… going through your mind as you watch?

The Onion gets hold of the story.

—————–
UD thanks Daniel.

Followed by a series of similar fraught questions. Everybody’s writing this clutch-your-forehead-and-ask-why shit.

Listen, for once in your life, to old UD. Ready? Real deal. Coming from someone who’s followed big-time university football closely for years, read countless interviews with coaches and administrators, attended many NCAA, Knight Commission, and other such gatherings, and even thought about the subject.

It’s about stupidity.

Look at the headline a couple of posts below this one: THERE HAVE LONG BEEN CONCERNS… When football takes over a university, stupid people rule. Shake Your Booty majors from Swamp State rule. Smiling, dazed, dressed for success people rule. Provost Brick Tamland. Academic VP Fredo Corleone.

These are not bad people, inured to evil blahblah.

To understand why they bring down universities, consider the characteristics of the stupid mind.

Basically, these are fear, traditionalism, conformity, lack of curiosity, and optimism.

Because you do not understand what is going on around you, you spend your life afraid of unspecified events. Anything you identify as new, unprecedented, not done before, has you peeing your pants.

You put a good spin on this fear. We’ve had the same coach for eighty years! We really value our traditions around here. Having the same guy in place for eight decades guarantees the integrity of the program. Because you’re stupid, you don’t know that entrenched power is incredibly destructive.

Independent thought is beyond your capacity. On this too you put a great spin. Teamwork! It takes a village! There’s no I in JOIN!

Because you haven’t heard of history, you don’t know that fanatic masses are a bad thing.

A number of current (and past: Palin, Huckabee) candidates for President or Vice-President of the United States know virtually nothing of Europe, economics, things like that. They belittle “Professor” Obama for having studied and taught things. Candidates Cain and Perry do a peacock-strut while listing the things they don’t know and pledging never to know them (roars of approval from the crowd).

Man is born smart but is everywhere in stupidity, wrote Rousseau, reflecting on the latest grossness on the U Geneva gridiron. The sad irony of stupid university people is that they’re on a university campus; they’re at a university. They could actually go to a class, or talk to a professor or something. Remember when John Madden wrote a book? Remember what he titled it? He titled it HEY WAIT A MINUTE I WROTE A BOOK! See how that sort of thing can happen when you least expect it? It’s always possible – there’s always time – – !

After all, look at that list of the attributes of the stupid up there. The last one is OPTIMISM. Take that darned optimism and run with it, baby!

… of them all.

You remember the title of the Neil Postman book about postmodern America: Amusing Ourselves to Death. That’s the deal here. Now that Penn State has imploded, keep an eye on the University of Texas. With its gigantic program on its way to generating billions in profits, UT is bending over and letting football have its way, just the way Auburn did decades ago. It’s as if Texas Governor Rick Perry said I’m gonna shut down three university campuses: UT Austin, uh… UT Austin and … I can’t remember the other two.

… and it has made me come to hate the culture of college football.”

UD finds it interesting that no one is attempting to characterize the Penn State scandal as unique or peculiar or an outlier or anything.

[T]he pep rally outside Paterno’s home Tuesday night was easily the most embarrassing display in the history of modern higher education, and it was fueled by a clueless puppet more focused on [his next game at] Nebraska than the real world around him.

… Paterno doesn’t get to coach his final home game. Boo-hoo. Let’s tip a van.

Penn State’s financial exposure in the sex-abuse case could be in the tens of millions of dollars.

If there’s one image that speaks to America’s twisted relationship to college sports, it’s the Penn State pro-Paterno rallies. Football before all. Lives were likely ruined at the hands of a possible predator, thanks in no small part to Paterno. Yet it’s Paterno who must go out “with dignity.”

All UD‘s English professor life, campus athletes and their fans have characterized themselves as the soul of all-American normalcy, with intellectually-inclined professors and students hopelessly twisted. And it’s strange – because if you’ve ever read even one account of the culture of paranoid teams and their whackaloon camp followers you know just how exactly turned around that appraisal is.

People are obviously very resistant to this truth, because even though they can watch the all-American anti-intellectual macho team parading its deep peculiarities on tv every night during the Republican debates, they continue to insist that Rick Perry and Herman Cain are the normal ones.

… and other university sports apologists had their way, Sandusky would have been a Penn State professor.

… why should we be impressed by a person somewhat higher than it?

When USC, Ohio State, Miami and North Carolina are caught cheating in one way or another, most people roll their eyes and say, ‘Here we go again.’ When public records from a lawsuit allege that an agent was bankrolling a basketball player and his mother starting when the kid was 14, the reaction is more eye-rolling. The university presidents publicly wring their hands, declare they’re shocked cheating is going on and go back to counting their money.

But Joe Paterno is Joe Paterno…

The university that Joe Paterno made.

None of this nonsense about finishing out the season.

Penn State finally gets serious.

Gail Collins: I don’t think making the 84-year-old coach retire and arresting two administrators no one has heard of is enough to make people understand how critical this is. I think Penn State should do the right thing and cancel the football season. Really.

David Brooks: I disagree on this last point. A lot of good young men have put a lot of time into playing football and being part of that team. I don’t think they should be punished. If a history professor commits some atrocity it would be wrong to shut down the whole department.

Gail Collins: I know the football players would be disappointed, but they’d still get to stay in school — which is why they’re at Penn State, right? Right?

… about to step down, according to this report.