“The NFL has murderers that play for them. Men who beat their wives. Drug addicts. But a man who knelt in protest…”

D.L. Hughley, on NFL owners and Colin Kaepernick.

But it didn’t. It doesn’t. All over the world, the highest-level soccer matches – remarkable numbers of them – are big blood baths.

Isn’t it strange? Don’t you find it strange? I mean, that the whole affair – overseen by one of the world’s most corrupt governing bodies – just grinds on? How much slaughter will international football tolerate before it decides the body count’s too high?

Here’s what old UD thinks.

Murder and mayhem pay. Extremely well. Many fans attend games in order to enjoy these things. War by other means; and I reckon Hobbes is right.

Since everyone knows how significant numbers of international soccer gatherings are likely to turn out, audiences for them are increasingly composed of people already inclined toward mass violence. But given the sport’s popularity, and the money it generates, the situation will be allowed to deteriorate infinitely.

… heroes, now a professional football player, dealt with a recent defeat of his team by taking out his gun and shooting it in the vicinity of players on the winning team.

Leon Mackey’s explanation – “It was an accident.” – is a real poser. UD looks forward to his attorney making the case that taking your gun out and shooting it in the direction of people with whom you’re fighting is an accident.

Or does he mean it’s an accident that he didn’t kill anybody?

Lo! The People turn aside and do not attend, while the High Priests hide their ledgers and take money from slaves.

Yea though the Lord sees and is full of wrath, we can do no other for we see as through a glass darkly.

U Conn basketball is constantly in trouble – mainly recruiting violation trouble, but throw in failure to meet academic standards – with the NCAA.

Its last coach – fired under the pressure of the most recent, ongoing, NCAA investigation – is suing the school for ten million dollars because his predecessor as coach, the sainted Jim Calhoun, was really a far sleazier figure, but was treated far better by the university.

Which is correct. Calhoun was significantly more disgusting (though, in fairness, Calhoun coached U Conn for many more years than Kevin Ollie, so had much more time to collect violations) than Ollie, so why should Ollie not get the ten million left on his contract?

Lawsuits, NCAA investigations – and probably, eventually, investigations from a US Attorney or two. Life of the mind, USA.

… back on track!

[A] majority of the NFL’s consumer base simply doesn’t care about the character of players off the field. I’m not doubting the sincerity of people when they say they care, but when the rubber meets the road, a rash of domestic violence cases around the league won’t stop the masses from tuning in.

[Pennsylvania State University’s former president’s defamation case against Louis Freeh] could be overturned if [the president] were to successfully appeal his March 2017 conviction of one misdemeanor count of child endangerment.

And should [Graham] Spanier win that appeal, [he] will continue to pursue his case against Freeh.

[Former vice president Gary Schultz and former athletic director Tim Curley] were both also convicted on the same misdemeanor count, and were sentenced in July to a mix of prison time, house arrest and probation.

Spanier, whose sentence has been delayed pending his appeal, was seen playing the washboard at the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts the same week the other two former administrators began their jail time.

An astute evocation of university life as the utter death of independent thought.

… when this hero of a school that features the word Christian in its name beat the shit out of a bunch of people at a bar. No one cared, because he runs real fast, and he went on to be drafted by an NFL team.

And of course his Texas Christian University hero page remains proudly up online cuz you know he’s so great y’all and we’re so proud to be associated with him, especially now with his beat-up girlfriend giving interviews about how much she bled in his latest attack on her.

Yeah okay so it’s all too much for the NFL team and he’s been dropped. But you won’t find TCU taking down his hero page! A player who can really draw blood doesn’t come along every day.

Now this is impressive. This UD must share with you; and in addition UD must bow to the Greek people.

To be so supremely gangrenous, so suppuratingly pus-ridden, as to face expulsion from arguably the world’s most infected body (FIFA!!); to be so persistently, so top-to-bottom violent — from gun-wielding team owners who rush the pitch and threaten referees, to alcoholic fascists in the stands who beat the shit out of everyone — is truly to have accomplished something grand.

