… to reveal all the petty inept mini-scandalous acts that may accompany anything bureaucracies do.
This is the real reason big scandals tend to grow, tend to be so difficult to tamp down. Bureaucracies are hydra-headed.
**********************
Just as plagiarism scandals break out with one instance of copying, but almost always, on examination, yield tons of other instances of copying (they also, typically, yield related forms of bad behavior on the part of the plagiarist), so any given big-time athletics scandal on an American university campus will almost certainly – having drawn public and press scrutiny – bring to light routine subsidiary idiocies.
When the shit hits the fan in this big way, you can count on some big name on campus blaming journalists for it all — but of course this move (especially if made by someone in part responsible for the debacle) — simply becomes another hydra-head.
***********************
And so it is in rattled rutted Rutgers, stuck in the deepening slough of its own despond. It started with an outrageously abusive coach, moved briskly to negligent administrators, and now has positively zoomed onward to useless, expensive search firms (the national scandal of often useless, always expensive search firms is what I mean by hydra-heads that lurk in almost all bureaucracies); an also-scandalous replacement appointment; a hectoring professor on a university committee.
UD‘s point is that all of these microbursts are routine aspects of any university. All universities have fanatic ideologues. All have presidents who don’t wanna know from sicko athletics. Almost all are robbed blind by search firms.
It’s only when the big scandal hits that all of these routine scandals come bursting out.
Alors, if you want to avoid the hydra-head deal, avoid the big scandal, right?
Should have thought of that before you spent all of your students’ money on that big ol’ dirty ol’ sports program.
You start at the beginning, and as you scan one sentence after another, your smile grows. At certain points, your smile goes way wide. Follow UD as she smiles through this article, in the Times-Picayune, New Orleans.
The headline at first looks disturbing, not smile-making.
LSU FALLS IN LOWER HALF
OF SEC IN PLAYER ARRESTS
DURING PAST THREE YEARS
Louisiana State University is trailing other SEC schools, which is… bad?
But wait! In arrests. LSU ranks somewhat lower than some other schools in the number of players arrested over the last three years. So – let’s see how it breaks down.
The arrest of LSU running back Jeremy Hill recently has made for negative headlines for LSU. But when it comes to that subject, LSU is in the lower half of the SEC going back to 2010.
According to an unofficial count tallied by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in that span, four programs are in double figures [SMILE], led by newcomer Missouri [SMILE. WELCOME, MISSOURI, AND THANKS FOR BURNISHING, RIGHT AWAY, THE SEC’S FANTASTIC REP!] with 18, not counting two coaches’ arrest for DWI [BIG SMILE ON THE NOT COUNTING THE COACHES THING. ACTUALLY, LAUGH OUT LOUD.]. Vanderbilt has the fewest with only one in that span.
In between is Florida (17), Georgia (15), Arkansas (12), Ole Miss (11), Auburn and , Kentucky (nine each), Alabama (seven), LSU (six) and Mississippi State, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Tennessee (five each).
LSU fans were divided on whether there was a problem at LSU or if it was more of a universal issue, according to this poll we posted. [KIND OF AN UNCERTAIN SMILE AS I TRY TO FIGURE OUT THAT EITHER/OR… IS IT A PROBLEM THAT THE ONLY ELEMENT OF YOUR UNIVERSITY ANYONE KNOWS OR CARES ABOUT ROUTINELY FEATURES CRIMINALS? NAH! AND SINCE OTHER SCHOOLS ALSO FEATURE CRIMINALS ON THEIR TEAMS, DOES THAT MEAN IT’S UNIVERSAL AND THEREFORE NOT A PROBLEM BUT AN ‘ISSUE’? IF IT’S UNIVERSAL IS IT LIKE SUN SPOTS OR DECREASED COGNITIVE SKILLS AS YOU MOVE TOWARD YOUR EIGHTIES AND THEREFORE NOT A PROBLEM SO MUCH AS A PERMANENT UNFORTUNATE FEATURE OF EXISTENCE?]
