[W]hat (the NCAA) did to Jim Boeheim, I think has really been sad, and I think you’re going to see an appeal process by him. What about the millions he’s raised for cancer? I don’t want to hear it. I happen to be a big fan of Jim Boeheim as a human being and as a person.
Many N.C. State fans stopped their “Wolf! Pack!” chant during Syracuse’s starting lineups long enough to strongly boo Boeheim when he was introduced. Others sang the chorus from the Village People’s song “YMCA” during Syracuse’s early possessions as a reference to some of the violations outlined in the NCAA’s report that were connected to a local YMCA.
Another fan held up a sign: “Jim, will play for grades.”
(For earlier posts on what UD calls coacha inconsolata, just put the phrase in my search engine.)
“Shouldn’t we start holding presidents, chancellors and the heads of departments accountable? …. They lay it all on the coach.“
Seven times in 27 hours! An English comp instructor’s dream!
I had to let it happen, I had to win
Couldn’t stay all my life legit
Looking out of the window
Staying out of the fraud
So I chose winning
Running around, trying everything new
The NCAA wouldn’t matter at all
I never expected it to…
Don’t cry for me, Siracusa!
The truth is my contract buyout
Leaves me a rich fucker
So farewell you suckers…
Now that the entirely random (all are called to cheat; few are chosen) Adzillatron of Fortune has swiveled its gigantic screen in the direction of Syracuse University, and now that the nation’s media is riveted to that school (you can’t buy this kind of publicity), it’s time for UD not only to remind you of her way-beyond-legendary column on the subject of professors and big-time sports; it’s also time to put in a word for the ladies.
The guys? Sure, sure, the guys. King Coach, the Coach God, with his massive salary and pep talks about character; the “Vice Chancellor and Athletics Director” (think I’m kidding? when you’re the absolute bottom of the barrel, you better believe you make your AD a chancellor); the president of the university, docile, kittenish BFF of his coachly master… We’ve seen this adorable bumbling crowd so many times…
But without the receptionist in the background of all this high-profile bonding, athletes would never be able to stay eligible. People forget that at schools like Chapel Hill and Syracuse, the entire elaborate system gets sacked and broken like Joe Theismann without those sweethearts over in the corner stamping AAAAAAA all day.
… judge that Syracuse University has misbehaved.
I guess they would know.
Read the hilarious everything plus the kitchen sink list of violations that these two wise men of the university athletics scene perceived within the Syracuse program here.
It would take an Ionescu – or a Molière ? – to capture the absurd convolutions in this NCAA decision, with Hypocrite #1 sternly determining the proper punishment for Hypocrite #2…
But let’s not go there. Let’s instead enjoy some highlights:
Syracuse had a written [drugs] policy; however, the head basketball coach and athletics director admitted they did not follow the policy. The athletics director said the department followed an “unwritten policy” because the written policy was confusing. As a result, basketball students who tested positive on more than one occasion were not withheld from practice and games, as the written policy directed.
One, two. When you can’t count, things get confusing!
These guys could count high – like, up to a million in salary and shit… But the lower end of the scale… (UPDATE: Sorry: Two million.)
Syracuse discovered and self-reported 10 violations in this case, which primarily involved men’s basketball but also football. The self-reported violations, dating back to 2001, include academic misconduct, extra benefits, the failure to follow its drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity. The other violations found included impermissible academic assistance and services, the head basketball coach’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff, and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.
Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?
And it says it all for most other big-time athletics programs.
Sometimes shit happens and the school ethicist has to resign. But most of the time most of the programs look exactly like Syracuse.
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Syracuse/Basketball: The legend continues.
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Okay. One more thing. UD wonders how Syracuse faculty – even students? – feel about the man who earns by far the highest salary on campus also running – for years and years – a program so filthy that even the NCAA had to notice. UD suspects no one cares.
Or worse: It seems to UD that Americans admire slimy winners – Ira Rennert, Donald Trump…
But it’s not just Americans. It seems to be universal. Russians absolutely adore Vladimir Putin.
Syracuse to Jim Boeheim: Kick me again, Master! (“Syracuse loves basketball more than life itself, and Boeheim probably more than basketball…”)
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And there’s more! UD‘s pal Dave sends her this absolutely wonderful description of the way online courses work in the athletics program. As you know, UD has long called online courses the salvation of university athletics programs, especially now with the Independent Study scam on everyone’s radar… And you wanna know why? Read and learn. Learn how Coach Boeheim earns two million dollars every year.
[A]thletics staffers were actively posing as basketball players, logging into their university accounts, and reading and sending emails to professors as if they were the players.
No student! No muss, no fuss!
A Deadspin writer summarizes:
Rather than requiring the players hand his assignment to a tutor, getting it back completed, and turning it into his professor, Orange players could stay out of things altogether and let the tutors just pretend to be them at every step.
And it never occurred to any of those professors all those years… I wonder why not.
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More boys in the band.
West Virginia was placed on two years’ probation for 360 infractions in 14 sports in its speakeasy. For all this, though, exactly one person was punished — an assistant women’s gymnastics coach. Gymnastics! Assistant! Crack down on a women’s sport! Hey, now that’ll get all those assistants in football and basketball to straighten up and fly right.
