The last place you’d expect to find nihilism would be on the gridiron.

Sports matter like hell. Look at all those people in the stands screaming.

Amazingly, though, the money boys seem to have created a small but growing cadre of Raskolnikovs, men who still slink to the games, but hate themselves and the world for making football a pointless putrid emblem of our pointless putrid lives.

“And somebody thinks this all makes sense?… [T]he entire [university football] enterprise has spun out of control,” says a Nietzschean on the sports staff of the Boston Globe. (I quote him in this post’s headline too.)

Sports Nihilism – a new concentration for the Kinetics and Leisure Studies Department.

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UD thanks Andre.

No.

[A group of faculty at scandal-ridden University of North Carolina] distributed a letter last week at a news conference held to introduce new UNC Football Coach Larry Fedora, asking the university’s Board of Trustees to explain how the hiring of the coach and his seven-year contract worth $1.7 million a year advances the mission of the university.

… [Among the questions the letter asked was:] How will the fallout from the recent [UNC sports] scandal and the new direction of the football team affect the health of the university?

… “[UNC’s president said] they were good questions,” [a spokesman said.]

“I just don’t think the football coaches should get paid what they’re paid,” Joshuah Gross, a [Western Carolina University] student said bluntly, shaking his head over the amount of money [a coach] pulled down.

Gross ran out of money to attend WCU and is headed to a local community college to continue his education. He works at Rolling Stone Burrito on campus to earn his living.

“The team is terrible, and here they are planning to sink even more money into a failing program,” Gross said one day last week. “The professors are suffering — they need to redirect that money into other areas, like into the engineering department.”

…”Nobody at Western gives a (expletive) about the football team — we are all there for the marching band [said another student]. They are just great.”

[A member of the athletics director search committee said that] athletics, along with other university programs, help students with “professional development, personal development and their networking” abilities. It helps build “good character,” she said.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It’s strange to think of a world without the Bowl Championship Series. Not that it’ll happen. Stories like this one, in which its filthy corruption – even by the general standards of big-time university sports – is once again described, always conclude by saying, as this one does, “the end is near.” But the BCS sustains itself the same way other filthy American enterprises – for-profit colleges, for instance – sustain themselves, by using our tax dollars to lobby politicians.

The American university – whether through sports or through Kaplanization – has become a perfect money vector for white guys who understand how lucrative non-profit labels and tax subsidies can be.

Not that it’s rocket science. All you have to do is take the money. If your conscience allows you to take the money a non-profit or tax subsidy status provides, you and your friends can become incredibly wealthy. All you need, somewhere along the line, is to pick up the idea that the intended recipients of the money – students, schools, charities – are a problem, an obstruction … an embarrassment, really. Give them some pennies to shut them up, lobby hard, and rake it in.

… for a job well done.

… 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.