… of la vie en sports factories.

It’s university life as a Beckett novel for Western Carolina, with its years and years of football losses, its massive deficits, its massive buyouts as the university tries desperately to find winning coaches, its through-the-roof student athletic fees, and its big empty stadium. One coach “received $940,000 from WCU in return for an 8-36 record.” Can’t argue with those numbers! It’s like what they always say: Philosophy professors don’t put butts in seats — coaches do!

Does WCU have a president? Guess not.

You can’t do better than a close read of this article, by an Indiana University student. Foreign observers from, say, former Communist countries will recognize the article’s rhetoric immediately.

Title: SHUT UP AND SHOW UP

The student is enraged because many of his fellow students do not share his passion for the basketball team. They are failing to put on their team jerseys and join the fervent throng. They are failing to understand what Indiana University means. Their absence at the games demoralizes their fellow students. If they continue to opt out of these mass rallies, they should be punished.

I’ve noticed an attitude change in IU students over the last five years or so. No longer are they dedicated fans by the masses, that will plan their schedule around the games. Fans that will always wear their IU gear with their head held high and be confident in their university.

Comrade Brezhnev has noticed a deterioration in the dedication of the masses to the cause.

I do want note, there is a solid core of passionate students but there are far too few of them. It looks like no more than a few hundred.

The radical core remain intact, to be sure! But there has been a serious falling away.

There has been an attitude change and I don’t like it. In a group of about 50 students polled, only about seven classified themselves as a diehard IU fan that will watch the team no matter their talent level. The worst part about this informal poll was that about ten claimed they rarely watch IU sports, yet they are a sports marketing major.

Those who reap the benefits of the revolution should make their fair contribution to it!

Too many times I’ve said at my fraternity house that I’m getting ready to work the game and they ask what game and who they are playing. Seriously? I cover every game and how could they not know when their university’s top sport plays? Maybe these students won’t buy in until Indiana wins consistently and against good teams. I think it should go the other way around.

The revolution has no need of fair-weather friends!

[Students] they don’t like the fact that their section is not the prime seating surrounding the basket. Instead of being grateful for the largest section in the country, nearly 7,600 seats, they believe that they are above alumni and donors. How irrational. There’s no way Indiana can take away seats from longtime donors and alumni that donate thousands each year to the university.

Our leaders have sacrificed for the party; they deserve a little special treatment.

If students aren’t dedicated and in attendance for the non-conference games, they don’t deserve to stand in the student section for the big games.

… [If] the students don’t show, cut the size of their section… [IU] is bringing in too many students out of state that just don’t get what Indiana basketball is all about. They don’t get the history, tradition or culture. They don’t understand you should show up early and heckle the opponents during warm-up.

Little as I wish to do this, I have decided that punishment is in order. Insufficiently committed comrades will stand for the big games. The so-called intellectuals on the admissions committee will be instructed to admit only those who understand our indigenous revolutionary traditions.

… just to see how they stay that way.

How does Northern Kentucky stay Northern Kentucky?

Well, it’s gonna move to Division 1 ’cause that’s where it’s at!

It’ll cost 3.5 million.

Of that $3.5 million, NKU estimated that $1.78 million would be from the general fund, which consists of tuition and state-funds.

[A spokesperson] said the funds would be raised over five years, beginning this year. The general fund is made up of tuition dollars and state funding.

He said the money will not be replaced, but is being shifted to Athletics. Eaton said the funds are earmarked for students but are now going to be earmarked for student athletes.

The university would take $646,000 from other university budgets, such as housing, dining services or already-existing scholarships, to be used for athletics.

New athletic department revenues are expected to reach $819,000 and would be brought in by tickets, sponsorships and donations.

