Reports on this are ambiguous, as are reports about why the traditional University of South Alabama cheer – SOUTH IN YA MOUTH – has been ruled out of bounds.
The decision was made by South Alabama Director of Athletics Dr. Joel Erdmann, who cited University’s intent to move away from a potentially politically incorrect statement.
Sexually incorrect it may be; but UD doesn’t see any political problem with it.
Students plan to resist. “You can’t truly ban it if it’s something we want to chant,” says one.
Hawaii’s athletics department had been trying to rely on the $23 million a year it generated from ticket sales, donations, television and marketing, plus an additional $10 million in direct and indirect support from the university. But by this summer, the department had accumulated about $10 million in debt and was adding to that at a rate of $1.5 million to $2 million a year. Over the objections of undergraduate and graduate student organizations, the state board of regents voted in July to impose an athletics fee for the first time.
An article in USA Today features Hawaii, and lots of other universities, soaking their students with athletics fees.
Lots of universities don’t disclose the fees. Why disclose them? You know that if you do, students are likely to vote against raising them. Just sneak them into unitemized tuition bills.
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At the rate they’re going, Hawaii will accumulate $20 million in athletic debt in not too long a time. Students will to have to take care of that.
In his five-plus years at [the University of] Florida, [Urban] Meyer has had players tasered while trying to flee police, arrested for being passed out drunk at a traffic light, stolen a laptop and then thrown it out the window when police arrived, fired an AK-47 into the air, stolen the credit card of a teammate’s girlfriend after she died and used it 70 times.
And that’s just a handful of the 30 times his players have been arrested or faced charges.
Look, it’s OK to fork over hundreds, even thousands of dollars for those season tickets and prime tailgate spots; it’s OK to fly the alma mater’s flag from your front porch on game days; it’s OK to wear the colors, to Hail the Victors, to Script Ohio, and to shake down the thunder and cheer, cheer for old leprechauns.
Be proud and hope for the best. But always remember one thing. College athletics are a cesspool.
Dave Hackenberg, Toledo Blade
Without Division I athletics, Northern Iowa’s not on the cover of the Sports Illustrated. Without Division I athletics, the Panthers aren’t whisked to Los Angeles and handed an ESPY award.
This University of North Carolina professor is certainly correct about her school; it cares far more for lower-ranked coaches than it does for philosophy professors… Yet she adds:
“It is what it is. It gives you an idea of where society places its value.”
Both of which are curious things to say. It is what it is — meaning nothing to be done… I wonder if she takes the same approach to her work in economics… unemployment rates, gross wealth disparities… they are what they are…
And then… way to blame it on society! As you may know, UD asks her students to avoid, in their papers, any generalizations about ‘society,’ because they almost always sound dumb…
In this case, for instance, society does not pay assistant university coaches hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill does. Many universities do not pay their coaches in the way UNC pays its coaches. As Balaban points out in her initial comment, UNC could give a shit about the life of the mind. Its resources go to athletics, and, with this latest scandal, to athletics-related public relations and litigation.
… its interest in luxury suites at University of Louisville football and basketball games onaccounta people were really pissed when they realized Dismas is a tax-funded non-profit charity sort of thing.
At first its CEO — who makes a humongous, totally corporate salary, so what’s the big deal with the luxury suites? — refused to give up his babies and said he had nothing to apologize for. Then I don’t know. Something happened. The IRS noticed the news stories about it maybe. I don’t know. Suddenly Dismas is all weepy and apologetic.
The UL athletic director agreed to release Dismas from its luxury suite contracts, but said this is “somewhat of a hardship” for the school.
You said it. They’ve got quite a few unrented luxury suites for both basketball and football and I don’t know how that has happened. Sports is a religion down there, etc., and watching the games from a luxury suite must be like worshipping at St Peter’s Basilica. You’d think they’d be clawing each other for the privilege. Anyway, I’m sure the university is making up the shortfall by destroying educational opportunities for its students.
It’s worth remembering that the University of North Carolina was not founded to field a football team; it was created to educate the sons – and much later the daughters – of the people of North Carolina…
… opinion piece in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Tom Eblen writes an advertisement for the next president of the University of Kentucky:
… Many Kentuckians are suspicious of new ideas and averse to change. They avoid risk for fear of failure or criticism. Ignorance and powerful vested interests often combine to keep the status quo.
Your biggest distraction in this job will likely be UK’s basketball and football teams and their boosters. These programs are rich and powerful and prone to trouble. They bring in a lot of money, and some of it goes to academics. But not nearly enough.
… [A]t UK, as at many universities, athletics has become the tail that wags the dog.
… [Y]ou will face a sports scandal or several. You will constantly be at odds with rabid fans who think the university exists to support a sports franchise…
Some students and professors say Mississippi State shouldn’t cancel Thursday classes for a football game.
In the article’s comment thread, a fan complains:
I guess with all the academics on our campus there’s no surprise we’d get a nerd (or professor) or two to complain.
Background on University of Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl, the lyingest good ol’ boy this side of anywhere.
… Not long after Pearl was hired, there came a day in 2008 when his wife reportedly got the day’s mail and there were two property-tax statements, not one. Yes, the coach owned another house in Knoxville where another woman lived. Whoops.
Of course, a divorce suit followed and a 25-year marriage was dashed because Bruce Pearl, aside from being a great motivational speaker and now a crowd favorite, was also a liar…
In Knoxville yesterday [the UT chancellor] said that once again Bruce would buy his way out of his latest lie…
University of Tennessee v. University of Kentucky: A race to below the bottom.
… seems to be losing patience with big time university sports.
… Amateur college athletics is now an oxymoron in full bloom… There isn’t a not-for-profit bone left in its body except for the tax-exempt status it somehow continues to maintain with the IRS despite raking in billions of dollars through television contracts, ticket sales and merchandise sales…
Of course the NCAA itself needs to lose its tax exemption. The whole thing’s a laff riot.
I’d argue that university presidents and the people who run the biggest conferences have never been more openly greedy. Since the end of the last college football season, the dominant story in college sports has been to find a better conference deal and get more money. Your school gets $15 million for being on television? Try for $25 million.
Like many other observers, Michael Wilbon notes that though big time university athletes spend “more than 40 hours a week” working on their game, they make virtually no money — while, in some cases, enriching everyone around them.