UD‘s smile persisted as she scrolled through the comments made by New Orleans locals. She’s particularly fond of the comparative approach many SEC fans take to the problem or issue or universe. Frinstance:
[A]t least the arrests are for fighting, and not for mostly robbery (Alabama). I’d rather have problems for bar brawls, [than] people who were dishonest.
You said it! Bar brawls are nice clean man-on-man violence, not like sneaky robbery. There’s a dignity to bar brawls.
The other day, Iowa Hawkeyes head coach Kirk Ferentz decried the spreading influence of money in college athletics. This is funny for several reasons, but you don’t really need to go past the fact that Ferentz is paid $3.8 million a year to coach Iowa’s football team, and does so while providing a comically small return on investment. In situations like this, schools would normally cut bait and fire the coach, but Ferentz is protected by a buyout that makes his contract look downright reasonable.
… If Iowa were to fire Ferentz today, the school would have to pay a buyout of $17,531,360.
$17,531,360. For Kirk Ferentz. To not coach.
When that’s the context, $918,000 is nothing.
… violent and prevaricating coach , direct your attention away from Rutgers for a moment and take a look at the University of Alaska.
The larger picture for Alaska involves spectacular statewide corruption. Our two far-flung states – Alaska and Hawaii – are among America’s most filthy, and their substandard universities, and corrupt university sports programs, reflect that. Of course one of the reasons these programs can be so corrupt is that no one outside Hawaii and Alaska pays any attention. We look at big urban states like New Jersey.
But UA has its own sports scandal going, and it precisely echoes the Rutgers story. College Hockey News reports:
Former Alaska-Anchorage forward Mickey Spencer alleges that former coach Dave Shyiak hit a player with his stick during a practice in 2011, then told players to keep quiet about it. Spencer made his allegations in a letter written to the school president and Board of Regents, it was reported in the Anchorage Daily News.
According to the letter, Shyiak violently struck forward Nick Haddad during a drill because the coach got angry that Haddad didn’t stop in front of the net as instructed.
The Daily News obtained the letter. In it, Spencer said, “He tomahawked, lumber-jacked — whatever you want to call it — him across the thigh on his (hockey) pants. We knew this wasn’t a small deal, it’s kind of a big deal. I’ve seen a coach break a stick over a goalpost or the glass because he’s pissed about something, but I’ve never seen one take out his anger on a player.”
You can understand why Shyiak was frustrated; he had eight losing seasons in a row at UAA. Anyone would have attacked a player.
As at Rutgers, after the violent coach went, the UAA athletic director who oversaw the coach was also forced out. There’s a suggestion that the university didn’t take the players’ report of the coach’s violence seriously; there’s also the fact that the university announced nothing of all of this to the media. And now, for unknown reasons, the search for a new hockey coach has been called off.
UAA athletics is also, by the way, under NCAA investigation for an undisclosed something or other.
The Sarah Palin appointees making up this university’s regents have called a special meeting to discuss all of this. That should help.
… whenever a university sports scandal gets truly nationally and internationally bad, we’re always treated to the semi-literate self-important pointless maundering of the Designated Faculty Hitter.
The DFH teaches sports management or something; he’s a team booster whose job it is to cover the sports shit on campus with academic roses — to make the crime and abuse and cheating and sleaze look as though they’re activities that can be understood as part of the daily life of an organization recognizable as a university, rather than a syndicate or a gang or whatever.
The DFH for the country’s latest scandal-plagued darling, Rutgers, has just done his thing, and it’s time for SOS to take a good long look at it.
********************
Dear Rutgers University, [He’s written it in the form of a letter to Rutgers.]
“It is no coincidence that we all bleed scarlet”.
That familiar saying among those that call themselves “Rutgers Men” is also the very ethos of my being.
[Strange opening line. To whom – among the readers of Forbes magazine – is that line familiar? And Rutgers Men? SOS had no idea Rutgers was a single-sex school. But she can certainly confirm that already in the writer’s first sentence he has dismissed any female readers his letter might have had. And – the very ethos of my being. Wow. If a team motto is the very ethos of your being, I’m being not very interested in what you have to say about anything. The very ethos of my being is laughing at you.]
