… has done it again.

Brainless, amusing, and bizarre, like some beyond-woebegone character in Evelyn Waugh, FSU (follow its tales-of-the-weird history by typing FSU into my search engine) has now generated a healthy trade in t-shirts depicting its quarterback as Jesus Christ.

Look for the crucifixion scene t-shirt once the NCAA gets wind of this.

All four [Vanderbilt University football players] await trial on Oct. 16 and are free on bond. [Jaborian] McKenzie even transferred to Alcorn State University in Mississippi and played in the team’s season opener. However, the university president said he was removed from the team Thursday night and the school had made a mistake allowing him on.

Well excuuuuuuuuse me!

197

Reported instances of players on BCS teams who were arrested in 2012 — an average of 16 per month. The SEC led all conferences in arrests with 42, followed by the Big 12 with 37. Fewer than a quarter of the 197 arrests resulted in players being kicked off their teams. Only one player was arrested more than once and wasn’t dismissed from his team or suspended for at least a game. Florida State running back James Wilder Jr. Wilder has been arrested three times, and has yet to miss a game. He has played in both Florida State games this season.

Here’s the photo I want you to have in mind as you read the following summary of the Scott Eaton story at Northern Kentucky University. I want you to see how dressed for success the guy is, how he’s doing the Number One thing that Joe Paterno’s statue does (did), how next to him on a presentation board there’s the slogan BUILDING WINNERS FOR LIFE rather than, say, STEALING FROM YOUR SCHOOL AND FUCKING EVERY FEMALE IN SIGHT. I want you to think about how many American universities, as they sport up, fervently embrace and abundantly pay and abundantly esteem douchebags like Scott Eaton.

Smiling sweet-smelling Scott Eaton who came to pathetic NKU knowing he couldn’t do anything for it but that it could do plenty for him, and immediately began his sex and money extravaganza.

He did it for years, too, and that’s onaccounta no one cared, no one understood, some people were being cut in on the deal, some people were too scared to speak up about The Athletic Director, etc.

Dumb, pathetic, desperate schools like Northern Kentucky University are sitting ducks, and their desperate athletic programs are set up to attract people like Scott Eaton, who know losers for life when they see them.

During the Dominique Strauss-Kahn business, a writer for the New Yorker noted the anxiety with which “many in Paris” are witnessing “the ‘Italianization’ of French life — the descent into what might become an unseemly round of Berlusconian squalor…” Their country after all had not long ago produced (just like Italy) an accused rapist as a leading candidate for political office. Strauss-Kahn came close to being president; Silvio Berlusconi, convicted of tax fraud and sex with an under-age prostitute, was Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister.

UD has always been intrigued by the ways in which states fall into depravity, and the way they care about that (the French care, according to the New Yorker writer) and don’t care about that (the Italians don’t care). Italy is so depraved, and so indifferent to its depravity, that Italianization has become a globally portable noun, toted around to designate a national culture’s relaxed descent into moral turpitude.

Richard Rorty, in his philosophical essays about postmodernism, expressed anxiety about the Italianization of the United States. He routinely described us as “rich, fat, tired North Americans,” cynical about all of our institutions, and sinking back, in the absence of belief in the possibility of social improvement, into our comforting consumer goods (Don DeLillo’s novel, White Noise, is the best fictional evocation of this cultural mood).

But that was only our high culture, Rorty was quick to caution; our elites – financial, intellectual – are Italianizing, as in figures like Lawrence Summers, who despite his remarkable moral grubbiness, seems set to become our next federal reserve chair. (Hm. Not so fast, UD.)

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One way to understand the Oklahoma State University story is to suggest that Italianization has now invaded our great plains states, the country’s symbolic center of rectitude.

Look at Iowa’s long-serving senatorial scold, Charles Grassley, and tell me whether, when you look at him, you can think of anything but rigidly upright stands of wheat. Then look at this dude. The expression on President Obama’s face says it all.

So traditionally America – especially America’s heartland – was the exception, the clean place, the corny, cock-eyed optimist of nations, with the corniest locale the plains of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. “Blondie and his frau out of the plain states came!” says cruel sophisticated George, mocking the newly arrived wholesome faculty couple in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Now that the plains states are epicenters of football scandal (yes, given structural corruption, there are plenty of other football scandal locations), you see the beginnings of Paris-style anxiety about Italianization even on the plains.

From Penn State to the Miami scandal to Johnny Manziel’s autograph saga to alleged violations at top college football programs across the country, the NCAA has never faced more “culture” issues than it does today.

“Culture” here designates not merely the corruption itself (everyone knows college football is rancid), but indifference to it, everyone’s fine Italian hand waving away any embarrassment or shock over the fact that Nick Saban, recipient of $5.3 million a year from one of the poorest states in the union, routinely tells journalists to shut up when they ask about his dirty program. (“Nick Saban, the Alabama coach, stamped out of one news conference last week like a petulant child, all because reporters dared to do their jobs. He would talk about the football game, not the system of big-time college football, the system that made him rich and famous. Never that.”) Just like Joe Paterno, this guy’s got a fucking statue! These guys are our heroes!

UD’s pretty confident that Saban’s statue will meet the same fate as Paterno’s… But maybe not. Maybe by the time the massive Alabama scandal hits, the process of Italianization will have advanced to the point where no one gives a shit.

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Anyway, my point is that the plains were our last bastion. Now it’s pomo meh. Meh. Rape at Montana, rape at Colorado, pimping at Oklahoma, drugs at Iowa, meh. The plain-spoken plains have spoken. They’re on board. Benvenuto!

