What with a drunken lacrosse guy at U Va just convicted of beating his girlfriend to death, you’ve now got a lot of people looking at the lovely culture of many university sports and noticing that even if this culture doesn’t produce a lot of murders, it certainly produces a whole lotta off-field violence.

So much that, as UD has noted on this blog before, a certain overly-familiar dance is danced by coaches and universities post-DUI, assault, rape, riot, etc. Boston University, whose hockey story has just jumped to the New York Times, is currently doing the rape two-step, what with two members of that team recently arrested for sexual assault.

This dance excludes the following:

An acknowledgment that enormous numbers of fans love hyper-violent sports, the more violent the better, and players are richly rewarded for being violent. And, uh, like, you don’t have to be a university graduate to grasp that some hyper-violent players are going to be violent in general.

An acknowledgment that many of the players don’t belong in college (see this post’s headline), that many won’t graduate – won’t really take courses in any legitimate way at all – and, as the person quoted in the headline says, are not college kids as we know them. Now a college president might try a new step and say In the name of diversity, we’ve decided to accept a cohort of violent flunkies. We think our students can learn a lot from them. But le président is likely to stay with the trusted routine in which Our quest for well-rounded individuals with special skills drew us toward this athletic prodigy and we’re stunned and disappointed that he has made some bad decisions.

An acknowledgment that a university can shut down a sports program. Usually, of course, sports programs get shut down when they’re so unmitigatedly vile that even the NCAA wants them to take a breather. But on occasion the campus itself will demonstrate enough integrity to turn off one of its assault-machines long enough to try to regroup (but regrouping is a bitch because it means fielding a new, non-competitive team).

An acknowledgment that the crucial fault lies in the university’s cynical recruitment strategy, which overlooks massive red flags for many players because all it cares about is how tough they are. Why are these guys at Boston University? Who let them in?

Here’s what the dance includes:

A sudden rhetoric of crisis from the president, as if no one had heard of America’s violent sports culture before.

A hastily assembled faculty review board, rather like the pointless Knight Commission, which will grind out more crisis-rhetoric.

A hasty dismissal of the bad boys from the team because their behavior has nothing to do with our values at BU even though we not only accepted them but have been treating them like royalty.

Our university presidents speak. NCAA, government. Somebody’s gotta stop athletics from killing universities. Just don’t ask university presidents to do it.

You’d expect some statement from the president, but schools like Auburn don’t really have presidents. Just coaches.

First they hire rancid Rick Rodriguez; then a bunch of his guys go punching women in the face.

The front porch of the university.

That football players, at least in uniform and often out of it, are crazy, psycho, too-strong and too-fast machines of physical vengeance, and would shoot their mother to win a football game, regardless of new rules vainly trying to rein in the aggressiveness they learned in the womb.

That coaches are paid to win, and motivating players is part of that equation, and if offering bounties to knock players out of the game by injuring them is an added motivation, then that’s what coaches will do.

Is it barbaric? Yes. Is it terrifying? Yes. Is it sick? Yes.

So what?

I’ve said it before and I will say it again:

That is why we watch football. Because it is barbaric and terrifying and sick. Because we love good hits and kamikaze safety blitzes and a quarterback sitting on the field after a sack with visions of Tweety Bird dancing in his brain.

I’m lovin’ it.

…Binghamton, a part of the State University of New York system, has been cleaning up — and paying out millions — ever since [2009] . The president, provost, two top athletic officials and the men’s basketball head coach have been replaced amid a scandal that proved costly to both university’s reputation and its bottom line. … Binghamton, like any number of universities, gambled on too many high-risk high school recruits and transfer students with histories of arrests and academic problems.

UD proposes a moratorium on the word “gamble” in this context. They didn’t gamble. Gamble would mean that they were routinely irresponsible, childishly hoping against hope that all those rap sheets didn’t mean shit, pressing their eyes shut real tight and praying that everything would be okay… That maybe for the few seasons they’d have these guys (before they transferred or flunked out or went to the majors) the stars would align just so and they’d refrain from misbehavior, or not get caught, or something.