As a Rutgers College and Law School alumus, a former student-athlete and current faculty member of the School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University has been a major part of my life for over a decade. [Why? Since Rutgers didn’t even teach you about dangling modifiers, so now you’ve embarrassed yourself again, right after that ethos thing?] My blood is forever scarlet, and I am proud of it.
During my time on the banks of the Raritan, I have had the opportunity to observe the exceptional growth and evolution of our university from a number of perspectives. While we have made tremendous strides [Did Rutgers tell you about cliches?] over the last decade, we have also managed to inhibit our own success due to an alarming string of organizational failures. While the majority of the media and public [You could have written most observers, but that wouldn’t have been as pretentious.] have been quick to point fingers of blame at our leadership for much of the turmoil, they too easily neglect that leaders of great organizations do not make decisions in a vacuum. Between students, faculty and staff, [That should be among.] the Rutgers community is made up of more than 70,000 individuals, [Again, you could have said people, but individuals is far more pretentious, with more syllables.] all of which [whom] play some role in the direction of the university. Large organizations, whether they are state universities or multinational conglomerates, operate in such a way that blaming any one individual for the failures of the entire entity is simply naive and unfair. [Totally untrue statement. It’s often the case that one person is significantly responsible for a large institution’s failure. That’s why the president of Rutgers will be resigning soon.]
Our President Robert Barchi is a brilliant neuroscientist. [Irrelevant.] Our former athletic director Tim Pernetti is a tremendously successful entrepreneur [So? We know that athletic directors and their agents are capable of negotiating obscene, institution-destroying contracts, but this isn’t really why they are at the university.] and his successor, Julie Hermann, is a accomplished athletic administrator. [Who says? Isn’t it rather naive of you simply to assert this?] While each of them has shown great stewardship throughout their careers, there is no such thing as a perfect leader. [SOS says: This sort of condescending, statement-of-the-obvious, pat-the-reader-on-the-head phrase — no such thing as a perfect leader, I’ll have you know! — is a real winner when it comes to regaining all those readers your writing has already alienated.] That is why every organization creates levels of redundancy within their decision making structures to prevent any one individual from having to [too] much influence. While this might lead to red tape and bureaucracy, it also insures that [the] healthy functioning of the corporate ecosystem. [As at Rutgers?]
… The controversy that has struck our great university over the last few months is not due to the shortcomings of our leadership, but rather a result of a culture in which accountability and communication are misaligned. In any large organization, particularly one as complex as a major state university, there are so many moving parts, competing interests and differences of opinion that unless there is a concerted effort to have total transparency and debate, bad decisions are are all but guaranteed to be made. [Note the jargon and passive voice and general tone of haughty lecturing to the unwashed masses who don’t know anything about the complex mysterious intricacies of organizations. This is what UD calls going cosmic. The disaster – not controversy – at Rutgers is not about the all too familiar corruption of universities by mindless boosterism and greed. No, no, it’s some case study in organizational blahblah.]
At Rutgers, there has long been a movement by many faculty and alumni against big time athletics. While their voice might be that of the minority, those that believe that academic and athletic progress are not mutually inclusive have succeeded at creating a juxtaposition that has become endemic to the culture of our university. [Do you have any idea what the fuck he’s saying? This reads like a letter from Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Vacuous. Comically pretentious.] As both a professor who values academic progress and an entrepreneur who makes a living off of college athletics, I am equally guilty of helping promote these conflicting ideals. [What conflicting ideals? What’s the juxtaposition? What is he talking about?]
