… to be sure, but the University of Michigan — which pays millions to a negligent president and many more millions to Rich Rodriguez, an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, crooked football coach — seems to be on an even faster schedule than that. Every moment it spins out some new way to get taken.

The latest involves $350 an hour legal fees:

The NCAA investigation into Michigan’s football program has cost the university nearly half million dollars so far, and expenses continue to mount.

According to invoices from the law firm Lightfoot, Franklin and White released this week as part of an open-records request, Michigan has paid $446,951 in legal fees and other expenses since contracting attorney Gene Marsh and others to handle its internal investigation last September.

The payments are for services rendered through April, and do not include a busy May, when the university released its findings and self-imposed penalties in response to the NCAA’s Notice of Allegations.

… Michigan, in a letter dated Sept. 15, 2009, agreed to pay … the former head of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, $350 an hour to lead its investigation. Other attorneys were billed at $300, and paralegals $130 an hour…

Check out the article’s comment thread if you want a sense of the reality on the ground. If UM were a public university in a financially distressed state, this would be a real scandal.

… seems to have been fired. Sometimes a person behaves too repellently even for the University of Georgia.

“The Bulldogs [teams] are a brand, and [Athletics Director Damon Evans is] in charge of controlling that, definitely, from the business side. If it was one of the top three or four folks at Delta [Airlines] who did this, you wonder what would happen to them,” [a University of Georgia booster] said.

It’s a distinction UGA works to maintain.

Apparently, head coaches need to worry about their bosses dipping their toes into legal hot water this time of year as well as their players.

According to the FOX affiliate in Atlanta, Georgia athletic director Damon Evans was arrested Wednesday night following a traffic stop and charged with DUI.

The station reports that Evans’ 2009 BMW was pulled over at 11:55 p.m. Wednesday. Evans was given a field sobriety test, and then later refused to take a breathalyzer test.

(It also apparently took police officers quite some time to set the camera up for Evans’ mug shot as the athletic director appears to have nodded off at some point during the process.)

… [One dealer] said that the Kansas incident shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of ticket brokers, just as the misdeeds of crooked car dealer or a rogue government official wouldn’t mean their entire professions were tainted.

Las Vegas ticket broker Ken Solky agrees. Yet he said the pressures on campus ticket managers to generate revenue for their schools could lead some to cut corners.

“You’re in a position to (ensure) that there are butts in a seat,” said Solky, president of his industry’s national association. “If I’m doing my job right, and I’m in the athletics department, I’m going to do whatever I can to get fans into the arena.”

The Kansas incident. A tiny drop in the big university sports slop bucket.

University police say three incoming UCLA football players arrested last week face felony theft charges for allegedly stealing a student’s purse.

From a comment thread after an article about the latest University of Florida player arrest:

[Commenter #1] Please point out one program that has [like UF] had 28 players arrested in the past five years. Thanks.

[Commenter #2] [D]id you forget the fact that Georgia had 30 arrests over the 4 year period that UF had 24?

Obscene yearly increases in student fees, a stadium whose construction they keep postponing because fund-raising efforts are for shit, a fourth-tier university … Florida Atlantic has it all.

Its athletic director explains:

He said with FAU’s planned stadium, the university is working to create a model where athletics is supported more from outside sources than student fees. But he said the fee increases just help the university maintain the status quo.

“If there needs to be a discussion of whether universities think it is time to devalue or downgrade their athletic programs, that is another story,” he said. “However, with athletics many times being the ‘front porch’ to the university and arguably the most visible, it may be a tricky exercise.”

Working to create… You know, that new stadium (the current, much smaller FAU stadium sits more than half empty at most games) was supposed to have opened years ago; this guy insisted it’d all get done with outside money, only it didn’t, blahblah…

But this front porch thing… The only idea coaches ever learn is this thing about the porch and they’re always sharing it with journalists… And the guy’s right – football and basketball are the most visible…

The most visible what? He doesn’t say. Let’s complete the idea.

