May 28th, 2015
It was only a matter of time before someone noticed parallels between FIFA and …

… the NCAA.

May 28th, 2015
Blatter pressure…

… due to mercenary incontinence.

May 28th, 2015
As is almost always the case in such matters, it’s not so much the spectacular vileness of the person…

… but the ridicule to which he is subjected that does him in.

May 28th, 2015
“Not sure this is what Havelange, Blatter and all had in mind when crusading for more US interest in football.”

The Clinic, a Chilean satirical magazine … ran popular internet memes on its website showing photoshopped images of Blatter in jail, Fifa as a mafia organisation, Maradona giving it the finger and the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, describing Fifa as a “manga de viejos hijos de puta” (a bunch of old bastards).

This came closer to capturing the mood on the streets, in stadiums and on social networks, where chatter was more of the nature of “At last!” and “The bastards had it coming!”

On Twitter, the Brazilian commentator Xico Sá called for a minute of noise at Thursday’s football matches to celebrate the arrests.

This is fun.

I hope Blatter has his Ceaucescu moment in public. Like Ceaucescu.

May 28th, 2015
Yodelayheeracketeering

One Swiss lawmaker calling for [Swiss non-profit laws] reform has noted contemptuously that that a multibillion-dollar global organization like FIFA “still has the same status as a Swiss mountain village yodeling association.”

May 28th, 2015
Those who…

… sell their universities to corporations run serious risks.

May 27th, 2015
FIFA: Lacking Blatter Control

Oh dear, what can the matter be?
Oh dear, where can Sepp Blatter flee?
Oh dear, Qatar is up a tree,
FIFA has had quite a scare.

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

Old World and New, folks – Old World and New. Two notorious all-male criminal syndicates gather for their respective high-level organizational meetings. The American group chooses as its venue a tits and ass sports bar overlooking a parking lot in a shopping mall in Waco Texas. The Euros choose a five-star Swiss hotel with views of Lake Zurich and the Alps. The Americans resolve their differences with each other and with the police outside the venue by shooting wildly. The Euros go quietly.

Yes, when it comes to class, the old country still has us beat.

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

In 2011, Emory University was touting the achievements of Aaron Davidson, 93C. Aaron is currently awaiting charges on – let’s see – bribery, bribery, bribery, bribery, and bribery.

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

When you control the most popular product of the most popular sport on earth, you can do [anything]. Neither the shady awarding of World Cups nor the thousands of slaves that will die in Qatar building World Cup stadiums has made a serious dent in FIFA’s power. One can only hope this will.

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

International soccer has a notorious reputation for corruption and intrigue, one that contrasts sharply with its squeaky-clean image in America. For millions here, the sport represents an antidote to the cynical, alienating gloss of the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Don’t buy it.

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

The “sheet” play.

May 24th, 2015
With fire power like this, no wonder Rutgers is willing to bankrupt itself for its football team!

Talk about a receiver who gives as well as he gets! Bravo, Rutgers. Your money is well-spent.

May 24th, 2015
“[The University of] Nebraska’s moving in on a record the NCAA doesn’t recognize: Number of murderers produced by a football program. Right now, it’s only one, but it’s trending three.”

Of course it’s not just murderers; for decades, Nebraska has produced manifold themes and variations on Richie Incognito.

What UD finds especially amazing is that whatever you do, the University of Nebraska will continue to celebrate you on its webpages. Look up anyone: Incognito, Povendo, Phillips, Thunder Collins… They’re all still there, worshipped as gods on the Huskers site.

With the Waco biker shootout on everyone’s mind, Nick Povendo’s a particularly interesting Nebraska product. He was actually Incognito’s backup on the University of Nebraska team! But he has now surpassed him. Povendo graduated to criminal biker gang stuff – the same stuff that shot up Waco. He’ll be on trial for murder soon.

UD asks: Why isn’t everyone talking about the University of Nebraska football team? Why aren’t we having a national discussion about what’s wrong with the state of Nebraska?

May 19th, 2015
“I think overall it’s good for business, I really do. It’s those little instances you have that make the weekend look bad.”

Ah, America. The head of the Myrtle Beach Merchants Association, gearing up for this year’s Memorial Day crowd, touches delicately on last year, when “three people died and seven were injured in eight shootings.” … And still those little things remain…

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

Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. The Spinnaker Club in Panama City Beach. These places, and whatever place this year’s melees in Myrtle Beach will choose, are emerging as icons of a peculiar form of capitalism — the form you get when you combine a society of the spectacle with guns and a totally unhinged profit motive.