I guarAHNtee you ticket sales are gonna be hot! Hell, we’re gonna make up all that money we took from the school and the students in seconds onaccounta how rich we’re gonna be once we’re Div 1! HOOOOWHEEEEEEEEEEE

When [Ohio State University] gave its new coach a contract worth roughly $25 million, the university’s president called it “a mark of our dignity and nobility.” That was as much Marie Antoinette as George Orwell. In this year of scandal, we’re saying: Let them watch football!

COLLEGE FOOTBALL EMBODIES THE WORST OF AMERICA

… this. His priorities are totally screwed up. “Shirtless Boys” Mead will set him straight.

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A commenter on Craig Long’s article in the Iowa State paper says:

Want to know where this funding is going? Here’s a clue.

Every time an athlete sustains a minor injury they wrap the limb in an ice pack and plastic to hold it. Look closer and you see that the plastic has the Iowa State logo plastered on it.

Seriously? Iowa State plastic wrap? Tuition gets raised and athletes still need their Iowa State plastic wrap?

Again, what the commenter needs to understand is (quoting Mead here):

It is about competition, drama, intensity, about hope and fear, collective celebrations or collective disasters, seared into young and impressionable hearts where they will never be forgotten — and where they will be annually renewed as each sport in its season produces new highs and lows, new hopes and fears. Alumni watching their schools’ games on TV, or celebrating or mourning their schools’ results each week with friends, family and colleagues are renewing their ties with their alma maters affirming that being an “Aggie” or a “Tar Heel” is an identity, not a line on the resume.

You don’t sear things into people without searing things into people. Without ink from the Iowa State logo literally bleeding into the athletes’ flesh, they and the people around them will never achieve an identity with the school so total, so intense, that it will bond them fiercely to it every day of their lives.

…. as pathetic as this dog.

You need a special sort of athletics director, special boosters, and (something people sometimes overlook) a local press willing to get just as excited as Fido when it looks as though there might be some goodies in the fridge.

The University of Memphis – arguably America’s stupidest university – has all of these things in profusion.

HOLIDAY CHEER! blasts a local headline, and the reason is plain to see!

Tiger Nation is buzzing because of big changes on the horizon. Not only is the university looking for a splashy hire to pull its dismal football program from the dregs, but it also seeks a visionary athletic director …

What’s in the fridge? (Slobberslobber.) New coaches?! (To pay off the last two losers Memphis is now out millions for years to come, but let’s not mention that.) (Oh and the program’s also hemorrhaging millions because no one goes to the games.) (Oh and don’t forget the full scholarships for the guys! Graduation rate of African American basketball players in 2009: 44%.)

But here’s the best holiday news of all! Memphis has just hired a public relations firm to tell it how to run a sports program! Yummy treats!

A local journalist thinks there’s something wrong with the severance pay Washington State University’s just-fired football coach (his record: 9 – 40) is getting:

At the risk of stating the obvious — this seems like a particularly bad time to pay Paul Wulff $600,000 not to coach Cougar football.

The money spent on college sports is mind-boggling enough. In the most recent survey of state salaries, UW football coach Steve Sarkisian came out on top, with $1.98 million in gross pay for 2010.

UW basketball coach Lorenzo Roma was paid $1.14 million last year, making him the second highest paid state employee.

But at least they draw their astronomical pay for coaching. Wulff’s salary is small by comparison, but next year he’ll be paid to not do his job.

… there’s this remarkable bit of writing on the subject of the American university.

The author glances at the latest sports scandals and writes

[This blogger] deplores the deplorable as much as anyone else, and only wishes readers could see how elegantly we wring our hands as each sad new story appears on our screens. Wring, wring, wring. Alas, alas, alas. Deplore, deplore, deplore. Repeat until Moral Seriousness is fully established.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm felt a frisson of sophistication reading this.

Allow her to reread it.

Yes. Again the frisson.

This writer has crouched down and taken a crap on Moral Seriousness. He has summited Mount Serious and crapped.

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SOS finds his debonair cynicism irresistable. The success of whatever argument he’s about to make about university sports is close to guaranteed.