Sucky splashy particles are about to fall on Kansas State University as a result of the Oklahoma State explosion.

Why should a Pickens who is healthy and strong,
Blubber like a baby if his team goes astray?
A-weepin’ and a-wailin’ how they done him wrong,
That’s one thing you’ll never hear me say!

Never gonna think that the men who squeal are the only men among men.
I’ll snap my fingers to show I don’t care;
I’ll buy me some brand new boots to wear;
I’ll scrub my neck and I’ll brush my hair,
And start all over again.

Many a new face will please my eye,
Many a new love will find me;
Never’ve I once looked back to sigh over the bromance behind me;
Many a new day will dawn before I do!

Many a light lad may kiss and fly,
A kiss gone by is bygone.
Never’ve I asked an August sky, “Where has last July gone?”
Never’ve I wandered through the rye, wondering where has some guy gone;
Many a new day will dawn before I do!

Rubus Oklahomus speaks. It’s all brands, isn’t it? A sports magazine, a university… Sports Illustrated’s brand is about big tits and OSU’s brand is about big tits — we’re the same! SI has no place coming after Oklahoma State University! That’s hypocrisy.

… with less suggestive names.”

Let’s help OSU rechristen its hostess program.

I’ll start the ball rolling with

ROSA LUXEMBURG BRIGADE

Just like the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who in his heyday would pick which Moonies would marry which Moonies!

Things are getting weirder and weirder at Oklahoma State University – not just pimping coaches, but matching coaches.

OSU does their schoolwork for them, escorts them to class, lets them have their drugs, and takes care of their sex life. Football players might not have gotten any money (oh wait a minute; they did get money) but when it comes to being radically, totally, amazingly infantilized UD doesn’t think you can do better than being admitted to Oklahoma State University. Did Les Miles change their diapers for them too?

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Oh, and while the OSU admissions office is scrutinizing the academic qualifications of recruits, is it also reviewing the tits of female applicants… I mean, hostesses?

Hostesses: If you want to be admitted to OSU, you know what to do.

Next up, on the Sports Illustrated hit parade:

Around 2007, Joel Tudman, an [OSU] assistant strength-and-conditioning coach who is also the team’s chaplain and carries the title of Life Issue/Social Development Counselor for the football program — a mentoring position that has become more common within athletic departments — was put in charge of the drug counseling program for football. Tudman is also founder of Net Church, which he started in 2006. The congregation has grown quickly, and Sunday-night services were moved from Bennett Chapel to a student union auditorium, where Tudman’s sermons are delivered to an audience that often includes 40 or more football players.

Tudman, however, has no formal training in drug counseling. While Tudman’s bio on the athletic department website indicated that he had received a “double masters in health and counseling” from Texas A&M-Commerce, he in fact has only a single master’s degree, in Health, Kinesiology and Sports Studies. (Tudman’s bio on the Net Church website also erroneously stated that he had master’s degrees in Health Promotions and Counseling. After Tudman was interviewed by SI the bio was corrected.) His Oklahoma State bio said that he was twice honored by the Lone Star Conference as a running back and was a “3 time All-American sprinter.” In fact, that conference recognized him once (honorable mention in 2003) and he was an All-America sprinter only in 2004. (After SI began investigating Tudman’s background, the school pulled his bio from its website.)

Tudman says because he took courses in health and counseling while at Texas A&M-Commerce he “thought it was a double masters.” He produced a transcript that showed he completed five counseling courses, but none of them dealt with substance abuse and he never enrolled in the two courses Texas A&M-Commerce offered in that area. Tudman concedes that his athletic accomplishments were also embellished. “That’s [a mistake] on my part,” he says. “I take full responsibility.”

… (Tudman remains unlicensed to treat drug users.)

When asked about Tudman’s qualifications and background, [OSU] athletic director Holder said, “I didn’t look at Joel’s résumé” …

What Holder looked at was whether Tudman was a sufficiently pathetic blowhard to be controlled by Holder. Answer: Yes.

…whether your favorite college football program is dirty.

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UD thanks Andrew.

But it’s here now, and it’s great. Enjoy.

Classy. The Oklahoma State University librarian who according to tons of former football players wrote all of their papers for them has counterattacked. They’re all demented, see. One too many blows to the helmet.

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OSU pushed “players into easier majors, notably sociology.”

It’ll be interesting to hear what professors in the OSU sociology department – handmaiden of the football flunkies – have to say in their defense.

… “You don’t have to do anything. If you go to class, they’ll give you a C because they care about Oklahoma State football.”

Former wide receiver Artrell Woods told the magazine he didn’t write “a single paper” while at OSU, but rather had completed work dictated to him by a tutor.

Said former defensive tackle Brad Girtman, “Are you kidding me? I didn’t go there to go to school. I went there to play football.”

One of the former players named among those who received improper academic assistance is all-Big 12 wide receiver Dez Bryant, currently with the Dallas Cowboys. Sports Illustrated quotes a former assistant coach, who said of Bryant, “He just wasn’t supposed to be there. There’s no way he could do the college work. Once he got there, he was connected with the people that would help him.”

Maybe they’ll say the same thing the librarian did. The many players making these accusations are hopelessly gaga after years of tackles.

But it would be more seemly for people at this prostituted school to be honest about it. There’s a Jacobean comedy called The Honest Whore, and it would be truly wonderful, a wonderful thing for the American university, if the current madam of OSU – the university’s president, I assume – would honestly admit that OSU has been a sports bordello. Professors and advisors there should emulate Sonia, the redeemed prostitute of Crime and Punishment, and pray for divine release.

Headline of the day, from Bloomberg.