This writer sets them out for us, in all their all-American glory.

…College sports at the highest level (meaning Division I revenue programs) is mostly about money. Those at the top of professional and major college athletics — whatever pure PR stance is taken, and has to be — understand gambling is part of why their sports thrive. Bottom line, it adds to the interest…

University of Toledo: You Can Bet on It!

Black will be played by Robert Zemsky, historian.

White will be played by Tim Curley, propagandist.

Dead All Over will be played by Michael Adams, president of the worst university in America.

Today’s meeting of the Knight Commission on university athletics opened with White, proud member of what he calls “the Penn State family,” where he’s Athletic Director.

White speaks:

College athletics is today the healthiest I’ve ever seen it. Everything’s looking great. Everyone here should be celebrating the positive values of university sports. We’ve learned we can be the great success we are and at the same time we can govern ourselves. We don’t need to be governed by outsiders. We’ve made incredible progress on all fronts. Enthusiasm and excitement and participation and profit is at an all-time high. Yes, escalating salaries stress the system. Yes, we continue to be challenged with our expenses. But these things are out of our control. Every one of these expenditures is necessary. We live in a market society, and we have to respond to market conditions.

Black speaks:

Trying to describe the place of athletics in the larger context of higher education is like trying to describe a burnt-out desert. You see, this discussion today — it isn’t going anywhere. We came here to talk about cost-containment, and it isn’t going anywhere. And that’s because any sense of values is missing.

Since you people don’t have any values, you put the marketplace up as the only thing that matters. That’s why you’re not ever going to reform at all. You’re part of the general loss of aura, loss of particularity, at our universities in America. Football on your campus is just like the NFL, you say, and, see, you’re proud of it. So what makes you a college? Absolutely nothing.

Used to be universities were supposed to be like churches — separate, special places, dedicated to higher things. They’re not special anymore. They’re just like any other business. So why tenure? Why tax exemptions? Look at Harvard and places like that. University endowments aren’t charitable donations; they’re hedge funds. University presidents make million dollar salaries, just like other CEOs.

It all tears at the fabric of the specialness of the university. You’ve all helped make that happen. Since you’ve been in business, things have gotten a whole lot worse. The university athletics engine will certainly stop running. But it will never reform itself. It’ll just run out of gas.

Dead All Over:

I resent this negativity. Why, at the University of Georgia we’ve got a heck of a program…

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Update: This post is now comment enabled.

… UD heads downtown for the Knight Commission meeting on university athletics.

She’ll blog about it later this afternoon.

… who now lives in Virginia, told me about Liberty University‘s plans for a snow-free ski hill some time ago.

It’s become a reality. Ski Channel reports:

And on the seventh day, God Skied.

Liberty University, the largest evangelical Christian university in the world, will soon be home to the first Snowflex, snow-free ski hill in the U.S. Snowflex was a quantum leap forward for carpet skiing. The technology was invented in the U.K. in 1993 and has since been installed in a handful of facilities in Europe. The first Snowflex tiles, plastic mats that closely simulate the sensation of snow, were installed above Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia on May 1st. The 110 vertical-foot slope should be open by the summer.

Jerry Falwell, one week before his death, talked about why he wanted to remake the bald hill above the university into an all-year-round ski hill. “There are no beer bashes at Liberty, and no coed dorms, but it doesn’t have to be a monastery. We’re breaking the stereotype that Christian education is synonymous with boredom.”

Surely there will be new tricks and their corresponding trick names whose genesis will be traced back to the dry hills (pun intended) of Liberty University. How about a Jesus Air, Nicodemus Flat Spin, Switch Judas 180, or a Mute Lazarus?

… the idiots running university sports.

[An NCAA report shows] no connection between coaches’ salaries and winning. “The only category of spending that has a statistically significant effect on performance,” the authors say, “is ‘team expenditures’ .” — recruiting, equipment and other “game-day expenses.”

Co-author Jonathan Orszag, an economist who once served on President Clinton’s National Economic Council and as assistant to the Secretary of Commerce, says there are instances in which big salaries for coaches prove to be sound investments. But “on aggregate,” he says, that’s not the case.

“There’s a lot of pressure on university presidents to hire an expensive coach,” says Orszag, whose brother Peter is the new White House budget director, “but the evidence suggests that spending more on coaches does not bring the benefit to the university that they expect.”

Headlines like this.

But that’s just the latest.

… cynical recruitment strategies for its men’s basketball team produce all kinds of problems — including, most recently, loss of a scholarship. Having “fail[ed] to meet the NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate cut score,” it is now “the highest-profile of three area programs to suffer penalties in the annual evaluation.”

