October 21st, 2019
The Miyamura High School’s Winning Football Strategy: The “Put the Coach in Jail” Play.

[A] cellphone video, shot by [a player], … allegedly showed [Coach John] Roanhaus walking in the locker room and taking two $20 bills from a black wallet before stuffing that cash into his sock, according to an arrest warrant.

For weeks, players had been mysteriously losing cash from their wallets… It had gotten so bad that players had been suspecting each other of the thefts and Roanhaus claimed to be a victim too, parents said.

Roanhaus had even made players run extra laps at practice as punishment for one of them allegedly stealing, the parents told KOB.

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

Miyamura High School’s football team has won just twice in nine games this season — though the Patriots did win their first game after Roanhaus’ arrest.

October 15th, 2019
Bulgarian Soccer Fans. Not sure why everyone’s making such a fuss about them. You can see the same thing in Italian, French, German, Argentine, and dozens of other national stadiums.

This guy, and a lot of other commentators, are really upset about Bulgarian behavior against England the other night. People are screaming so hard about what looks to ol’ UD like routine racism and fascism in the stands that the head of Bulgarian soccer – who saw and heard nothing during the game and is offended by derogatory remarks from various quarters about Bulgarian fascists – has been forced to resign.

Everyone’s droning on about how it’s happening onaccounta resurgent right-wing nationalism in Europe – which assumes that if you can liberalize a government you can debestialize soccer fans. Me no think so. Me think there’s really nothing political about these people. Me think if you asked them basic political questions they wouldn’t understand what you were saying.

Read any intelligent person on ISIS. ISIS is about nihilism and love of beheadings and enslaving; it ain’t very Islamic and it certainly ain’t political. Hate to get all Jonathan Swift on you, but a lot of people – er, young men – are real animals. (Most soccer stadium audiences around the world are currently almost one hundred percent young and male. Everyone else is too afraid for their and their childrens’ lives.) Countries that let them attend public competitive events get what they deserve.

Yet, as Mike Meehall Wood points out, Bulgaria (and other countries) ain’t got much choice:

[D]omestic games are played out to low crowds, where the only people who show up are those who really, really care, which is to say, the hooligans. The idea that the Bulgarian authorities can root out the boneheads is laughable: the stadiums would be empty afterward, so congratulations on not only becoming the guy who bankrupted the club, but also the one who incurred the wrath of the most aggressive and dangerous thugs in town in the process.

The hooligans know this, and thus act with near impunity.

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

But UD! You’re talking about closing down soccer altogether!

Look. Countries already have shitlists of people they won’t allow into the games. Make the shitlists long enough and non-barbarians might start buying tickets. And anyway what are you talking about? Don’t you know that increasing numbers of games are played in closed-to-the-public stadiums because audiences are simply becoming unacceptably dangerous? I ain’t the one shutting down the show – that’s the soccer federation.

October 15th, 2019
BREAKING NEWS: A UD EXCLUSIVE

With the imminent incarceration of his latest personal attorney, the president is, according to three sources, about to name Washington State University coach, and Pepperdine-educated attorney, Mike Leach, to replace Rudy Giuliani. A longtime supporter, Leach has a framed and signed photo of Trump on the wall of his WSU office, shares the president’s love of conspiracy theories, obscenity, and violence, and is said to be “tired” of coaching fat stupid lazy worthless university students for a mere four or five million a year.

For background on Leach, go here.

October 13th, 2019
All Hail President Robert Barchi as his Rutgers Presidency Comes to an End!

He leaves, he tells us, on a high note; and who could disagree? From his refusal to step down from lucrative do-nothing corporate board seats even though they represented a conflict of interest; to his inept oversight, during his short tenure, of the most prolific, grotesque and high-profile athletic scandals American higher ed has ever seen; to his spending unprecedented amounts of school money on a football team so outrageously horrible that sports writers compete to describe it (“worst team in big ten history,” “so bad the big ten should kick them out,” “worst football imaginable,” “so bad it’s almost impossible“), Barchi has, allow UD to say, managed to embody to perfection the very essence of the postmodern American university president: Brainless, arrogant, greedy, institution-destroying, and deeply, deeply embarrassing for everyone involved. In other words: The bidding for Barchi to be president of your school has just begun!

