The guy the University of Illinois chose for – among other things – outreach to high school student prospects “was convicted of battery in 2004 and served a year of probation.” It was a drunken brawl, and Matthew Sinclair apparently beat a fellow brawler very severely. More recently – couple of days ago, in fact – a witness watched him stick a gun out of his car window and aim it at another car. “Officers found an unloaded firearm, a loaded magazine with 16 rounds of ammunition and a set of brass knuckles in the vehicle Sinclair was driving.” Brass knuckles! That’ll keep the lads in line!

But if you really want to discipline the young, there’s nothing like pointing weapons at them.

“[A]lthough [Matthew Sinclair’s] gun was uncased and unloaded, ammunition was accessible, and Sinclair didn’t have a concealed carry permit.”

Pish posh. A mere “lapse in judgment,” says UI’s head coach. So the guy likes to beat the shit out of people. So he likes to point guns out of cars. So he doesn’t give a crap about concealed carry laws or ammunition storage. So he’ll probably do jail time and not just probation on this go-’round. So what. Lapse.

If a local judge or jury jails Sinclair, UD has just the replacement for him.

Richie Incognito ain’t doing nothing these days. Sittin’ on his hands filing grievances is all. Richie knows how to do Sinclair’s job real good.

The remarkable synergy between the values of universities and the values of big-time football is there for all to see: Commitment to free, independent thought, to dissent, to reason over violence, to sober deliberation over intoxicated impulse, to academic seriousness leading to the completion of advanced degrees, to academic integrity, etc., etc. And nowhere is that synergy on clearer display these days than at Washington State University, whose athletic director has compiled an enemies list of people who aren’t “on board and believing in what we’re doing.” No bowl game tickets for those people. Dissenters have been placed on a no-tickets list.

The list is based on “a crimson-letter file of any particularly snarky emails that haven’t properly embraced the new way.” As another true believer – this one from Rutgers – writes in one of Scathing Online Schoolmarm‘s favorite pieces of prose:

Great organizations have culture, and culture only comes from a set of shared attitudes, goals, and values that every individual within that organization believes in.

It’s the ethos that’s made North Korea such a success, and you’ll find it at almost all of America’s great football schools too – get with the game or get fucked.

One local writer doesn’t quite get it:

This is inspired marketing for a program that’s had almost as many empty seats as occupied ones for its last two home games.

Most schools rank donors for ticket eligibility on a priority list.

The place that’s foisted a decade of bad football on its audience suddenly has a blacklist.

[The AD] means it when he says he has to change the culture. But who knew what he had in mind was vindictiveness?

No, no, no – it’s not vindictiveness. And it’s not a moronic marketing strategy. No, no, no.

You are looking at it the wrong way. The Democratic People’s Republic of Washington State University is a benevolent, misunderstood state. It seeks, via shunning, to educate dissenters so that they may join the glorious new way.

This is also what re-education camps are for, and UD is certain the AD has these in mind too. Otherwise it would look vindictive.

The stadium could be at least a third empty Saturday, considering the combination of anticipated bad weather, a holiday weekend with students away from campus, and the relative insignificance of the Minnesota game in relation to the final standings

And that’s why they pay the coach almost two million dollars! Let’s not hear any more bellyaching about overcompensated football coaches!

This article about the University of Colorado destroying its academic mission in pursuit of football money will have you tearing up at the poor little rich boy story that frames the narrative.

Best way to read the piece is to skip over the hard numbers stuff.

Colorado’s athletics department is awash in red ink. It owes the school nearly $30 million in internal loans provided over a series of years to help cover the athletics department’s move from the Big 12 to the Pac-12 and the considerable cost of buying out departed coaches and athletics directors while paying bigger bucks for new ones, among other costs. Plus, [Coach Mike] MacIntyre’s contract specifies other areas in which the school commits to spend even more on football, from facilities to staff to academic support… The average compensation package for major-college coaches is $1.81 million, a rise of about $170,000, or 10%, since last season — and more than 90% since 2006… The department is paying back $21.4 million in internal loans over 10 years at 2% interest, with $3 million in internal payments to be paid this fiscal year, shrinking the balance to $18.4 million.

But with a $7 million deficit last fiscal year and an expected $4 million deficit this fiscal year, [the loans will] stand at $29.4 million at the end of this fiscal year.

Colorado also provides the athletics department with a subsidy of roughly $5.5 million each year under the category of institutional support that does not need to be repaid.

Skip all that and go right for the heart – Coach MacIntyre loves his dad!

Eco-friendly University of Alabama:

“[The Quad] gets torn up every year… It’s almost to the point that we need to replace the whole system.”

[One groundskeeper], who oversees all of the grounds on the University of Alabama campus, said though tailgating is a lot of fun, it does take a toll on the grass. Each year the University pays anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 to rehabilitate the Quad.

