Yes, never mind.
Hush now.
Listen up: This is a university, where people are smart. What we did was smart. This is what we did.
In [Bob] Diaco’s three years as head coach, UConn’s football squad ran up an 11-26 record. This year, the team was 3-9, and on Monday, athletic director David Benedict announced that Diaco was out, effective Jan. 2.
Under his original contract, firing Diaco in early 2017 would have cost the school $800,000. But last May – after Diaco’s second season, in which the team had six wins and six losses – UConn agreed to a contract extension that increased its buyout obligation to $3.4 million.
Six/Six. 6/6.
Fucking Six/Six Man!
The board of trustees got a major boner when we did that good. Plus we got scared! We thought: Now that Diaco’s so hot hundreds of other programs are gonna wanna snap him up! Don’t let him get away! Don’t let him get away!
Oh but look. We lost the boner. Oh no.
Now you have to give us the money to give the man who gave us the boner that went down.
Understand?
Par for the course.
Nice Jesuit school too. They must be in contention with Baylor for Most Hypocritical Religious Institution in the Land.
… and there’s nothing more scatheable than the surrealistic boxing with shadows that occurs when a local team booster, distraught that no one attends his university’s football games, troubles deaf heaven with his cries. SOS is particularly fond of this form of the persuasive essay and is always delighted to find a new one. So let’s go!
HEADLINE: UNM Football Has Earned the Right to Expect More Filled Seats
The University of New Mexico sports program is your typical farce/horror, with years of scumminess and scandals to its name. Because of this history, and for all of the other reasons students and others are staying home or leaving the stands early, few people attend Lobos games. Even when they’ve got a winning record.
The New Mexico football program has pulled a 180 since hiring a new head coach five seasons ago. But despite putting a winning product on the field, attendance has inexplicably continued a downward trend.
See, that’s why he says in his headline that the team “has earned” butts in the seats; they’re winning games. They got them an incredibly expensive coach who’s doing what he was hired for!
But the little shits complain about the expense.
Several readers have expressed dissatisfaction this semester with the perceived high price tag of the football coach, questioning how someone in his position could justify such a high salary.
And you know what else? The writer doesn’t mention it, but given that most of them don’t attend games, they’re also pissed that their student activity fee is insanely high, meaning they’re paying the dude’s ridiculous salary.
Even though no school in the Mountain West had a better conference record, no team had worse attendance …
Inexplicable. How can this be? Don’t all our students live for a winning football team? Where the fuck are they?
Some might argue the reduced attendance is due to a struggling economy that leaves no additional money for entertainment, but that doesn’t appear true as other schools have no problem filling [their] stands.
Additionally, package deals were available at the beginning of the season — some offering tickets for less than $6 per person.
Less than six bucks! That seems a pretty compelling piece of evidence that you couldn’t pay most UNM students to go to the football games. What might be behind this?
New Mexico has tried to lure in fans this season by revamping its concessions, offering free fan giveaways and introducing alcohol sales. It even opened up the field to the public after the game in an effort to give fans a better game day experience, to no avail.
With no professional sports teams, it seems odd that Albuquerque and the metro area don’t turn out in better numbers, especially for a local product that many have a direct connection to.
Yeah. Well. The beauty of the booze solution is that it makes an already pretty gruesome social scene a good deal more gruesome. You might not know this, but a lot of people dislike being around loud belligerent drunks. People with children, in particular, seem to object. Universities try to deal with this problem by stationing tons of police everywhere (thus adding to the expense of the enterprise); but again, inexplicably, the more an event looks like an encounter with a police state, the less people want to attend it.
The fans that do show up deserve a lot of credit as they likely supported the team even when it was down, but it still seems like the team has earned the right to expect more. Is it too much to ask the community to show student-athletes who proudly represent the name on the front of their jerseys that it cares?
If so, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise when coaches start to jump ship to pursue vacancies in places where it is not.
Now it’s getting desperate. And, as I say, surreal. For what can be the point of this writing? Are we trying to guilt-trip people into having fun? (Or scare them: You might lose your million-dollar coach!) UD has read versions of this essay in which the writer instructs the local gentry that it’s their responsibility to attend football games. A civic duty, like voting. But voting is over in an instant; here’s the deal with football games.
Attending football games is boring. Plays take a matter of seconds, there’s an endless amount of time between plays when nothing happens, and the replays are limited. You can’t change the channel if the game’s lousy. The weather conditions are usually crappy, and the seating sucks unless you’re in a suite. You’re often clueless about injuries. I sit in a press box with replays and constant players updates and I get bored, so I can’t really blame students for staying home and watching on TV under greater/cheaper conditions.
To be sure, the boredom is occasionally broken by watching someone get severely concussed; but the drama is over in a second. Plus a lot of people don’t like watching young men get severely concussed.
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Now SOS will let you in on the real reason a lot of students ignore your football team.
They are ashamed of the school. They don’t want to be seen publicly associating with it, and they’re certainly not going to cheer for it.
Why?
Well, you just type university new mexico in this blog’s search and engine and start reading.