… makes a sextuple play.

Dalton was arrested on suspicion of felony possession of a controlled substance, minor in possession of alcohol, possession of false identification and three traffic charges, including a lane violation and failure to provide insurance.

Extra point: Comment from one of the article’s readers:

I mean, come on guys, look at players at Ohio State, or Florida. Players on those teams get arrested/suspended often.

Yes. Why pick on him? He’s just a freshman. He’s just getting started.

The local paper’s quoting Marilyn Flowers, an economics professor – and chair of the department – at Ball State who’s been going after campus athletics.

… Ball State has more than $14 million budgeted for its athletics programs. Approximately 80 percent of the budget is paid for from student fees – almost $9 million – and institutional support – almost $2.5 million.

“When it costs so much for kids to go to school, and you charge them $800 a year and most of them don’t go to any games, that I think is really unfortunate,” Flowers said.

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UD thanks a reader for linking her to this story.

… features University Diaries.

Good article in the Spokesman Review about the majorly unprofitable football program at Eastern Washington University.

A veteran EWU professor comments:

“There are far more opportunities for students to represent their universities in sports at Central and Western than at Eastern, because they’re competing at a different level.”

Corkill backs his argument by noting his school has axed sports such as baseball, wrestling, swimming, men’s soccer and men’s golf during his tenure, basically for the sake of reducing expenditures.

“And they’ve done it in order to protect football and basketball and the Big Sky Conference,” he said. “I feel, in a way, that football distorts the intercollegiate athletics program at Eastern, and given the huge budget cuts we’re facing, I just think that maybe it’s time to rethink whether we should be in the Big Sky – or if we even need football.”

… is a benign dictator, in the way of football coaches.  A well-meaning, emotional man of limited worldly understanding, he keeps his kingdom content with athletic spectacles and brooks no dissent.  His players are worshipped by all.

On the fringes of Leipold’s domain lies a university, and though his players may not use the athletic equipment of this university without one of their fitness coaches present, three of the athletes did so anyway, refusing to show their student identification and behaving with the sense of entitlement that you would expect of the king’s pets.

A reporter from the university newspaper was present, took offense, and wrote a column about “spoiled athletes.”

Neither their demeanor, nor their language was respectful, but that’s OK, because they’re athletes. They’re allowed to play the system. Next time I’m in the Williams Center, I’ll keep my ID, wear my headphones on the bottom floor and bench press naked because I feel like it. …

The guilty party usually isn’t the typical student-athlete. It’s really not even the few who misbehave or accept preferential treatment. The villains are the “adults” – the coaches and administrators – who send the message it’s acceptable to behave how you want because you can run fast or jump high.

The writer concluded by noting one common endpoint of athlete-coddling:

[S]ometimes exceptional talent still isn’t enough to bail out someone who thinks he’s above the rules. Ask [Maurice] Clarett. You can reach him at the Toledo Correctional Institution.

When he read this, King Leipold flushed crimson and flew into a rage.

“This is fucking bullshit,” he thundered, and banned the newspaper from access to the football program. “The door is shut. Go cover soccer…. I’m sure that will be fun.”

So certain was Leipold of the right of kings that he wrote an email to the university’s chancellor boasting of having shut down the press: “If this is the type of journalism our paper is going to have. They can cover someone else — we will get along just fine,” Leipold wrote.

Imagine Leipold’s amazement when reprimands and sanctions rained down upon him from the chancellor! When he was made to apologize in public to this student and to the newspaper!

Moral of the story: Just as the concept of assault has now become clearer to Mississippi’s coach, so the concept of a free press is surely beginning to work its way into the brain of King Leipold.

An editorial in the University of Kansas newspaper:

The Olympic Village project is simply the latest in a long line of building projects that have dramatically changed the face of athletics at the University in the past six years…

… Athletics must strike a balance among providing reasonable facilities for its athletes, accommodating spectators and appealing to donors and recruits. But most importantly, it must contribute to the overall success of the University, which is ultimately measured in terms of academics. Keeping in mind the terms and constraints of the relationship of Athletics to the University, it is disconcerting to see the construction of yet another huge and costly athletics facility while the rest of the University literally crumbles around it. Deferred maintenance costs for older parts of campus have plagued the University for a decade and detrimentally affected academics. Now, with a full-blown recession, large budget cuts are projected for the next two years, and maintenance will no doubt be deferred once again, not to mention faculty layoffs and deep cuts in student services…

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Oh: And here’s a nice companion piece.

Nice summary of recent events in university sports.