… the filthiest of all the Bowls, the very deepest bowel of the Bowls (scroll down for BCS details), has sent a letter out to a bunch of politicians. Over the past few years, the Fiesta people have given these politicians free game tickets.
The letter asks the politicians why they – the Fiesta people – did that.
You read that right. It’s a letter that says you tell us why we bribed you. Turns out it wasn’t a tax exempt sort of thing to do! Who knew? … But … well … maybe it was a tax exempt sort of thing to do only we’re too stupid to figure out how it was tax exempt. Will you tell us?…
Or… maybe if we write this letter to you we’ll transfer the guilt to you! You took the money after all! It wasn’t me, Mom! It was him!
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Answers to the Fiesta letter are starting to trickle in, and so far it doesn’t look good.
Senator Rich Crandall:
“I don’t have to prove to you it was a benefit. …Your board and directors said it was a benefit… You need to go back to them and ask them how they felt it was a benefit. I don’t have to justify anything to you.”
Senate President Russell Pearce:
The request is “outrageous.”
Looks like the Fiesta guys might have to go back to the drawing board and figure out all by themselves why they’re a tax-exempt organization. For some reason, the beneficiaries of their payoffs aren’t cooperating.
As you recall, we will gather this August in retreat, for one brief moment, far away from the busy bustle of the outer world, to think on our sins and, in sincere repentance, get them hence.
Are there scoffers? Naysayers?
[University sports corruption is] such a point of concern for Mark Emmert that he has convened a retreat for NCAA leaders in August to discuss the problem, play golf, and receive backrubs. The backrubs will be exquisite, and the results of the conference will be hey did we mention backrubs and golf? Seriously, backrubs and golf. That’s really worth the trip alone.
This is the voice of the devil. Do not heed him! The devil wants to banish tax exemptions from luxury boxes and cap what Kentucky can pay John Calipari. Do not heed him!
Gather, instead, with goodly folk like Brother Tressel, and think on how we can make our fellowship yet purer in the sight of God.
… (which unfortunately also taught accounting to Gary Foster). It’s by Dave Matter, in the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune:
Over the last five years, the Big East school has used more than $115 million to cover its athletic department’s spending. That’s almost twice as much as any other major conference athletic department received from its university coffers. And here’s where it gets ugly: State funding cuts have forced Rutgers to withhold $30 million in scheduled raises for its employees.
… Rutgers … is coming off a 4-8 football season and has the Big East’s highest-paid coach in Greg Schiano. At just over $2 million a year, he makes more than any public employee in the state of New Jersey…
… [S]ince 2006, Rutgers has spent more than $115 million to cover athletics spending, a USA TODAY analysis finds. In 2010, Rutgers University said it would withhold scheduled negotiated raises for its employees because of state funding cuts…
[N]o athletics program has matched Rutgers’ subsidies; $115 million is the highest for any public school and nearly twice the subsidy of the next highest school among the power conferences …
The short answer: Get a president who doesn’t preside.
From an interview with the latest one on his way out the door.
On UK’s scandalous athletics culture:
I wish the country as a whole wasn’t as crazy as it is about athletics. It’s out of whack. But it’s a reality that you have to deal with in this position.
On the Wildcat Coal debacle:
Todd and the Board of Trustees received a lot of criticism for accepting $8 million from coal operators to build a new dormitory for the basketball team in return for naming it Wildcat Coal Lodge. Author Wendell Berry pulled his papers from UK, and others complained that the university is too beholden to an industry that denies climate change and resists calls to become more environmentally responsible.
If he had it to do over, would Todd handle Wildcat Coal Lodge differently?
“I tried to handle it differently,” he said. “We had some other suggested names. You have donors who … want to name it what they want to name it. They are good donors for us across the whole university and they are capable of giving more. We discussed other names, but when it came down to it, it was a decision to take the donation.
“I would be glad to build a Wildcat Green Lodge,” he added, if donors would give UK the money to pay for it.
Common thread? You can’t expect me to do anything! I’m only the president.
Well, them boys at Ohio State was supposed to circle the wagons and all, but seems one of ’em didn’t hear the cow bell! One of the trustees dropped the ball! Here’s what he said about all them NCAA violations!
“The cracks here weren’t really cracks of rules, procedures, and policies, they were cracks in a value system,” Jurgensen said. “I think we have a lot to learn on sort of the manual aspects of this, but I think we also have a lot to look at it in sort of the soul searching of what is most important in the game of life.”
Hah? Fuck that! President Gee and all the other boys on the board jumped on this guy so fast he’s still spittin’ up dust! The name Ohio State and the word Value are, like, one and the same! Nothing wrong here! Nothing to see here! We’re a model for the nation!
University of Nevada Reno president Marc Johnson skillfully handles a challenge from the press on the matter of the athletic department’s $1.5 million deficit.
