… the nation’s number one party school last year (this year it’s number two), the school that has over the decades hired more drunks and debauchees as coaches and athletics directors than any other, the school… oh, read UD’s many posts about WVU if you have a taste for the sordid – put West Virginia University in my search engine… Anyway, it should come as no surprise that the coach at the center of the Oklahoma State allegations has moved on to… West Virginia University! Joe DeForest will be soberly scrutinized by head coach Dana Holgorsen, himself a man of unimpeachable self-control.

UD’s enjoyed, over the years, following good ol’ T. Boone’s beloved Oklahoma State University (and – if you read that last link – T. Boone is so right that it’s a changed school!), and she’s certainly settling in to enjoy Parts One through All Our Coaches Are Pimps.

Hoo-wheeeee!

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary, as Stephen Foster put it. The guy in this post’s title wants to know why he can’t just love his Vikings and not have to think about being one of millions of Minnesota taxpayers who’ve given hundreds of millions of dollars to the team’s racketeering owner, Zygi Wilf.

Zygi is one of Yeshiva University’s most honored trustees. He is part of the Yeshiva University tradition of having its trustees called “evil” by judges. First Bernard Madoff and now Zygi have inspired some of America’s finest jurists to rise to this rhetorical occasion…

(Update: Yeshiva’s main campus is named after the Wilf family. Yikes.)

But back to our headline. Like it or not, your sports news – university sports, professional sports – will always be saturated with – imbricated with (to use an English major word) – criminal news. This being the case, UD proposes that MFA programs at sports factories offer not just instruction in Minimalism, but also instruction in Criminalism, a prose style in which you entertainingly interweave afternoons at the arena with evenings in jail.

There is a good deal to study here. UD has been a student of criminalist prose for years and has accumulated a syllabus-full of methods, approaches, points of view. She’s particularly intrigued by the style she calls Coacha Inconsolata, a mournful account of the sufferings of coaches who through no fault of their own recruited drunks and flunkies to the team and of course to the school. Here’s a very recent example. The trick is to focus not on the totally foreseeable stupidity and criminality of the recruit, but rather on the shocked and hurt coach.

Here are some excerpts, with commentary from Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

U Conn [basketball] center Tyler Olander has put Kevin Ollie in a difficult position … [This is the beginning of the first sentence of the article. Start right off not with the player, but with the coach. It’s unseemly to dwell on jailed players — too many of them, doesn’t look good, challenges alumni to keep loving the team — so dwell rather on the sacrificial agonies of the coaches.] Legendary coach Jim Calhoun had already left Ollie with a underwhelming and thinning front line. Now, calling that front line “thinning” is like a bald man using the comb over. It’s approaching nonexistent. [Next move: Recall the impossibly big shoes into which the coach must step. Legendary Jim! You only have to watch this famous clip to understand how beloved, how amazing, Calhoun was… Poor Ollie! Left only with thinning hair.] Olander was UConn’s only big man left on the roster with any sort of real experience. The Huskies had already lost veteran Enosch Wolf, who had his scholarship taken away for his own legal issues… [If you’re not blubbering by this point, you’ve got a heart of stone. What is this good and great man, this Job of the jocks, supposed to do?]

Just continue like that if you want to write Coacha Inconsolata criminalism: The writer here goes on to talk about the coach’s “major headache,” the way he’s “scrambling” to do a good job, and how “This is not what he had to have in mind when he laid out his plan” for greatness. Do not touch on the question of how it is that anyone entering a major university sports coaching position lays out non-criminogenic plans for greatness. Do not ask how anyone could possibly be that stupid. Just go with the Job thing.

Between 2003 and 2008, Rutgers’ overall athletic budget increased at double the rate of the university budget. This was made possible in part by the university, which, through student fees and its general fund, heavily subsidized the athletic department, sometimes to the tune of 40 percent of its budget. Worse, some of the athletic department’s budget wasn’t even accounted for, since it was kept hidden in off-the-books spending deals and secret contracts that were discovered by the Star-Ledger in 2008.

The New York magazine article from which I’ve quoted ends with this way-ringing endorsement:

Rutgers’ [ongoing] pursuit of athletic glory won’t be any more ignominious than anyone else’s.

A commenter adds:

Omitted by the author is the exceedingly discouraging fact that Rutgers Athletics amassed a deficit of $28 million last year, the second largest deficit in all of college athletics. All at time when state support to the academic enterprises of this once highly regarded public institution have been reduced significantly.

And a major portion of the athletics budget comes from a mandatory “student activity fee” supposedly instituted to fund things like student organizations, concerts, etc. Instead most of the fee is directed towards 84 athletes, 15 highly paid coaches, and massive athletics facilities.

This once highly regarded etc. says it all.

Many Oklahoma State University fans are shocked by allegations that OSU football players were paid, their grades were changed and that recruits received sexual favors.

According to the university, a series of articles in Sports Illustrated will allege that misconduct in the OSU football program occurred between 2001 and 2007.

OSU Vice President of Athletics Mike Holder said, ” We are shocked by the allegations raised about our football program…”

Yeah, passing out in piles of beer cans – that’s college students everywhere, not just at tailgates down south.

UD has found the quintessential university football sentence for the 2013 season.

She doubts she will find a better one, but she’ll keep looking.

But so par for the course at America’s greatest pretender to academic seriousness.

And, you know, just after everything that has made and continues to make West Virginia University a national laughingstock, it only makes sense for students at an equally risible school like Texas State University to urge university leaders to make WVU their model and liquor up the games.

One may argue the [Texas State] football team has not given fans something to cheer about in recent years, but part of the problem may be that a major aspect of sporting events has been absent at Bobcat Stadium — alcohol… If alcohol was sold at Bobcat Stadium, the university would surely see an increase in attendance and revenue. According to the West Virginia Gazette, West Virginia University first sold alcohol at its football games during the 2011-2012 season. The school made $520,000 from alcohol sales alone, and a total of $1.26 million in concession sales that year. Considering those figures, imagine selling alcohol at Texas State football games to a fan base and culture that embraces drinking.

A culture that embraces drinking. Such a dainty way to put it.

[I]t’s scary to think it only takes one brain-dead knucklehead to target Manziel’s helmet-encased brain.

At the Thanksgiving game, the group deep-fries eight turkeys and installs an alcohol ice luge…

I call it

AMERICA: FUCK YEAH!

You say this is too much strength conditioning!

I say

Welcome to Iowa!

You say This bartender’s too young!

I say

Welcome to Iowa!

You say Blowing a .248 is just too much!

I say

Try .341, sucker! (If she’d been doing herself anally, University of Tennessee style, she’d have had a .448!) And welcome to Iowa! America’s Number Two party school last year, and this year — America’s Number One!

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

[UD thanks Stephen for the link.]

Ah, but this is America, where classes are routinely cancelled for football games, but if you so much as leave a game early you may eventually be subject to punishment.

More good news for Penn State.

You go, Minot State!