July 5th, 2019
Sausage Party!

It’s all-male and all-amazing!

June 29th, 2019
When your university absolutely hemorrhages money…

… a $480,000 gift to an administrator fired almost as soon as he started is a drop in the bucket. Behold my recent Rutgers posts. Of course you and I know that the gift is rather in the way of a bribe not to disclose the institutional corruption the guy witnessed. I’m sure he’ll play along.

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

Not everyone plays along.

June 18th, 2019
Ah, sweet mystery of life.

You can’t have a sip of Campari.

It’s hotter than ten Kalaharis.

So tell us Michel.

I mean, what the hell?

Why did FIFA select the Qataris?

June 10th, 2019
Florida Gators: They’re KILLIN’ it.

Always one of the American university’s most criminalized football teams, the University of Florida Gators have lately outdone themselves. Aaron Hernandez’s Former Florida Teammate Charged With Murder runs a headline, and, yes, believe it or not, the team boasted two future murderers playing side by side! Hernandez killed acquaintances; Earl Joiner allegedly killed his wife. Earl Joiner Becomes Second Florida Gator to be Accused of Murder from 2007 Team notes another headline. Storied team! A school can’t pay for this kind of publicity!

June 3rd, 2019
Deadspin on Incognito

‘The first year of [Richie] Incognito’s retirement was marked by erratic and threatening behavior. This was not the old shirtless barroom rages of his Dolphins years but stuff that suggested serious distress—telling the police that he was “running NSA class level 3 documents through my phone” when they showed up to stop him from assaulting a stranger at a gym, showing up at an Arizona funeral home with a half-dozen guns in his truck and threatening employees after they refused to honor his request that they cut off his late father’s head “for research purposes.” Last Tuesday, Incognito signed a one-year contract with the Oakland Raiders.’


And now for some Freudian (see post below this one) thoughts about human beings and aggression.

‘The NFL has sold football as a shelf-stable retail version of war for generations, and it’s hard to imagine the league ever settling on a more compelling pitch. Humanity has only ever come up with so many ways to justify the fact that people admire and enjoy things that we’re taught should be abhorred, and squaring all these contradictions is not just a problem for [former Bills coach] Rex Ryan, or football. American culture admires bullies more than it dares let on, primarily because Americans are much closer to the edge than they dare admit.’

Seems to UD we’re absolutely fine about letting it on, having elected a bully president. He’ll probably be re-elected.

Some people really like bullies, and the fact’s right out there. The Deadspin writer cautions us that “cruelty and violence are [not] the same thing as strength.” But Incognito’s brilliant career conveys the fact that fans already know that. They just prefer cruelty.

May 30th, 2019
‘European soccer is a heedless, Darwinian affair. Spending rules are broken. Salaries are secrets. The best leagues are awash in Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds, and Chinese conglomerates.’

The genius behind Football Leaks “describe[s] the evolution of European soccer from a varied and distinctive game to a corrupt playground for the international élite, in which only the richest, least scrupulous clubs can thrive.”

Makes our college and professional football look pure as the driven snow.

May 29th, 2019
‘Troubled,’ ‘risky,’ ‘controversial,’ ‘wayward soul’ Richie Incognito…

… (all adjectives taken from news headlines) comes roaring back to professional football, which explains to us in an official statement that not all players can be “boy scouts.” University Diaries has followed this mentally ill man from his violent nutso college days to his violent fully ripe grossly insane professional stint, and has always predicted that despite his dangerous madness he will repeatedly (until age and yet more brain disorder make him a throwaway) be taken back by football teams.

As ever, Deadspin has the best take, starting with its headline:

RAIDERS GIVE RICHIE INCOGNITO HIS, WHAT, 50TH CHANCE

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

UD thanks John.

May 13th, 2019
Have we gotten to Australian Rules Football yet? Guess not.

[The emergency line] was flooded with calls from disgusted and upset supporters following Collingwood’s 19-point win over arch-rival Carlton.

One fan, Ross, said he’d “never be going to the football again” after being thrown to the ground…

[A] man was also seen “relieving himself” on a police car while leaving the MCG.

There were also reports of spitting and children crying as they were caught up in the mayhem.

Robin, one of those to call 3AW, said she spent the last five minutes of the match trying to break-up fights between fans.

She said it happened in the Carlton members area.

“There were four, full-on fights where people were knocked out,” she said on 3AW Football.

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

An eye-witness account.

One star defender is the subject of repeated homophobic abuse, raising the idea of calling the phone number on the scoreboard by which you can report abusive behaviour.

But clearly identifying the source of the remarks in the pack in which the coward is concealed is difficult and, you suspect, alerting the authorities will only inflame an increasingly heated group.

… Where once the overt nature of loud and insistent barracking created some form of self-policing, the friction now seems like the wild, uncontrollable urges of those who have no sense of the consequences of their actions.

May 13th, 2019
‘Dolphins head coach Brian Flores told reporters he believes people deserve a fourth chance.’

Haha. I mean second. He said second chance. But he can’t count.

May 13th, 2019
What you do with your money if you’re a football school.

Give the coach $93 million.

May 7th, 2019
‘[I]t is an admission that the Greek state is not competent … to control hooligans from clashing against each other outside sports arenas.’

And inside. The takeover of Greek soccer by violent fascistic gangs has led to the logical next step: No one, except for a few invited guests, will be allowed into the arena for the final of the Greek Cup.

Normal people have been driven out of Greek soccer arenas because the gangs are terrifying. Imagine bringing your kids to what are essentially enormous riots. This leaves the teams with nothing: a handful of peacekeeper/observers will be admitted, but that’s it.

May 3rd, 2019
UD’s buddy Jay Smith…

… is featured in the New York Times. Hot stuff.

May 1st, 2019
Title IX in Action at Washington State University!

For every two male athletes afforded the opportunity to destroy neighborhood cars, one female athlete must be afforded the same opportunity.

April 28th, 2019
“[Ira] Bowman, a former Providence and Penn player and the 1995-96 Ivy League Player of the Year, was hired as an Auburn [University] assistant [basketball coach] in July. He is the second Auburn assistant under head coach Bruce Pearl to have been linked to a federal bribery case. Pearl hired Bowman to replace former Tigers assistant Chuck Person, who was arrested in September 2017 in a federal bribery case involving college basketball corruption. Person is scheduled for trial in New York in June.”

Now … how can that happen? You take a real squeaky clean athletics program like Auburn and you hire TWO dirty coaches in succession! Bowman was spozed to be the good guy who replaced the bad guy, but he’s another bad guy! It’s just like when the University of Southern California appointed Varma to replace Puliafito! Well, I’m sure head coach Bruce Pearl don’t know anything about it.

April 25th, 2019
‘University of Florida Gators Staffer Arrested on Aggravated Cyberstalking Charge’

But otherwise it’s such a clean program!

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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. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

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.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

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