The polemic announces itself in the title of his post: It All Begins with Football. The author argues that the very basis of our rich, globally dominant universities lies in the “tribal” appeal of their games, at which “shirtless boys” covered in warpaint whoop their way to abiding love of alma mater.

No naked tits, in other words, no money. Take away the tits and what’s a university? Buttoned up Mr Wizards, men incapable making the alumni cash register go DRRINGGGG.

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

And you know, he’s right. Thinking back, SOS can date her decision to give money to Northwestern University to the first home football game there, at which she peeled off her sweatshirt and whipped them out.

The good news just keeps coming for the biggest baddest football schools, with Oklahoma State students responding to a victory by storming the field in a riot that critically injured two and less critically injured several more.

Some students were spared injury by their university’s clever expedience of pricing tickets so high many can’t afford them. The Oklahoma State newspaper’s editorial board complains:

It’s not as if the [OSU] athletic department is broke. It made a profit of more than $16 million from 2009 to 2010, and we know seats aren’t exactly selling like flapjacks on final’s week. One can notice that from looking at all the empty seats at midfield (a costly $832 per seat donation requirement is likely the reason for the lack of a sellout, but that is a discussion for another time)… Fielding a great football team does not require ripping off the students.

Better an empty luxury box than some jerk in the stands with no money!

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And if you think nobody does it better — How ’bout Florida and Florida State??

Authorities ejected 167 people from the stadium for violations. And in what police say was a first, a fight broke out among people in an elevator outside the pricey skyboxes.

Violence also occurred outside the stadium. In two of the more egregious incidents, a man was beaten and his head stomped, and two people doing FSU’s tomahawk chop while walking along West University Avenue were accosted.

You can understand people getting violent in the vicinity of the luxury suites. Not only are those fans drunk (alcohol is only allowed in the skyboxes… imagine how many more than 167 people would have been ejected if the whole stadium could drink!), but if their team is down a point or two it’s like I paid $87,000 for this box and SHIT MAN I’M PISSED.

Yes, and this blog has always been very upfront about what it is. It’s called sado-masochism.

People the world over wonder about American university sports. They wonder why professional sports exist at universities at all, let alone run and corrupt them, turn them into places devoted to the exact opposite of what universities are for: the search for truth in a civilized setting. Big-time university sports have made our universities southern Italian villages, dominated by padrones and omertà and mindless violence. All in the name of money.

People who like to live under these conditions – who do nothing to change them and much to celebrate them – are masochists. People at sports universities love their brutal unstable coaches, men who abuse their players and get rewarded for it with million dollar bonuses. They love the freaks-on-steroids players who get hopped up on the weekends and beat people up in bars. They love the local moneybags tyrant who, because he gives tens of millions of dollars to the sports program, controls the team and the university president.

Yes, Joe Nocera is right – there’s something really askew here, and anyone surprised that it features literal as well as figurative rape is an idiot.

Nothing that 11 million dollars couldn’t fix.

… a writer attempts to convey to British people the madness and squalor of big-time American university sports.

Along the way, he quotes Charles Clotfelter:

“Sport is in a way the connection with people that offsets the idea of the forbidding ivory tower of intellectuals,” Clotfelter says. “To think of the institution as purely an academic enterprise is probably to misconstrue it. It’s more than that. It’s also a social thing. We’re in both of those worlds.”

An odd statement, no? First of all – forbidding tower of intellectuals? Where? Name an American campus to which this description corresponds. UD‘s George Washington University – atypical in some ways, typical in many others – is mainly about guys in suits teaching public relations or law in the morning and heading off to their consultancy at the IMF or their gig at Brookings in the afternoon.

Second: Yes, a university is also a social thing. And it features huge numbers of sports to enhance its sociable atmosphere. Swimming, wrestling, volleyball, track, tennis …

Oh, whoops. Universities are dumping those sports to pay for football.

So why are the big sports killing the small sports?