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And I just know you’re not interested in the one way you might actually be able to turn this around.
Try giving some money to the (get ready for it) academic side of your university.
… news that UM’s football team is boycotting the rest of its season (the little that’s left) unless ten suspended players are unsuspended, and unless it gets an apology from the school’s president for having suspended the players in the first place, ol’ UD‘s been pondering this one.
This is a new one on her. A university football team, en masse, refuses to play or practice, goes on strike, puts a jock school’s big-money super-ticket on ice. All at once a hundred and twenty glutes hamstrings and quadriceps enter the inactive list.
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The announcement made for a spectacular visual. With trembling hands a wide receiver read from a sheet of paper, while behind him loomed suited-up troops.
The next day the university’s president issued a vaguely conciliatory statement, and today (Saturday) he has issued another, less conciliatory, statement. Here’s what he’s trying to convey to the lads.
Even though the courts decided there was insufficient evidence to go after a bunch of players who seem to have been involved in a gang sexual assault against a student, the university can do its own punitive thing. The team’s thing is that the guys are unjustly condemned since the courts turned down the case; the school’s thing is fuck that this place has had a shitload of sex problems from players as well as coaches in the last couple of years and we can’t afford to look as though we’re doing nothing.
I mean the school doesn’t say that; it doesn’t say that a random half-attentive blogger like UD can scroll through her University of Minnesota posts and be astounded by the number of sex scandals its sports teams have generated lately, but c’est entendu. It’s like Baylor or Penn State – do you really think this nation’s galloping-fucktard campuses are going to let the next run of rapes slide? We’ve got a critical mass problem here. We’ve got a money problem here. You know how much clean-up costs? The latest estimate for rapeabilly rapscallion Baylor is $223 million. (UD thanks JND for the link.)
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So. A few more comments on this story if I may.
The team’s gotta be counting on a groundswell of support from students, alumni, the local community. They might not want to hold their breath. Fuck Fatigue has set in, UD suspects, as well as General Gross-out. Whatever else you want to say about the incredibly detailed university report on the events of that night, it for sure makes for nauseating reading. It even features a high school student, a person the team’s trying to recruit. One of his possibly future teammates is quoted saying “it was good the recruit was having sex because that might make him more likely to come to the university.”
Shades of the University of Louisville, our first official house-of-prostitution university.
Another reason we probably shouldn’t expect much support: There isn’t even that much interest in the game. After having built an insanely expensive new stadium because that would bring in huge numbers of fans, UM has watched the stadium steadily empty of spectators even as UM has got a huge debt to pay back on the place.
Datz right – tanking football game attendance is a national trend. But add to that the peculiarly off-putting business of rooting for a sorta scummy team and you’re talking rows of dead bleachers.
So the team isn’t playing and the students aren’t watching – a quintessentially postmodern moment here, no? Simulacrum City. Animatronic fans and billion-dollar gifts from trustee venture capitalists are going to have to keep the show going.
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UPDATE: That was quick. Boycott over.
UD‘s gotta figure that the guys had a chance to read the university’s report on the incident. I ain’t kidding when I say it’s stomach-churning. Maybe you don’t want to put yourself on the line for the people featured in the report.
UD admires the team’s solidarity in defense of their teammates. But anyone making their way through the eighty sickening pages describing what these guys actually seem to have done will conclude they’re not worth fighting for.
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It’s all over but the satires.
[The football coach at the University of Wyoming] is getting a pay raise to $1.4 million a year, starting next year. He is currently guaranteed $850,000 a year. The new contract provides for raises that will take his guaranteed salary up to $1.7 million in 2023 and includes added incentives, such as two $625,000 payments if he stays through the term of the contract.
The coach’s raise comes as the university has eliminated more than 100 staff and faculty jobs… No university faculty and staff received pay raises this year.
Point Two:
Board President John McPherson [said] : “We’re not shortchanging the academic side of the university by agreeing to [the] terms of coach Bohl’s contract.”
Ain’t it?
In fact, at this point, UD assumes this sort of national attention paid to a university is a plus.
When Baylor first hired Art Briles
The prez and trustees were all smiles.
But there’s just no escapin’
A teamful of rapin’–
Get ready, get set, for the trials.
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And remember, kiddies: Baylor’s already paying Briles six million dollars or so a year to go away.
Truly, truly a blessing.
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Baylor University: Toxic Christianity.
While a lawsuit was almost certainly expected, if Briles thinks people at Baylor conspiring against him is why he doesn’t have another job, he’s clinically insane. Anyone associated with Baylor, its athletic department and its football team is toxic right now. Briles wouldn’t be considered for any jobs at any level even if he was carry a sack full of recommendations from Baylor’s administration.
After Briles gave an incredibly weak apology for the out-of-control program he ran at Baylor, did anyone think he would be getting a job any time soon? The guy just doesn’t seem to understand the havoc players wreaked under his watch and just how awful the culture he promoted was.
If Briles was smart, he’d have laid low for a few years, then mounted a comeback with some very serious apologies. Instead he’s out there suing his former employer and acting like he did nothing wrong.
