[What happened during] Reggie Bush’s stay at USC … goes on to some degree or other at just about every school that’s running a football factory. Constructing a minor-league system for the NFL has turned out to be a profitable sideline, even if it sometimes means having to hold your nose.

Jim Litke on America’s Number One Smelliest Football Factory, Auburn.

And there’s no better field for play in this regard than big time university sports.

Here’s some wonderful writing from Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky, about Auburn’s rapidly-tarnishing Saint Cam Newton:

We expect a certain level of stupidity from our athletes. We accept that they’re going to have tons of personal tutoring help, up-to-and-including people writing their papers for them. Hell, it’s college; we expect kids of all kinds to cheat. But to get caught [as Newton did] indicates a stupidity that we just can’t accept. This, and nothing else, is sullying our notion of the student-athlete!

It’s a joke, of course. There’s an All-SEC Academic Team, and being on it doesn’t tend to improve a player’s draft stock. ESPN College GameDay doesn’t go to Knoxville or Baton Rouge or Tuscaloosa for finals week to cover the due date for term papers. We all know these kids are there to play football, and we’re there to watch them, and all we ask them is to make the slightest effort in preserving the illusion of academia mattering. We know they don’t care, but we’re all content to live in our giant happy Moon Bounce, oblivious to anything beyond the bizarre artificial creation that is college athletics. And we get mad when someone pops it.

I like Petschesky’s evocation of the surreality of big time college athletics, since that is what has struck me the most in my years of covering it. I like just as much his point about the fragility of this giant creation, the way it can suddenly be made to explode in our faces, and the way this reality-explosion angers us. Humankind cannot stand very much reality, says Eliot; and indeed fewer sights are more intense, and intensely strange, than university sports figures and fans forced to reckon with the reality of their false and sordid world.

Burst their bubble at your peril.

************************************

[UD thanks Dave for the link.]

… of how puke-on-the-floor sickening some universities have become.

Now I’ve heard everything. You mean to tell me that people are pointing fingers at a school one-fourth of whose trustees are former football players for the school? That has a total of two women on the board? Among whose trustees sits the Amazing!!!! Bobby Lowder? A school that has the longest record of sports scandals in the history of the universe?

Puh-leeze.

… as University of Washington president. Like Emmert – now running the NCAA – she’s a jocksniffer. She has also, like Emmert, never seen a corporate board seat she didn’t like.

One of Wise’s first acts as president is to fuck up all sorts of classes on campus because of a football game.

But it’s worth it because a huge national audience will see how important academics are to UW.

Yes. That’s her argument. UW will be able to showcase nationally how it doesn’t give a shit about holding classes, and this will persuade thousands of the most brilliant potential applicants that they should apply to the University of Washington.

The game is expected to snarl traffic through Montlake, disrupt afternoon and evening classes at the university, close clinics at the University of Washington Medical Center and play havoc with the workday schedules of thousands of fans.

… [Wise and other] university officials say the game is an opportunity to showcase the school’s athletics and academics to a national audience.

It’s much more than that. It’s also an opportunity to showcase UW’s commitment to keeping its clinics’ doors open, and its commitment to the quality of life in the larger metropolitan region.

… “You can’t put a price on the loyalty a successful football program breeds.”

The athletic department’s budget is stretched beyond its means, due in part to buyouts of prematurely dismissed revenue-sport coaches, of which [University of Minnesota coach Tim] Brewster is now the third in four years.

His original contract was set to expire after the 2011 season, but since Maturi gave him a two-year contract extension in January, the University is now on the hook for about $775,000 in Brewster buyout costs, according to the Star Tribune, which also reported the athletic department had to take out a loan from central administration to cover $5 million worth of buyouts associated with the early terminations of Brewster’s predecessor Glen Mason and former basketball coach Dan Monson.

Gearing up for a fourth winner.

Look at this article about MSU’s budget problems and its fierce defense of an unpopular, financially killing sports program. Read the comments top administrators there make about keeping football going. Textbook provincialism… or why Missouri State will always be Missouri State.

Board of Governors Chair Elizabeth Bradbury said athletics help to make the school a destination-place locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

“When you look at being that kind of a university, typically you are looking at schools that have good, strong athletic programs,” Bradbury said.

“Student-athletes are some of our best ambassadors,” Bradbury added.

MSU ain’t any sort of destination place.

A commenter on the article lists a bunch of schools that have dropped football, and notes that most of them are better schools than MSU. Another commenter makes the obvious point that athletes – especially football players – tend to be the worst ambassadors.

The vp for student affairs makes the pro-football case yet more astutely:

“If we didn’t have football, what would happen to our band program? If band isn’t as vibrant … those musicians also are involved in orchestra, ensembles and all that goes with that.”

A commenter responds:

Those football players are just a support group for the band! I will send this statement to the National Academy of Sciences to prove that football is very important to the academic pursuit of musicianship.

Then there’s the university’s president:

Asked if athletics teams could be on the chopping block in the future, Cofer said, “I don’t answer hypothetical questions.”

You can see why Cofer’s skittish about answering future-oriented questions. MSU’s last president was way bullish on the money the new basketball stadium would make.

The [recent state] audit … pointed out that JQH Arena operated at a loss in its first two years and, according to the current budget, is projected to operate at a loss for 2010-11, as well.

As a result, operating transfers from the athletic fund were needed to cover losses.

Cofer said he’s working on a plan for improving finances for JQH.

Yessiree Bob we’ve got that plan in the works fer sure.

… in swimming, has died in a World Cup race. He lost consciousness during the last leg of the open water event.

People are stunned, and it’s too soon for any official theories. But the water was very warm, and “several swimmers were treated for heat exhaustion at a nearby hospital after the event.” Maybe he had a heart attack.

Crippen’s sister is a senior at Virginia, and also a swimmer.

… the cane.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

… stays classy.

Montana State University’s president explains how they’re financing the thing.

… Asked what would happen if ticket sales weren’t enough to cover MSU’s debt, Cruzado said MSU was taking every precaution in its financial plan, but the details are still being worked out…

Asked what would happen if private fundraising fell short, she said, “Failure is not an option.”…

… the guy.

He’s such a sweetie.

… beat Bethesda Chevy Chase High in football 42-28 yesterday. In dramatic style.

[A]t this time in 2008, the Wildcats had not won a game in four years.