“Before football season starts, the Quad is nice and pretty grass on both sides,” [he said.] “There’s grass on the east and west sides, but if you go on the west side now [to see the damage] it’s because tailgating just chews it up. We know that [it happens] every year. We over-seed and hydro-seed it in November, so that way it will be nice and pretty again in the spring.”

… “From corner to corner there’s beer tops… In the years past we’ve had to go in there and comb the Quad from east to west because there were so many that it had gotten really noticeable…”

Beer tops are just the small stuff.

Of all the items left on the Quad after home games, the most notable are not money or food. … [T]ents, living room furniture and televisions are left behind and never claimed.

Groundskeepers are impressed:

… “[Our] fans and visitor fans have been really good… ”

“You can’t put that many people in one area and expect it to be spotless… We’re realists. They do well for the most part until the beers get to flowing.”

… here. (Read the rest of my WKU posts here, if you can stomach it. Scroll down.)

Next, enjoy this beautiful observation from a faculty member at a university meeting last week.

Dick Taylor, an assistant professor in the school of journalism and broadcasting, asked [the president] if money spent on the football coach could be used towards education.

“In my three years, I’ve watched just the football coach … go from 250,000 a year to 450,000 a year to 850,000 dollars a year,” Taylor said. “I really wondered if the money could be better spent in what our core is which is educating students to get jobs.”

LOL.

Sports school presidents only say the truth on their way out the door and down the stairs.

UD has seen it again and again.

Here’s the latest case – the outgoing president of jockshop University of Nevada Las Vegas confides in an exit interview:

If we had paid as much attention to what the quality of the incoming deans were, as we were for a football or a basketball coach, I know this institution would already be at least on a peer with Harvard or anybody else. The level of scrutiny over athletics is a conundrum.

… and – look out – he’s at it again, stirring up hornets in Huntington. A local Marshall University basketball booster is outraged that Brozik, a professor there, made a student attend class.

Brozik … wouldn’t give Yous Mbao, a 7-foot-2 senior center on MU’s basketball team, an excused absence to play in the Herd’s 119-77 win over Rio Grande at the Henderson Center.

Had Mbao played, the win might have been 199-77!

[I]nformed sources say Brozik allegedly told Mbao his grade would be dropped two letters if he weren’t in attendance for a group presentation that Tuesday evening.

… What an injustice.

… If his name sounds familiar it’s because Brozik is the same professor that was outspoken in his criticism of Marshall’s financial support of the school’s athletic department. His rhetoric created a controversy and notable media attention.

The unfortunate part is when a few dissidents, such as Brozik, achieve notoriety while the silent majority of Marshall’s faculty is supportive of MU’s athletics.

The faculty at-large deserves better.

It’s also unfortunate that Marshall’s athletic department didn’t stand up to Brozik in Mbao’s behalf. It should have. It’s time to stop the nonsense.

(Yeah, ol’ Dallas outspoke for sure on Marshall University’s sports-fucked finances and general mental debility. We covered this notorious dissidence here.)

Marshall professors deserve to be at a university where coaches tell them when students can and cannot attend class. Why then do they not rise up as one and break their silence? Why should they get the short end of the stick, when professors at plenty of other schools have the right to plead with coaches for permission to have athletes attend class?

The athletics department itself fell down on this one, passively allowing a professor to apply attendance policies to athletes.

The article is clearly a call to arms. Expect professors and coaches to rally at Marshall’s central quad on behalf of their rights.

There’s an intriguing point/counterpoint in these two Eastern Echo articles dealing with the cosmic nullity that is the Eastern Michigan University football program. As the first student points out, when there’s no there there there’s every reason to stop pretending there’s a there. There.

Year in and year out, money continues to be wasted on a program in which virtually no one shows up to watch. … [There] are better things to do with the $2.47 million in the football budget instead of wasting it away with a sub-par product…

The writer calls for the university to shut down the program.

The other student argues that…

He doesn’t really argue. Even on the level of content, it’s hard to follow what he’s saying, since he doesn’t know what a semi-colon is. But his main point seems to be that the school has produced some NFL players.

Plus, some really impressive things are happening in the program. For instance, they just fired their crazed homophobic coach – and breaking his contract will only set the school back a few hundred thou. Oh, and

I would argue that wins and fans go hand-in-hand. If you want fans in the seats, you have to put some wins on the board.

Well, Coach English was trying to do that by calling everyone a faggot! What do you want?

Sure, some commenters point out that putting wins on the board actually doesn’t – at EMU – put fans in the seats. Like, I mean, really; (note semi-colon) no one at your school gives a shit about football…

Surely you didn’t think the emerging details of the Virginia State University attack (at a banquet) on an opposing team’s quarterback would make things look better? Not only does it seem to have been a planned, group assault against a totally unsuspecting single individual (he had left the luncheon to use the bathroom), but in its immediate aftermath, at a public event honoring various players and their conference, the two teams came close to an all-out melee.