For most American universities, and quite notoriously for FAU, big time sports are the most visible manifestation of their moral, intellectual, and financial failure. They are the ‘front debtors’ prison’ to the university.

The IRS is examining the University of Texas at Austin for executive compensation and matters related to taxable income, preliminary offering documents show. Mack Brown, head football coach, the highest-paid state employee at $5.1 million per year, earns almost seven times more than Francisco Cigarroa, who’s paid $750,000 as chancellor of the University of Texas System.

… The IRS mailed questionnaires to 400 nonprofit colleges and universities in October 2008, seeking data on endowments, compensation and income from businesses unrelated to their missions of teaching and research. It picked more than 30 institutions to audit on the basis of answers…

Disgusted with the vileness of Southeastern Conference-type university athletics, and embarrassed for his alma mater, the University of Southern California (current target of one of the NCAA’s random sanctioning fits), a professor proposes a new league:

Stanford and Notre Dame could take the lead in establishing a national conference of first-rate academic institutions that offer athletic scholarships only to true student athletes, as defined, largely, by an iron-clad commitment to graduate with their classmates in four years. An invitation to join this conference could be extended to other private institutions with both high academic standards and proud athletic traditions – such as Northwestern, Duke, Boston College, Pittsburgh and Brigham Young (which could substitute a suitable variation on the four-year graduation policy to accommodate Mormon missions). The three United States service academies might also be asked to join.

A slideshow.

The University of Waterloo football team has been suspended for the entire 2010 season following the revelation that nine of the 62 players on the roster have committed doping offences. The coaching staff has been placed on paid administrative leave.

… “We have a total of nine possible anti-doping violations. Two violations have been confirmed to date and the sanctions have been accepted. We are in the results management process as it relates to the other other seven potential violations,” [said one official].

… Waterloo athletic director Bob Copeland decided to test the entire team following the arrest of a member of the team, Nathan Zettler, for possession and trafficking of anabolic steroids.

During the news conference Copeland defended the university’s decision to suspend the entire team…

National Post

[The] Big Ten Commissioner [says] that academics are a top priority [in the upcoming expansion of various university athletic leagues].

“Of course they’re going to say that,” Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist said of the Big Ten’s repeated emphasis on academics. “What are they going to say? ‘We’re going to prostitute ourselves?’ ”

If the Big Ten truly valued academics, it would not [add] Nebraska, Zimbalist said. He notes the school’s academics aren’t on par with those of Michigan, Illinois and other Big Ten schools.

“What’s happened over the decades, more so in the last two, commercial value has trumped academic value, and that’s decidedly wrong,” he said.

Yet in a slumping economy, it stands to reason that schools are looking to improve their bottom lines.

“It’s understandable there are certain financial pressures and they’re trying to sustain themselves,” Zimbalist said. “It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do to subject yourself to the needs of TV and media.”…

Those pesky night games, during which wasted tailgaters turn the campus into a reeking dump, will go on. After all:

Athletics director Damon Evans said Wednesday that he hoped to find a healthy balance between the early kickoffs and the games under the lights …but said television contracts with CBS and ESPN would ultimately outweigh many of the school’s desires.

Background on Bobby Gonzalez here. He’s been fired and is suing.

On admissions standards at Seton Hall:

Every one of those kids that I brought in, I’m not the admissions director. I’m not the administration. They were very well aware of all of their backgrounds. They admitted every one of them. There was a process with every one of those young men, they knew every kid there academically. They knew every player we brought into the program.

On his future:

Star Ledger: Do you feel that, given everything that has happened, you’ll have another shot to coach again?

BG: Absolutely. If you look around the country — and I’m certainly not going to name any names of coaches or schools — but there’s been guys right now currently (coaching) that have had sex scandals. There have been guys that have had DWIs that are coaching. There have been guys that have had major NCAA violations that are coaching.