Instead of creating an environment based on accountability, where critical issues are brought out into the open and decision makers are held responsible for their actions, the university community has seemingly refused to learn from its past mistakes and has become seemingly forever mired in the morass of its own self-sabotage. [Morass and self-sabotage… weird mixed metaphor. Deadly repetition of mousy seemingly. And what is he talking about? He seems to want to attack critics of crushingly expensive and corrupt sports at Rutgers – it’s the fault of the critics; they’re not on board with everyone else, etc. That’s fine. Go after the nay-sayers. But go after them cleanly and directly.] 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. [Huh? This unanimity is certainly true of great cultures like North Korea. In the United States, especially in our universities, it’s just the opposite.] If those of us who owe so much to Rutgers cannot agree to bring our goals into sync, than how can we expect our University to do the same?
******************************
There’s more, but – to quote Mr Bennet on one of the letters he receives from Mr Collins – I won’t sport with your intelligence further. A painstaking analysis of this writer’s appalling prose does seem to reveal an attack on those pesky dissenters whose efforts to keep sports from destroying Rutgers turn out to be responsible for this catastrophe. If only Rutgers had been as united as the folks in Paterno’s Happy Valley, the outcome would have been so much better.
… schools.
*****
Update: LOL.
UD has started timing the appearance of these articles. How soon after the body has, as it were, begun to go cold, does this get written?
For the purpose of this blog, let’s assume the worst here and examine the landscape of the defensive line with Martin not being a part of it.
I mean yes yes of course he was arrested only a few hours ago for using a gun in the commission of a crime, and he already had a record of bad behavior, but put that aside. How will this affect our win/loss ratio?
The comments at the end of article are, as always, worth reading. They run the familiar gamut: Total denial (he was set up); shocked outraged disgust, and an insistence that he be kicked off the team immediately (I have never seen such behavior from a player on a big-time university football team!); a reminder that even with thugs the team eats shit; polite, tentative questioning of the coach’s recruitment strategies; an admission that a fan had noticed some, er, violent tendencies on the part of the player; immediate shouting down of the fan by other fans who tell him/her that if you don’t like violence don’t watch football…
***********************
Another Update: SPIN IT, BABY! SPIN IT!
Wow. It’s rare that you read such pure unadulterated bathetic shameless spin. All praise to this writer for churning it out so fast and thick and pure.
Seriously. This is insane to spend [$450 million to renovate a football stadium] that is used six times a year. Maybe eight. It [is] also completely consistent with the rest of the great state [of] Texas, and the United States.
… [Note that this] athletic [department is] associated with [Texas A & M, a school] of higher learning.
Well, yes… All of us with anything other than them itty bitty brains you see in the truly athletified recognize the Beckettian absurdity of big-time university sports. And it’s noble for Larry Bennett, a political science professor at DePaul, to go up against the surreal inevitability which is a new empty money-hemorrhaging basketball stadium there. But… you know…
There’s gonna be a university casino too! Bennett thinks
DePaul University should not be associated with it. […] By joining this project to DePaul we would be signaling that its institutional ethics are precariously situational.
But believe me, DePaul is so far past Bennett with this idea… I hear it’s looking into massage parlors too…
… sings Cinderella; and this year’s Cinderella university story has got to be Rutgers, whose dream to be the Auburn University of the east is coming true, one day at a time. Rutgers has done it all, with amazing focus and commitment:
*** It has moved decisively toward shutting down the academic component of the university for the sake of athletics. The school’s athletic budget is massive; its academic more and more paltry. Eventually Rutgers as “teaching” and “research” “university” will be exclusively online.
*** It has hired and fired presidents with an eye toward greater and greater haplessness and indifference. Its trustees may be close to firing its latest leader, his function of taking the fall for the most recent string of athletic scandals having been fulfilled. Watch for Rutgers’ next presidential offer to go out to Nick Saban.
*** It has decided to retain its latest in a line of allegedly abusive and/or mendacious athletic officials. She and her rhetoric of integrity and triumph will stay; the letter protesting her cruelty as coach – signed by the entire volleyball team she once led – will be ignored.
These, and too many other strategies and initiatives to mention, are the outward manifestations of an American university determined to root out any scholarly residue, and just as determined to compete with Auburn, Texas Tech, Southern Methodist, Kentucky, and LSU for sports supremacy. A bold move, indeed, to go up against the southern powerhouses. But so far, Rutgers is doing everything right.