But of course the expulsion will never happen. Did Hitler expel Goering from the party because he was too anti-semitic? In world football, you can’t be too corrupt or too violent.

– has long assumed, correctly, that its ridiculous trustees will listen to the shit the athletics department tells them year after year about taking care of that pesky deficit. Crazed highly-paid coaches, some still working for the school, others suing the school; games in which no one takes any interest; student athletic fees through the roof; academic quality in the toilet; a deer in the headlights president and an empty-threat legislature – you know the drill. Trustees know the drill…

Cuz everything’s gonna be fine as soon as the athletics department not only kills the deficit, but starts making HUGE money. Hold onto your Stetson!

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

But every now and then there’s a kind of … eruption on the part of one of the trustees. One of them suddenly flies over the cuckoo’s nest and lets out his anger at having been lied to and infantilized for years and years and years. It never seems to happen at our most craven sports factories – Auburn, Nebraska, Louisville – but it can certainly happen elsewhere. Because it’s very rare and beautiful and precious and fleeting, like one brief brilliant flash of a peacock’s tail, we take note of it here at University Diaries.

Rob Doughty, president of the UNM Board of Regents – which is responsible for signing off on years of consistently failing budgets from [the] university’s athletics department – says he feels he’s been lied to and won’t rubber stamp any future athletics budgets nor consider forgiving any of the department’s estimated $7.5 million deficit before seeing significant changes.

… “I want to know right now, in front of everybody, why are we [this much] in the hole when I was promised last year that we had a balanced budget?” Doughty intensely questioned.

… “I’m very upset today. I feel like this Board of Regents and the folks that were there, and especially me, were misled and were told things that weren’t true. And [athletics was] making false promises.

“And, I have to say, that in my time at this university in the last four years, as I sit here today, I think I’m as mad as I’ve ever been…. I think the projection line was done just to balance the budget…. [I] want to know what research was done, what analysis was done to really back the projected figures.”

Hey can’t put one over on Doubty Doughty. That projection line was done just to balance the budget!

I’m sorry, kiddies. Either all of these people are idiots, or this is the way they want things to be. It’s a way of life. You don’t get to break in, a century after the cargo cult has established itself, and say Maybe building a landing strip for magical gifts won’t make the magical gifts appear…

Shaking My Head, the man says. Shaking my head cuz one day before the big scrimmage a chunk of the team attacked police and property outside a bar last night. This program, the man says.

But it isn’t just the program, right? Texas Tech is a university; a university whose current national rank is #176 , down twenty points from a couple of years ago. A real trailer park of a place, with violent tailgaters, sadistic coaches, 1500 current lawsuits from dismissed sadistic coaches, a freshman who a few weeks ago got annoyed and took his handgun out and blew the head off of a campus security guy, and, well, there’s jest a ton of stuff like that about this great Lubbock institution. Ask me about Alberto Gonzales!

So … shaking your head? You live in the world’s biggest academic shithole. There’s not enough room in all that shit to move your head, let alone shake it.

**********

UD thanks JND.

… with the safety of their community, as always, paramount in their admissions choices.

What do you do with a sunken Baylor?
What do you do with a sunken Baylor?
What do you do with a sunken Baylor?
Early in the mornin’

Give it a new coach and a female president
Give it a new coach and a female president
Give it a new coach and a female president
Early in the mornin’

Talk up how we’re absolutely positively Christian
Talk up how we’re absolutely positively Christian
Talk up how we’re absolutely positively Christian
Early in the mornin’

Keep your trap shut about recruiting practices
Keep your trap shut about recruiting practices
Keep your trap shut about recruiting practices
Early in the mornin’

‘Women can feel safe though our players rape them
Women can feel safe though our players rape them
Women can feel safe though our players rape them’
Early in the mornin’

‘It’s just a little sacrifice to give our heroes
It’s just a little sacrifice to give our heroes
It’s just a little sacrifice to give our heroes’
Early in the mornin’