And look. I can understand (see this post’s title) how distraught onlookers might tell reporters that it reflects badly on historically black universities; but, as a daily chronicler of American universities, I can assure you that this event, while certainly a step forward on our path toward the brutalization of institutions of higher learning, differs little from the hazing and rioting endemic on a whole bunch of campuses. Hazing, rioting, and, for sports factories like VSU, the games themselves brutalize our schools. In this particular case the opposing quarterback got his lights knocked out the day before the game, under dramatic circumstances; but of course he’s getting them knocked out, little by little, whenever he plays. A fine thing for universities – to be the means of delivering brain injury to their students.

Anyway. The comment thread on the article to which I’ve linked you is also instructive. Just as plenty of people think Richie Incognito did what needed to be done to toughen up a cowardly teammate, so a number of commenters don’t see the what the big deal is here. Why cancel the game just because our team got together and beat the shit out of the quarterback the day before? Use your second-string quarterback.

UD sometimes feels as though she should issue warnings:

WARNING: THIS UNIVERSITY IS HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

U Mass Amherst, Chico State, University of Rhode Island: Certain schools feature violent people – often violent drunks – and should be avoided.

Virginia State, where only a few months ago two students were hazed to death, should definitely come with a warning. At a recent event celebrating its athletic conference, its football team beat an opposing quarterback so badly the game that had been scheduled for the day after the banquet has been called off.

The guy “was allegedly beaten by a group of Virginia State football players in a bathroom of a WSSU campus building during the CIAA football banquet.”

Winston-Salem State Chancellor Donald Reaves said in a statement Friday night, “I am saddened to report that at today’s CIAA pre-championship game luncheon held at the Anderson Center of the WSSU campus that our starting quarterback, Rudy Johnson, was viciously beaten by one or more members of the Virginia State football team.

“There is no excuse for the behavior of the Virginia State players. One suspect has admitted to his role in the attack and has been arrest on criminal assault charges. The University Police Department is attempting to identify the other VSU players who were involved. Today’s event was supposed to be a celebration for both teams and for all the players who were being recognized for an outstanding season. The actions from the Virginia State players certainly changed the outcome for everyone.”

Most teams wait until they’re on the field before beating the crap out of the quarterback. VSU can’t wait.

*********************

Wow. Yet more violence at Virginia State University.

Just sayin’! Not sayin’ Rule By Females would necessarily be better. But when you run a blog about universities and it’s all about undergraduates like Richie Incognito and trustees like Steven Cohen and coaches like Mike Rice you do wonder about Rule By Males.

When you see – frequently – headlines like this

WHY REPLACE A STADIUM THAT’S
ONLY HALF-FULL ON GAME DAYS?

it has to go through your head to consider whether men are led through life by anything other than dicks and wallets. I mean, why are Colorado State University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas (scroll down) going to build massive expensive empty new stadiums? CSU Athletic Director Jack Graham’s “dream of playing with the big boys,” says one local critic, really shouldn’t result in a university spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a slightly better located, slightly expanded, void.

Various fans explain to the newspaper that they go to the games, they get excited when they go to the games, and they get excited by the thought of competing with other schools on the basis of the magnificence of their stadiums …

… Jesus… to…

… oh, Jesus….

It’s because of the intellectual luster he lends the place. Challenged on the pathetic graduation rates of the students for whose progress he’s responsible, he explains:

“If everybody stays, our graduation rate is great… But some guys just don’t stay. If somebody had an answer, I’d love to hear it.”

Boeheim earns close to two million dollars a year for his policy of saying

1. If they would graduate, they would graduate; and

2. Fuck if I know.

… where Richie Incognito spent two years as a university student.

Every powerhouse recruited him. His old man wanted him to go to Miami, but Junior felt at home during his visit to Nebraska. “I don’t want to go anyplace else,” he told his father. “There is nothing to do there. It’s just football.“

LOL.

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‘Course, they’re way past Incognito problems now.

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Oh, why be coy:

Incognito was suspended (twice) at Nebraska, and you know it’s not easy to get suspended at Nebraska, where character-building coach Tom Osborne let a cornerback play while awaiting trial for second-degree murder. Osborne also retained a defensive lineman who was arrested eight times, convicted four times, and left the heartland accused of multiple sexual assaults, before his induction into Nebraska’s Hall of Fame in 2006. Not to mention Nebraska’s current leader of young men, Bo Pelini, who is still apologizing for an epic carpet-bombing of F-words, an attempt to say exactly what he thought of Nebraska’s fans.

… The Incognito rap sheet includes a note that his peers voted him the NFL’s second-dirtiest player. No. 1 in a Sporting News poll last year was another Nebraska worthy, Ndamukong Suh.

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All of which confirms for the millionth time that if you want true surreality, the really actually deeply bizarre, you don’t go to America’s big cities. As David Lynch knows so well, if you seek America at its most scarily twisted, head for the rural heartland.