Have faith in your dream and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through.
And it’s Rutgers. At Rutgers, you bankrupt the school subsidizing athletics. At Rutgers, all that money you took from students buys coaches who abuse students. So that’s, uh, students buying their own abuse. Strange goings-on at a university.
At Rutgers, the new athletic director brought in to clean up the program after problems with abusive coaches turns out – allegedly – to have been an abusive coach.
In smaller ways, too, the new clean-up person at Rutgers already looks like an embarrassment.
[Julie] Hermann was also a central figure in a 1997 discrimination lawsuit filed against the University of Tennessee.
Former assistant volleyball coach Ginger Hineline claimed that she was discouraged from becoming pregnant while working under Hermann.
Hermann made remarks at Hineline’s June 1994 wedding that became central to the lawsuit, which ended with a jury siding with Hineline and awarding her $150,000.
Hermann denied the existence of the video at her introductory news conference at Rutgers on May 15.
“There’s a video? I’m sorry, did you say there’s a video? There’s no video, trust me,” Hermann said.
But The Star-Ledger posted a video on its website, showing Hermann at the nuptials joking that she hoped Hineline would not get pregnant any time soon.
I’m sorry, there’s a video, trust me.
All my checks and cash and fees,
To Charlie Weis we bend our knees.
All for coaches! All for coaches!’
… like New Mexico, is that you’ve got to read shit like this.
Most people just lie there and read it and try not to feel so defiled by its stupid lies that they want to jump off a cliff (there are amazing cliffs in New Mexico). Others can’t help taking the words in and responding to them, as these two New Mexico State University students did.
Although their effort to introduce reason, decency and (you gotta be kidding) intellect to the state – and, more specifically, to the chair of the NMSU board of regents – is the very definition of noble futility, along the lines of, say, the Warsaw Uprising, they are to be admired for the effort. Attention, as they say, must be paid.
[The chair’s letter] is a strangely defensive account of the glories of our sports program and why it deserves the funding it currently receives, including a controversial $4.1 million annual transfer out of the academic fund.
The Cheney letter may have largely been prompted by the “firestorm” created when then-presidential candidate Garrey Carruthers stated that dropping football to a lower division or even eliminating it entirely were options on the table.
Carruthers nearly immediately retracted that statement, but Cheney seems to still feel the need to rally against the critics. “Like it or not,” the chairman of the board tells us, “we must live in the reality that is collegiate sports today.” We have to keep doing what we’re doing, because everyone else is doing it. We have to pay our football coach more than the entire philosophy department combined, because that’s just the reality of the market…
… [It is impossible to] justify the robbing of academic funds to cover the athletic program’s debts at a time when professorships are being reduced and money for research and public service continues to decrease. The Aggie-pride factor doesn’t take away from the fact that many student-athletes leave NMSU with a subpar education and a host of physical and financial problems. Wins don’t justify the overblown importance of big-time sports on college campuses. Instead of blindly going along with the “reality that is collegiate sports today” — the reality of the NCAA’s perverted money-making machine, of rape cover-ups, of steroid abuse — why don’t we put our foot down, be different, recognize that they’re just games and act accordingly? Why not do groundbreaking work to redefine the role of collegiate athletics rather than just trying to keep up with the big schools?
Bravo. You lose.
… (the big three here are Hawaii, Alaska, and Nevada) has a farcical public university system.
HEADLINE #1:
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA
ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT DEBT
EXPECTED TO REACH $13M
HEADLINE #2:
BUILDING ENROLLMENT, FOOTBALL TEAM,
PART OF PLAN FOR NEW UNIVERSITY OF
HAWAII WEST OAHU CHANCELLOR
And what a chancellor!
[With Rockne] Freitas’ background as a [football] star at Oregon State University and his many years in the NFL, as well as being instrumental in bumping up UH football to the Mountain West Conference, anything is possible.