October 10th, 2019
The Pride of Arizona State University…

… the hero whose hero page will never be taken down because he’s SUCH a hero, seems to have assaulted his way out of a professional career. I guess ASU liked being assaulted when Vontaze was a (cough) student there. It certainly continues to celebrate and boast about its close association with a notoriously violent asshole. Turns out, however, that the NFL does have some limits when it comes to truly crazy shits in the league.

Not that it doesn’t love them! It does love them, and it gives them lots of money and makes them team captains (Vontaze was a team captain!). Fans adore them; they’re paying for the big hits. But things are getting so wussy out there, with concussion bs and all, and the teams are under incredible pressure to suspend (Vontaze is ALWAYS being suspended) and even dismiss people like Vontaze.

October 7th, 2019
The tango can never be too … masculine… for the NFL.

Even Argentina’s beginning to worry about it, but American football pays through the nose to do the on-field tango with Richie Incognito, Antonio Brown, and Vontaze Burfict. Audiences love their moves; at a time when NASCAR carnage is at an all-time low, there’s nothing like football to keep the crushed-skull statistics steady. Crowds went wild, most recently, for beaten-comatose Mason Rudolph, dragged upright off the field because no one could manage to scare up a stretcher (each NFL team is only worth around three billion dollars so there are budgetary issues).

Vontaze has been suspended and Brown dropped. Looks as though it’ll take a few more Incognito attacks for the Raiders to do something about Richie. But even if the team has to give up Richie, Americans also love watching the legal and recruiting moves that ensue after the insane giants that bestride our game fields are removed from play. How will their appeal or lawsuit go? Which lucky team will now welcome the big bad head case?

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

Above all, American football needs to do something about Juju Smith-Schuster and players like him.

[Ruldolph’s agony] was so upsetting that teammate JuJu Smith-Schuster was in tears on the field.

We don’t need crybabies out there making the audience think there’s something wrong with kicking the shit out of people’s brains.

October 5th, 2019
‘The NFL finding an extra Vontaze Burfict helmet to helmet hit on the film is like my wife finding an extra empty beer can in the trash can on Saturday morning.’

Ooh look. They found another Vontaze hit. Shocker!

October 4th, 2019
Arizona State University: Some Schools Have No Self-Respect.

[Vontaze] Burfict’s troubling pattern of behavior stretches back to high school. He was the top high-school recruit at his position in the country. Recruiting site 247 Sports listed Burfict as the 11th best prospect in the country and one of the 250 best prospects in the history of high school football; he still ranks as the 39th best player to ever come out of the talent-rich state of California. But Burfict received few elite-level college scholarship offers, and he ended up at Arizona State, a third-rate program. The best of the best had heard all about Burfict’s reputation: he had serious anger issues, the story went. One by one they chose to pass.

Our hero!

October 2nd, 2019
A legendary football player talks Vontaze.

(Background here.) And he does a great job of evoking the game that dominates American university life.

You’re in the heat of battle. Your mindset is kill or be killed. Because the offensive linemen are still coming at you. You’re in war. You’re supposed to be able to be violent sometimes and other times you’re supposed to just be able to take your foot off the gas like that. That is hard, my friend.

I feel for this guy. Do I think he should be fined? Yes. Do I think he should be kicked outta the league? No. I think it is absolutely dead wrong. This guy has handled himself like a pro. And yes, he is a violent mother f’er and I love the way he plays the game of football.

Can’t think of a more appropriate setting for this activity than a university.

September 30th, 2019
Life of the mind: Arizona State

Here’s their hero’s page, their big man on campus, the pride of ASU. How do you get a hero’s page at ASU?

Burfict was … benched during his time with Arizona State after several penalties for illegal hits. One of those hits essentially cost the team a game against Stanford in 2010 after an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty gave them a first down inside the 10-yard line. Stanford then scored what would be the game winning touchdown.

They’ve kept the page up through his recent attempt to decapitate another player, and through all fourteen of his suspensions from NFL play. An icon of the American university! He kicks the shit out of other people’s brains; he’s just about the dirtiest player ever, a violent wingnut; but they worshipped him at ASU and he’ll be back in the professional game (How do you get to be team captain in professional football? Be Vontaze Burfict!) after this latest suspension cuz man can he hit. They want him to keep at it until he succeeds in decapitating someone. Then, with reluctance, they’ll hand him over to the American justice system.