Massively paid, highly experienced coaches know perfectly well what’s up and what’s going to happen. As with conflict of interest at universities, it’s not about avoiding it; it’s about managing it. Bringing a certain rhetoric, a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain style, to it. What they’re hoping is that when the naughty thing happens they can get away with feigning surprise and heartbreak and insisting that the kid deserves a second chance. Think of it not as gambling, but as a kind of dance –

Do you love me (do you love me)
Now that I can dance
Watch me now

(work, work) now work it out baby

Work it.

The real point of the dance is to change the nature of the university. UD will never forget being at a Knight Commission meeting and listening to a professor from the University of the District of Columbia insist that coaches should be professors.

Lois DeFleur, [SUNY’s] president, retired. Mary Ann Swain, the provost, stepped down to return to teaching.

Etc. etc. The Binghamton scandal brought down the most important academic administrators and compromised quite a few professors. Why? Because like Clemson and Auburn SUNY was well on its way toward becoming a thorough sports factory and not a university. The coach dance is about corrupting professors to pass flunkies so they stay eligible, corrupting admissions committees so they’ll take in people who can’t do university level work, corrupting presidents so they’ll look the other way while paying the coach millions.

The only thing that got in the way of Binghamton’s devolution to Auburn was some surviving sense among some people on campus of what a university is.

Maybe SUNY’s coach will have better luck next time.

UCLA – one of many American universities with a hell of a basketball program.

Well, it’s all over university football too.

I mean, what do you expect? Like hockey, these are very aggressive games, and you want the most aggressive people on campus playing and coaching them. So if your coach is a bully (Examples? Oh, you know. The storied names. Bobby Knight. Mike Leach. Mark Mangino.) that’s a good thing. If one of your players is a bully, that’s a good thing.

The one thing you want to avoid is some pussy from the press interviewing people, writing it all up.

And Sanctorum is worried college makes people snobs! Huh. UCLA makes them animals.

A commenter responds to Texas Tech coach Tommy Tuberville’s latest run-in with the law:

… Texas Tech head coach Tommy Tuberville has now been linked to two [fraud schemes] in the past year. Tuberville was listed as an investor in former Georgia coach Jim Donnan‘s “retail liquidation company”, GLC, which turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. Now, Tuberville is the subject of Huntsville Times report that lists him as the focal point of a fraud case involving an Auburn-based investment company.

What the commenter overlooks is that you can’t make TTU look bad, because TTU has been way, way worse than bad for years. Tuberville? Texas Tech recently announced that they’re raising his salary by $500,000. Good timing! He’s got a lot of investors to pay off! Plus attorneys to hire!

Texas Tech hired disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – paid him $100,000 to teach one course.

Texas Tech hired mad Mike Leach, then fired him when he allegedly concussed one too many players, and is now the object of an incredibly expensive lawsuit he filed against the school.

You don’t make sewers like TTU look bad.

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UD thanks Dave.

… this side of … eh. I’m thinking nothing compares. For sheer vulgarity, sheer classlessness, sheer idiocy, SIUC can’t be beat. UD has watched in disbelief over many years as this campus, with its plagiarizing, political hack leadership, its tanking student body (who would want to go there?), its mindless, grandiose “Saluki Way” sports expenditures, and its empty stadium, just keeps scratching its balls. (Scroll down on this page for earlier posts.)

Yes, the machinery grinds on – coaches still get overpaid, games take place, student and state money is sent down the drain… and President-for-Life Glenn Poshard smiles on, a Brezhnev unaware the USSR has been dismantled…

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

The athletic director senses that student anger has now morphed into apathy, and it makes him nervous:

“I can live with anger even though it’s not pleasant. I think what is happening now is we’re slipping into a little bit of apathy, and that’s a little more dangerous. Our fan base has kind of turned, my gut tells me, from anger to a little apathy and that’s what concerns me.”

Right now, the school is giving the molto sucky basketball coach

$762,500 per year, and SIUC would have to pay Lowery twice that amount to buy him out of the final two years of his contract.

But no worries: They’re in great shape to make a payout.

