… 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

Serious, big-time, cartel-type drug business is pretty rare on American campuses, but as San Diego State (a school with many and varied scandals over the years – sports, drugs, presidents with, er, money issues) showed back in 2008, with its guns and brass knuckles and cocaine and all, it does happen.

I suppose it’s marginally more embarrassing when your school has the word Christian, rather than State, in its name, but no matter: Texas Christian University, as its chancellor notes, is, just like SDSU, simply going to have to tough things out until they settle down.

And speaking of tough, the TCU football team is gonna have to be Ram tough. The coach did a surprise drug test “after a prize recruit told him that he would not attend TCU because of drug use by players.”

TCU has not released results of any drug tests, but [one player] told an undercover officer that 82 players failed.

Far out!

“Are you saying the athletic department is fully paying its entire expenses, including salaries, and the university is not contributing?” asked chemistry professor Dvora Perahia.

“We are part of the university,” Hill said. “We are what is called an auxiliary enterprise, which by definition produces its own revenue and pays its expenses.”

Hill said reports on how self-sustaining athletics departments are will vary depending on accounting definitions. Clemson, for instance, grants in-state tuition to athletes so that the scholarship dollars stretch further — a savings of about $2.5 million to the athletics department. This and the student fee, though it provides tickets to students, are considered subsidies in some reports.

Still, Hill said, Clemson athletics pays the salaries of every staff member and coach, covers all its buildings’ utilities, pays for all team travel, and raises all the money for $8 million in athletics scholarships.

“We charter jets?” American literature professor Susanna Ashton said.

“Of course,” Hill said.

“Sorry, I don’t do sports. The word ‘jet’ caught my attention. That’s cool,” Ashton said.

“We’ve got a football team with out-of town games, and we have to get them back for class,” Hill said.

A couple of economists go there.

[M]any prominent universities would lose their main claim to fame. Alabama and LSU produce a large amount of revenue and notoriety from football without much in the way of first-rate academics to back it up. Schools would have to compete more on academics to be nationally prominent, which would again boost American education.

Or those schools might become what UD predicts (economists aren’t the only people who can make predictions!) the University of Massachusetts will become: Exclusively online institutions.

———————

UD thanks Dave.

First it was this guy, who kept evading capture. Now it’s these guys, who gathered at a student’s window to watch her having sex with one of their teammates. Just like the first pig, they got caught, and now they’re squealing.
——————

UD thanks Andre.

… there’s always some little old lady who rises to iconic sucker status? There’s always some little old lady who explains in a tremulous voice how this nice man called her up on the telephone and was so sweet and patient with her and now he has the $150,000 she’d put away for her dotage…

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looks like that old lady. Now that its latest disastrous football coach has retired, UNC is the sucker du jour.

Although the news came out yesterday that new Bucs coach Greg Schiano has hired his old friend and colleague Butch Davis, there have been conflicting reports about precisely what role Davis will have in Tampa Bay. And the reason for the conflicting reports appears to be an issue regarding Davis wanting to collect paychecks from the Bucs while also collecting all the severance pay he can from the University of North Carolina.

North Carolina fired Davis in July amid an NCAA investigation into academic misconduct and accusations that players received impermissible benefits from agents. According to the Tampa Bay Times, when Davis was fired the school agreed to give him up to $2.7 million in severance. (Because giving $2.7 million to a football coach who was fired amid a scandal is a great way for a public university to use its resources.)

Davis has already received $933,000 of that severance, but the rest of it comes in increments of $590,000 a year in 2013, 2014 and 2015 — but only if Davis is unable to find a coaching job. If Davis has resumed his coaching career, North Carolina can deduct his coaching salary from that $590,000, and if his coaching salary is more than $590,000 North Carolina doesn’t have to pay him anything.

So Davis is apparently hoping to work out a title with the Buccaneers in which he will “serve the Bucs in an advisory capacity” rather than become a coach, and therefore he’d be able to get paid by the Bucs while still collecting his full severance from North Carolina.

Haha Butch boy put ‘er there! Gotta hand it to you!

The University of Minnesota newspaper’s editorial board isn’t happy about huge sums of money going to a bogus administrative position for a retired football coach.

But I’m sure thousands of other UM students are honored to be burdened with debt and a cut-rate education for the sake of football.

They don’t give a rat’s ass where the funds to shovel millions and millions of dollars in the direction of retired football coaches come from. The fact that the university somehow has money to do that, but lacks money for its academic programs bigtime “will hurt the U when President Kaler comes crying poor to the Legislature for money for our students.” As one of many unhappy legislators puts it.

Get it? Pick up on the hostility in the “comes crying” bit? No? How about this, from another legislator:

“How badly do they need money if that’s how they’re handling it?”

Maybe further comments from legislators would help President Kaler.

“I think it is definitely a direct legislative issue, because these kinds of salaries make legislators think, ‘Does the U really need money and why don’t they ever put it toward students when we give it to them?'” [Mindy] Greiling said. “Once again, it looks like the university is putting students last in terms of their budgets when we see things like this.”

Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, who serves on the Capital Investment Committee and whose district includes numerous university employees, said she has become almost immune to university decisions that she believes show the wrong priorities.

“I don’t think any of us buy the argument [that foundation money makes it acceptable], but they give the argument with a straight face,” she said.

Straight face. I think university presidents should be smart enough to pick up on these teeny linguistic nuances, don’t you? Coming from the state legislature?

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

UD thanks Michael.

… for the nation.

The vote was 174-3. Pretty decisive. UD‘s wondering about those three. One has to be the faculty representative to the athletics program – that’s always a jock in it for the free tickets. What about the other two?

Comments on the article in The Star-Ledger (“Eliminate philosophy and other essoteric non relivant majors that only keep the dorms full.”) point to the real problem at universities like Rutgers: scads of overpaid philosophy professors.