There are enough overt racists among the students at Texas A&M to make the appearance of white nationalists there not that scandalous, not that surprising.
“When I heard about the Aggie European Alliance, I was disgusted; however, I was not surprised,” said graduate student Lia Epps.
Wonder why not.
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The school has responded strongly (counter-demonstrations) to this guy’s appearance, but there’s no denying that, if you’re an American fascist trolling for recruits, making Texas A&M – rather than, say, Hampshire College – the first stop on your speaking tour is a good career move. Texas A&M specializes in worshipping naughty naughty naughty white boys.
Today we drop in on Oregon State University, which just last year was crowing about its football attendance numbers being way high, and now this year is keening over its ticket sales being way low.
Truth and illusion – who knows the difference? Eh, Toots? as George says… And anyway… the money people “expect OSU athletics to be operating in the black within the next three fiscal years,” so just you hold on to your hat! We’re gonna be tearing up the pea patch in no time don’t you worry and meanwhile we’ll just pinch this here eight million dollars to tide us over…
In 2007, [Humboldt State University] switched the Athletics Department’s primary funding source from the state General Fund to revenue collected by the student Instructionally Related Activities fees, which are currently the highest in the California State University system, according to Strategic Edge. HSU’s student fees have increased from $278 per semester per student in 2010 to the current $337 per semester rate, according to the university. [AD Tom] Trepiak said raising the fees any higher is not an option.
The funding model switch was made to free up funds for more academic purposes, according to a 2007 university memorandum of understanding.
But Trepiak argues that athletics are a form of academia.
“The job of a coach is to teach a student athlete how to do their sport, so part of that is a perception thing with people looking at it with their own special interest rather than the big picture,” he said.
UD finds this statement, at the end of an article in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s student paper, refreshing. It states the truth, bluntly. When you do this grotesque thing – when you import professional sports to universities, of all places – you’re going to have to prostitute the universities. That’s the cost of playing the game. Many of your players are going to play, and nothing else. Somehow you’re going to have to solve the problem of that pesky – even embarrassing – “university” identity, and it’s going to mean tutors who write papers for players, online classes ostensibly taken by players but actually taken by designated online-class-takers, and the creation of bogus departments with bogus courses designed to allow everyone to pretend that players have studied something.
Many of the players have already been admitted in bogus ways – they graduated from fake high schools (usually with reassuringly fervent Christian names) designed to produce legit-looking diplomas for sports guys. Your job, at Chapel Hill, is to figure out how to retain your recruits even though they’re not doing any schoolwork. Your biggest challenge is not the NCAA, which doesn’t give a shit, but rather the rogue tutor or investigative reporter.
A university like Chapel Hill – a community like Chapel Hill – sees itself above all as a professional sports team. Everyone, from the president down, has a role to play on the team. The president issues high-minded language about the glorious nexus of physical and mental achievement on campus. Professors pass the players along no matter what they do. Tutors do the players’ schoolwork. Local reporters are slavish panting boosters.
It all holds together very nicely – UNC’s bogus courses sailed along for decades – until, as most recently at the University of Missouri – someone has a crisis of conscience or something, and the ship goes down.
And then it comes up again. I mean, the scandal costs the school (taxpayers, often) zillions, and getting rid of a coach or two (this is de rigueur post-scandal: dump some coaches) is also expensive (you’re breaking a contract; plus these guys are liable to sue), but in the end none of these jock school academic scandals amount to anything. Even if you decide to dump the president, she’ll just move to another jock school, and you’ll have all the time and expense of finding another person able to talk about your rigorous academic program with a straight face.
Cost of playing the game.
… gets right back up on his Champions for Christ mount after the … unpleasantness at Baylor.
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And do you think the New York Post went out of its way to choose a photograph of McCaw that’s a dead ringer for this one?
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UD thanks a number of readers for linking her to this story.
It’s that old devil called shame again
Hits a tutor and starts fucking up our games again
Puts a wrench in our plans, tears up our fans,
And just breaks our heart.
It’s that sly old son of a gun again,
He keeps telling her that she’s the naughty one again.
But we still have our coach, still have our teams,
And those jocks in my class.
… every day is a challenge. Ken Starr, Art Briles, gang rape and cover-up galore… All in the context of a very self-righteous, very Christian campus…
It would be a challenge for anyone [“Uh we’re pleased to announce we have the final numbers… Let’s see… ’17 women [have] reported 19 sexual or physical assaults involving football players since 2011, including four gang rapes…'”] , but Heath Nielsen is really struggling with it. Maybe it’s something in the Waco water supply, but (paraphrasing Tammy Wynette) sometimes, in Waco, it’s hard to be a man.
A sportswriter was photographing a football player after a game, see.
[The writer] had received permission from a football player to take [the] photograph, and after the picture was taken “Nielsen walked up to [the writer] on the right, grabbed [him] by the throat with his right hand, squeezed and pushed him away from the football player,’ an arrest warrant affidavit … says.
When [the writer] and the player asked Nielsen what the problem was, he replied, “He’s abusing his privileges,” the affidavit said.
To review: This is the guy in charge of managing the team’s public image.