RGJ: You mention that success leads to higher attendance. But the football team finished in the top 15 last year and was in the Top 25 almost the entire season and still only drew 19,000 per game and even had 11,000 for one game…
MJ: When you have more competitive games, that helps. When you’re winning games 50-7, I think that hurts attendance. Not as much as not winning, but when you’re winning 50-7 that kinds of gets boring by the second half so people don’t come out.
Nothing says finger-lickin’ dignified like having your university graduation ceremony at KFC YUM!
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And now you got some reporter complaining about Rutgers University in this here headline:
CORPORATE SALES OF STADIUM NAMING RIGHTS FURTHER SULLIES COLLEGE ATHLETICS
First off, I think we can agree that big-time college athletics has long since reached sully-saturation, so let’s lose the further.
Second, High Points Solution is an information technology firm! That’s classy! It ain’t Kentucky Fried Chicken! Rutgers should count its lucky stars.
A fun fact about the football coach at Eastern Michigan University.
EMU is one of many pathetic Division I schools in these here United States. But even by the standards of that tawdry deluded crew, EMU stands out.
Further facts, from a long article by Pete Bigelow:
The athletic department reported $19.8 million in revenues in 2009. Of that amount, $14.9 million came from direct institutional support and $1.6 million came from student fees.
That $16.5 million represents 83.4 percent of the school’s athletic budget, the highest percentage of direct institutional support any athletic department received among the Mid-American Conference’s 13 member institutions.
Athletes make up 2.5 percent of EMU’s overall student body, but receive more than 20 percent of the university’s financial aid budget. The athletes’ share amounts to approximately $6.7 million.
NCAA rules stipulate a school must average 15,000 fans per home football game to remain in Division I. Eastern Michigan, which averaged 6,401 fans per home game in 2010, uses $150,000 from a distribution contract with Pepsi to purchase tickets from itself at a rate of $3 apiece to remain NCAA compliant.
We buy tickets from ourselves!
Very pomo. Très simulacral. Doesn’t do anything to hide the empty stands, however.
It helps, when trying to understand the Division I losers, to imagine the presidents of these schools as Blanche DuBois, and the big football victory that will turn it all around as Belle Reve.
Dan Fulks answers this question, posed in the first paragraph of a Birmingham News article:
Why did the University of North Alabama board of trustees ignore its students, staff and faculty [who all voted against] by voting 6-3 this week to pursue a move from Division II to Division I?
My dear little brothers in Sport, we meet this August in retreat, to think on our misdeeds and heartily repent of them and pledge to be better men in Sports.
For, as it is said, “College Football Live is … depressing and full of tragedy.” And, as it is said, college football is “morally bankrupt.” And that’s just football.
I invite you to meet me in a verdant space, where we, together in retreat, shall think upon our misdeeds while playing golf… Where, through warm summer evenings, we shall confess our naughtiness and sip sweet liqueur… What a fellowship, what a joy divine.
And after! Ah, after! Cleansed, we shall, each of us, stand before our local scribes and try to control our ecstasy as we speak of the new men in Sports we have become.
WBNS, Columbus:
For [Ohio State University athletic director Gene] Smith, the [free courtesy] Cadillac is part of his deal. He earns $800,000 a year and his contract requires a free car for him and his wife. [OSU director of NCAA compliance Doug] Archie, who is directly responsible for making sure players don’t go wrong with car dealers, makes $117,000 a year. He does not have a contract that guarantees a free car.
Archie’s [free] car comes … from Miracle Motor Mart, located at 2380 Morse Crossing. Former 1980s-era Ohio State player Mike D’Andrea, who owns the lot, said he sometimes employs student athletes during the summer.
In exchange for the cars, D’Andrea said he received a pair of season tickets to Ohio State football games.
… finally gets its own Adzillatron. [Scroll down for UD‘s earlier Adzillatron posts.]
Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith said Thursday he is considering hiring private investigators to strengthen the monitoring of Buckeye student-athletes.
Hard to imagine a finer intellectual setting than this: Your students trailed all day by the school’s private investigators.
And what an excellent use of university funds.
A University of New Mexico football player is in jail for suspicion of “trespassing, battery and resisting arrest,” after refusing to pull his pants up.
An airline employee spotted [Deshon] Marman before he boarded Flight 488, bound for Albuquerque, and complained that Marman’s pants “were below his buttocks but above the knees, and that much of his boxer shorts were exposed,” [Sgt. Michael] Rodriguez said.
The employee asked Marman to pull up his pants before he boarded the plane, but he refused, Rodriguez said. Marman allegedly repeated his refusal after taking his seat on the plane.
“At that point he was asked to leave the plane,” Rodriguez said. “It took 15 to 20 minutes of talking to get him to leave the plane, and he was arrested for trespassing.” Marman allegedly resisted officers as he was being led away.