It’s odd. The rhetoric of these massive motorcycle rallies is one of personal freedom, yet the events instantly turn their locales into police states. Read the details of the security presence and restriction of movement in Myrtle Beach.

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

People are starting to notice the same thing at university football games. Because the drunken crowd is so nasty, everyone’s under heavy surveillance.

May 17th, 2015
Hm. Let’s see if we can follow this latest dispatch…

… from America’s colleges. It’s a little complicated, because it involves a football team/fraternity synergy… But okay. Let’s go.

A fraternity at Cal Poly has been suspended because the frat is a cover for a drug dealing operation. Nothing new there. More than a few frats have figured out that they’re supremely – UD would even say unbeatably – well-situated as far as the drug trade goes. Recall the federal raid of a bunch of San Diego State fraternities/drug houses. The raid netted guns along with drugs. These boys don’t fool around.

This latest thing, the thing at Cal Poly, also involved guns as well as drugs. Here’s the rather complicated first paragraph of an article about it:

Cal Poly has suspended the fraternity targeted in an attempted armed robbery last summer for violating student conduct policies, after the university determined chapter members knew illegal drugs were sold at the house and failed to take action.

See, what blew the cover of this frat’s operation was the school’s football team. A group of players wanted drugs, and they knew where the campus drug market was, and, well, something went wrong.

The Delta Sigma Phi house at 244 California Blvd. was the target of an attempted robbery on Aug. 10 allegedly committed by a group of Cal Poly football players believed to be looking for drugs.

I guess the football players didn’t want to buy the drugs; they didn’t seem to understand that the frat is a drug market, not a free drug distribution center.

So. To recap: You’ve got university football players committing armed robbery for drugs against a university fraternity.

Cal Poly: Keepin’ it all in-house!

May 8th, 2015
“It is not in any team’s competitive or financial interests to care too much about the criminal backgrounds of men who are good at the sport, aside from avoiding negative coverage.”

And I’m not too sure they care much about negative coverage.

May 8th, 2015
When UD wrote “The Faculty Bench,” back in 2006…

… she pointed out that one of many reasons professors don’t fuck with their universities’ often fucked up athletics programs has to do with simple abuse. Criticize campus sports and every yahoo from the chair of the board of trustees to the local wino who doesn’t go to games but joins fellow drunks to trash the town during tailgates is going to come after you. You’re going to be called names six ways to Sunday.

Few people want to spend their lives dealing with dicks. So few people squawk about sports.

But over the years this blog has accumulated a pantheon of professors, a handful of heroes, who have been willing to stand up to the abuse. (Some of them are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Mark Killingsworth, an econ professor at Rutgers, is one of these. As that absurd school sports itself to death, Killingsworth hammers away at the obvious point that it ain’t got no moolah. “I have to assume that so far the plan [to expand athletics] is to keep [the] status quo, to keep taking money out of academics,” says he, and ain’t it the truth. But no one else in the state of New Jersey (with the exception of Killingsworth’s father-god, William Dowling) cares, and indeed if you go by most of the comments on all the articles about Killingsworth in the local press it’s pretty clear that many people in New Jersey think poorly of Killingsworth.

Moral: Think twice before getting between a boy and his concussion.

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

Update:

Rutgers is an enormous public institution, with an annual budget of $3.6 billion. It is responsible for educating 65,000 students. Why isn’t that more important that competing in the Big Ten?

May 7th, 2015
“FAMU athletics is in a good place. It’s growing in a good place.”

Just how good?

FAMU fans want to know when the football and basketball teams will be eligible for postseason play again. [Both are currently under academic sanction.] They want to see how [the coach will] tackle a budget millions of dollars in the red. Above all, they want to know if the athletic department is moving in the right direction after eight years with six different people … at the helm.

May 7th, 2015
“Jones is the fifth Alabama football player to be arrested in 2015.”

And it’s only May.

This sort of team record doesn’t come cheap. Nick Saban’s currently at seven million a year.

A football coach whose salary is the talk of the town.

A team whose arrest record is also the talk of the town.

Bama!! Life of the mind, Bama!!!

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
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Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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