Not only that, but the director in charge of the Mountaineer speakeasy, Oliver Luck, was himself not implicated. No. Instead, he moved on — are you ready for this? — to the NCAA, where he is now executive vice president of regulatory affairs.
LOL.
… (What’s the third one?) …
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s chatter captures an important truth about corruption and hypocrisy as they play out at some of our highest-profile big-time sports universities. Everyone knows that universities like Auburn and Clemson are corrupt; but Auburn and Clemson are consistently corrupt; they wear the daily mask of honest hypocrisy. They have a modest, becoming, forthcoming, hypocrisy.
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Think of it this way.
“[A] state like Illinois with a high corruption rate makes a better investment than a state with a moderate corruption rate… The reason is that the return for your bribe is more certain in a highly corrupt environment.”
It turns out that a very corrupt state offers its own kind of transparency.
That’s the kind of transparency I’m talking about. Almost all big-time sports universities are highly corrupt, but only some are transparent about it.
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Or think of it this way: Who do you prefer to represent international banking, Lloyd Blankfein or the Reverend Prebendary Stephen Green? Recall Blankfein’s reliable mask as he testified in front of Congress; compare this to the reverend’s chilly refusal to lower himself to discuss his own lowness… his refusal to accept his lowness.
What I’m trying to say is that the truly contemptible universities are those, like Duke and Chapel Hill, who keep flouncing around like Blanche Du Bois, denying that they’re just as whorish as Clemson and Auburn. Duke’s Beloved Leader – like Rev Green – refuses to discuss his program’s latest scandal. UNC doesn’t want to talk about the likelihood that it’s as corrupt on the graduate level as it is on the undergraduate. (UD thanks Ken, a reader, for this link.) But they owe it to us – the American taxpayers subsidizing their luxury boxes full of drunken louts and their departments of exercise sciences doing the Beloved Leader’s bidding – to be transparently corrupt.
… will become more and more common a desperation move.
As you know, UD has predicted that in a few years universities will offer High-Achieving Attender scholarships to applicants who can show (via photographic portfolios, etc.) a superior level of game attendance in high school.
Everybody’s talking about junk bond status Alabama State University’s brand new football coach, a man who makes Billy Gillispie, Bobby Knight, Mike Leach, Mark Mangino, and of course Mike Rice look like milquetoasts.
Alabama State is one of this blog’s stalwarts (put Alabama State University in my search engine) – a school so corrupt and mismanaged, with so farcical a crew of trustees, that the mind boggles. You might argue that it’s really not the sort of school that can afford another scandal – hiring a notorious head case to coach a team that a school with a 24% six year graduation rate shouldn’t be wasting the state’s money on anyway – but you’d be shouted down by all the people who think things are peachy there and that nothing’s more exciting than a brand new coach.
The last coach is suing, of course. But at least ASU’s got the amazing Brian Jenkins.
… via their athletics budgets, we sometimes go outside the realm of the university proper. We go to municipalities like Rapid City, South Dakota, whose mayor helps us understand university presidents who ruin their schools’ budgets by building massive half-empty barely-used football stadiums.
Mayor Kooiker is locked in epic facilities battle with Sioux Falls – just the way ruinous university presidents get themselves locked in facilities battles with rival institutions. A local columnist calls the mayor’s plan to expand the local civic center
a risky gambit for South Dakota’s second-largest city, where concern over losing state high school events to the Denny Sanford Premier Center has spawned a go-for-broke proposal that brings a Wild West audacity to the treatment of public funds.
Building a new arena and refurbishing the existing one within the civic center — creating a multipurpose facility that can be fitted for regulation football and seat as many as 19,000 for concerts — could cost taxpayers as much as $420 million by the time interest on the bonds is paid.
But once you know the deeper motives for the gambit, much becomes clear.
The fear … is that Sioux Falls will lure most major state high school tournaments because it has a state-of-the-art facility, more than double the city population of Rapid City and has consistently produced more revenue than its West River counterpart when hosting events in the past.
That’s a reasonable concern, especially after a South Dakota High School Activities Association survey showed that 52 percent of respondents considered Sioux Falls their first choice for a state tournament site, compared to 15 percent for Rapid City. That was before the Premier Center even opened, meaning the gap could widen.
Kooiker responded by showing up in Pierre to decry recent scrutiny into site selection as a conspiracy to favor the state’s largest city, which was not an original argument but impressive in its inanity nonetheless.
“This is about the closest I’ve seen to an overt effort to simply take all of the tournaments and put them in Sioux Falls,” said the mayor. “I would ask that that not happen.”
Reminded that high school student-athletes were a major part of the survey to gauge their opinion on creating the best possible tournament experience, Kooiker responded that kids “don’t know what they want at that age.”
Once you realize that there’s nothing rational about the gambit, and that the motives are childishness (for Kooiker to insult the “kids” is rich), paranoia, and mindless competitiveness, it’s easier to wrap your mind around the otherwise inexplicable behavior of some university presidents.
… doesn’t even make any money out of being stupid and corrupt. In fact, it’s losing money.
This article quotes representative campus dullards who don’t understand why Auburn’s massive athletics program is currently bleeding over thirteen million dollars.
As with everything Auburn (scroll down), it’s good for a laugh.
Piece of cake. Everyone loves football. I’m sure the money will appear any day now.