[W]hen the losses started coming, attendance straggled. SIUC averaged 3,299 fans in an arena that underwent a $29.9 million renovation two years ago, down from a high of 7,743 in 2006-07. Additionally, [the AD] said season-ticket revenue is down considerably and the scholarship fund has taken a hit.

… the University of Florida football program.”

UF: keeping up with expectations. Surpassing them.

… upon the magic of big-time university sports. For when we do… oh, when we do…!

And verily it is as Bagehot wrote – for when you pull one kingly thread from the sunny jacket of John Junker, well, the whole fabric of the thing comes apart, don’t you see:

Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it… Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic…The existence of this secret power is, according to abstract theory, a defect in our constitutional polity, but it is a defect incident to a civilisation such as ours, where august and therefore unknown powers are needed, as well as known and serviceable powers.

This is why I say to you: Let him be. Let his princelings be. Let the Bowl Championship Series be. Its powers are august and therefore unknown; unknown and therefore august. Reverence them.

… the front porch of the university.

The dignity and glory of the university.

The arrest record under Meyer was embarrassing and already nine [University of Florida] players have been arrested under Muschamp. It’s no coincidence that eight of those nine players were either recruited by Meyer or committed to Meyer before Muschamp took the job.

Today, it all comes down to which coach gets nailed for the rap sheet. Alma mater, ’tis to thee!

This is not the way to bat cleanup. This Sports Illustrated column on the massive drug bust at Texas Christian University – featuring plenty of football team involvement – is the first of what will be many attempts at damage control.

This writer’s prose is the functional equivalent of someone in a crowded room waving madly away at marijuana smoke because it’s so thick everyone’s choking on it. A polite gesture, but futile.

Let’s take a few tokes of this guy’s prose and see what went wrong.

His basic moves are two:

1. Aw shucks.

2. I’m shocked. Shocked.

To get us to the point where we actually believe that big-time university football is made up of clueless saintly coaches and adorable lunk kids who sometimes do the darnedest things, the writer must throw deep into platitude territory. His prose must evoke an Americana that would embarrass Edgar Guest. Let’s see how he does it!

The coach has created a winning team

the right way by recruiting guys who were a step too slow or an inch too short. Patterson persuades his players to use those slights — real and perceived — as motivation to maximize their ability. [Start with the hard-luck, overcoming obstacles, come from behind, motley crew that shows up the sports machine schools — the whole motivational enchilada. Ignore the fact that the investigation began when a recruit rejected a TCU offer because of notorious drugging on the team. Ignore that. Don’t ask why some random recruit knew about this and the coach didn’t. Just keep reading. And keep your hankie ready.]

That’s been the foundation of Patterson’s success, which has ultimately resulted in TCU achieving its dream of being in the Big 12 and becoming, you know, one of the big boys. [Achieving its dream. Maximize their ability. Keep the cliches coming. They feel so damn good.]

In one day, four knuckleheads — linebacker Tanner Brock, defensive tackle D.J. Yendrey, safety Devin Johnson and offensive tackle Ty Horn — destroyed much of the program Patterson has built. [Knuckleheads! Cue the Three Stooges! Adorable! Clowns!]

Having shooed away the dealers on the team, the writer will concentrate for the rest of his piece on the clueless sainted coach.

[W]e can only imagine the cauldron of emotions that must’ve been bubbling within him.

After all, he must’ve felt dumb that so much illegal activity seemed to be hidden in plain sight. And he probably felt betrayed by the players and disappointed because he let down the parents who trusted him with their kids.

Kids is always a good choice for stories like this one. The basic dynamic the writer’s going for, after all, is familial – the coach is the fond, too fond, dad, incapable of imagining his kid a dealer; the player is… just a kid!

And oh lord the churning, churning cauldron of emotions he must be experiencing as it hits him so hard out of thin air that the kid sells drugs…

Knucklehead v. Dumb: The sad sorry story of our sports family… But the coach and the team “will survive this shameful day.” We will survive!

[TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL]
PLAYER DENIES ENTIRE ROSTER FAILED
DRUG TEST