Helluva game, football, and, as always, a terrific look for our universities.

[Vontaze] Burfict is simply out of control. When he was at Arizona State, he racked up 22 personal fouls in 37 games, and saw his draft stock slide in part because of his volatility.

ASU’s hero! Read his hero page!

September 22nd, 2019
Life of the mind…

… United States of America.

The hotly recruited pride of the University of Wisconsin. Go, Reggie!

Hey but Reggie: “Nearly” doesn’t count. Let’s see some real action next time.

September 16th, 2019
What if they gave a $20 million coach …

and nobody came?

September 15th, 2019
The University as Tinpot Dictatorship

There aren’t that many of these, and most of them are religious institutions. Yeshiva University has long been the standout, ruling over its students (especially its women) with an iron morality fist (would you expect any less from a school whose behavioral models have included Bernard Madoff, Ezra Merkin, Ira Rennert, and Zygi Wilf?). In 2011, when a woman student published a sex survey, she immediately lost her housing scholarship. Around the same time, another woman student published a short story with mild sexual content in a campus publication. The paper was shut down. AND sex filters were imposed on all male students’ computers. Not females’ of course! Because females don’t read… or, uh… write about sex.

And there’s the curiously named Liberty University, whose duce has generated lots of news copy lately. UD thinks The Onion captures the situation there best.

The other source of tinpottery is the southern jock school whose Dear Leader knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake! U Alabam’s Shahanshah Nick Saban has been in a snit because his subjects don’t go to the blowout football games (they’re always like 70 – 0) he puts on for their entertainment, or if they go they get bored and leave early… and then you know, out in tvland, viewers all over the country see them empty seats and Saban’s embarrassed etc. So the school now tracks its students’ movements:

Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step: using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays.

You better not be in the fucking library when you’ve been told to sit on a bleacher in 100 degree heat for hours of grinding nothingness!

But just as in other Orwellian regimes the population rebels, so in ‘Bama, the frat boys have been identified as the avant-garde of the resistance:

[It will] not be long before pledges are conscripted to hold caches of phones until the fourth quarter so their fraternity brothers [can] leave early.

Plenty of precedent for this, mes petites. Remember clickers?

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

UD thanks Dave.

September 10th, 2019
Won’t you help me cure this overload…

[USC] had to deal with the notorious “Varsity Blues” scandal this spring which heavily-involved [Lynn] Swann’s athletics department. Throw in basketball assistant Tony Bland getting caught up in the college basketball corruption trial and Swann’s seat was getting awfully hot.

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

Carol Folt’s letter to candidates to replace USC Athletic Director Lynn Swan: Sing it.

This overload …

I can hear your cleats clicking on the sidewalk

Beating to the rhythm of my heart

Caught up to you

You’re the only one I want

I follow you home every night

Just to make sure that you get there alright

Baby it’s true

Can’t think of anything but you

And what I need baby

Is a little bit of sympathy

I’m down here on my knees

It’s a twenty-scandal night

And I can’t live without your help

Won’t you help me cure this overload

Won’t you help me cure this overload

Won’t…yeh!

Oh, Varsity Blues

And basketball is nothing but skooz

Doesn’t that say something

Scum has taken hold of me, yeah

Baby I need you

You’ve got to see me through

Can’t take another scandal-night without you

Honey it’s true I am so hung up on you, yeah

August 30th, 2019
The sad death of a major league pitcher from choking on his own vomit after ingesting major league drugs is such a big story…

… that UD has a thousand news sites from which to choose a link for you. As usual, though, she’s drawn to Deadspin, whose commenters are a sight to behold.

Much of Deadspin‘s Tyler Skaggs thread involves writers comparing notes on the opioids Skaggs took; in particular, they try manfully (UD figures they’re almost all guys) to describe what it’s like to take oxys.

I had liquid oxy after throat surgery and I felt like a rainbow over a lake filled with titties.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
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I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
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As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
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Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
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[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
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