Four out of five Tamarac [Florida] commissioners from the class of 2006 have been arrested. I haven’t seen an arrest rate that high since the University of Miami football team was winning national championships.

Michael Mayo, Sun Sentinel

Auburn University: The scummiest sports factory in the nation.

And that is saying one hell of a lot.

… it must be college football.

[The Ohio State University scandal: the] latest offering from a septic tank of a system that’s unlikely to be flushed out in our lifetime.

Sports Illustrated

One thing you gotta say for holy roller hypocrites like Gordon Gee and Jim Tressel: They inspire really good sports writing.

… on a single football game?”

At least they’ve got a sweetie of a basketball coach.

… is featured in this PBS report about big-time university sports. (Click on the video.)

Thanks, Dirk, for the link.

Sports Illustrated:

… Before this rash of arrests, Pitt had no procedure for screening football recruits for past trouble with the law. But after Knox’s arrest Pitt’s athletic department implemented a new policy requiring coaches to seek more detailed background information on potential recruits.

… Pittsburgh had more players in trouble with the law (22) than any other school among SI’s 2010 preseason Top 25.

… Pitt chancellor Mark Nordenberg and athletic director Steve Pederson declined requests for comment…

… [C]ollege coaches are willing to recruit players with questionable pasts to win. More surprising, however, is just how little digging college coaches do into players’ backgrounds before offering them a scholarship…

We’ll see more and more of these professor-confessionals.

For 33 years, I taught classes at the University of Missouri’s main campus in Columbia. Every year, I felt my indignation kick in as students, fellow faculty, administrators, staff, alumni and townspeople with no direct connection to MU seemed to show more concern about the football and basketball teams than about teaching and research.

Tell it!

[B]ig-time athletics damage morale of faculty and staff, who see stratospheric football and basketball coaches’ salaries as everybody else swallows reductions. Athletic programs sometimes increase budget deficits rather than earn money for the campuses.

Yes!

So, I will continue my tiny protest by boycotting MU football and basketball games and occasionally speaking out. Many of my colleagues and friends will make fun of me, as they always have, and I will probably die without seeing even a bit of meaningful reform.

… talks about the athletic fee.

…Non-negotiable student fees subsidize over 23 percent of the athletic department’s budget.

Each semester, all U of M students registered for six or more hours must pay $225, the full-time cost of the Student Athletic Fee, on top of sundry general access fees, the student activity fee, the debt service fee and the facility fee.

Combined, these program service fees total $606 per semester, so the athletic fee comprises more than 37 percent of the sum.

I can think of hundreds of better ways I could spend the athletic fees I’ve paid over the years, not to mention what some of The University’s other departments could do with the $7.4 million students contribute to the athletics budget…

… [T]he last few years have [been] so deplorable that [the University of Tennessee] is laughingly called “The University of Thugs” on call-in radio shows across the country.

A local columnist calls for the firing of UT basketball coach Bruce Pearl and his staff.

Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.

Imagine vomiting forever.

… Someone, whether it’s George Blaney, Tim Tolokan, his family, somebody who loves and cares about [University of Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun] has got to tell him to extend this any longer will do the state’s flagship university no good. This no longer can be a case where the coach lifts his leg, squirts on the NCAA like it is a fire hydrant and shrugs at a complicated rulebook.

… Kelvin Sampson at Indiana, Bruce Pearl at Tennessee, Butch Davis at North Carolina, schools will go to great lengths to protect valuable investments. So what UConn did in backing Calhoun isn’t shocking, although the hundreds of thousands in legal costs are.

… [The illegally recruited student] was expelled from the school — over the coach’s strenuous objections — after allegations [he] had abused a female student and violated a restraining order 16 minutes after receiving it. [The student] played no games…

… Texas Tech, our nation’s raunchiest, most good old boy-ridden, sports factory. If you’ve got the stomach, type texas tech into my search engine and read all about it.

Or just consider the latest raunch: Upping the football coach’s salary “by $500,000 through 2015.”

The impoverished, salary-frozen faculty is upset – or at least some professors are upset…. I don’t think you get to be the national disgrace Texas Tech is without a lot of professors excited at the thought of debasing themselves for football.

You’ve got your coach – highest paid employee in the state – overseeing a football program which puts thirteen students in the hospital for days, being treated for “rhabdomyolysis, which forces muscle fibers to release into the blood stream and can cause kidney damage.” The condition was apparently brought on by punishing practice sessions. The coach didn’t come back to check on the students when the news broke — too busy recruiting.

You’ve got your athletics director playing golf with alumni in Florida. He didn’t come back either.

And you’ve got your team physician, paid $385,000 a year to take care of the students, enjoying a medical junket at a beach resort:

The meeting’s itinerary, released to the AP under the state public records law, shows participants adjourned by noon most days and didn’t have any business Jan. 26, the day the university confirmed the players were hospitalized with rhabdomyolysis.

… sinks yet lower.

ESPN’s number one concern, it would seem, is to not make the channel look like one big UT infomercial.

… Holy Family.

[S]ophomore Matt Kravchuk can be seen in the video getting knocked down by coach John O’Connor during a January practice and then [being kicked by] him while he was down. Kravchuk filed a police report following the alleged incident.

…”Got a little (bleep) blood on you. Good,” the coach says in the video obtained by the TV station.

Amen.