It’s … taxing.

In response to huge gobs of student audience routinely leaving football games early and embarrassing the school with their obvious indifference to the proceedings, USD coach Joe Glenn said, back in 2012:

… [The] legacy of a fan base lies on the shoulders of the students.

“If students get to know their players and learn to cheer them on, then the longevity of the fan base will extend,” Glenn said.

This comment boasts some high-dollar-value words (legacy; longevity) but it’s basically saying what all pathetic, athletics-run universities say to their students: We didn’t admit you to this university for you to be a student. It’s on your shoulders to sit in bleachers for hours, screaming and pulling your hair out at the sight of your football team.

Just get to know them!

So… let’s take a look…

In 2012, even as the coach was insisting USD students get to know their team, no fewer than six football players had an active conspiracy going (teamwork!) to commit big-time tax fraud. They

gather[ed] names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other identifying information, federal authorities said of the scheme, which went on between June 2011 and May 2012. They used the data to file fraudulent tax returns, using addresses that weren’t associated with the identity theft victims so that members of the scheme could retrieve the refunds.

So, with the help of federal authorities, Coach Glenn got his wish. University of South Dakota students have gotten to know their team, gotten to know that a significant part of that team, working together, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is a high level of organized crime for a group of twenty year olds, and, as sentences are handed down, their activity is attracting high levels of national attention…

So now you know the sort of people you’re cheering for, kiddies! Get out there and scream your head off!!

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And spare a cheer for the team’s impressive recruiting staff. These guys found six tax fraudsters! Six identify thieves! Now they need your support as they work night and day to repeat the magic…

That was Washington State University’s athletic director, doing a little damage control in 2012. It’s now 2015, and the school lucky enough to hire Mr “lock [his] fucking pussy ass in a place so dark that the only way he knows he has a dick is to reach down and touch it” Mike Leach to coach its football team now has not a 6.6 million dollar athletic program deficit, but … let’s see… how profitable have they become…

Oh. They’ve now got a thirteen million dollar deficit.

But Bill Moos is still at it, promising the suckers at WSU that if they’ll just sit tight for another two or three years…

Moos said all Pac-12 schools will see significant increases in television money …

Just hold on, dammit! Another couple of years! I swear it’ll be zillions from tv!

Well, a little over a million. Maybe.

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But… wait a minute!

“We expected a sizable deficit as we put our numbers together and then we decided to make it even larger to take care of some things that we felt needed to happen…”

You expected? But you told me back in 2012…

Ben Carson or Dartmouth College, the irony’s getting a little thick around here. Coughcough. UD‘s having trouble breathing.

One quick bit of advice from UD, by the way: In general, avoid the word integrity. People who use the word integrity seem to get themselves slapped down a lot. Find another word. Better yet, try to be honest about who you are and what your local culture is.

Carson’s majorly lifted book included cautionary tales about how important it is to have integrity, the way he has integrity, and how people who have integrity do not, for instance, plagiarize… Dartmouth College, which pretends to believe that people like this are chockablock with integrity, allowed some floating lamblike being from the religion department to offer not only a course designed for athletes about sports ethics (in the direct footsteps of America’s best-known sports ethicist, Jan Boxill) but a course featuring that most perfect of ed-tech devices, the clicker.

The clicker boasts all the advantages of today’s cutting-edge classroom devices:

1. It’s expensive to the student.
2. It’s so easy to cheat with that even students inclined toward honesty will be tempted to use it in that way.
3. It’s dehumanizing.
4. It allows lazy professors to avoid any interaction with students.
5. It has zero educational value.

I know you don’t want me to pile on, but the full name of the course was Sports, Ethics, and Religion. With Dartmouth rapidly becoming the nation’s epicenter of vile fraternities and cheating classrooms, UD recommends that it continue offering these classes as a smokescreen (rather in the way Bernard Madoff put himself on the board of trustees of an orthodox religious institution) but add to their names. Next semester: Sports, Ethics, Religion, and Patriotism. After that, Sports, Ethics, Religion, Patriotism, and … Integrity! Und so weiter.

Put Out More Flags. Put a Bird on It.

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UD thanks Dave.

Which, strictly speaking, I guess is true. What they seem to be doing there – UD‘s just speculating – what they seem to be doing at the University of Alabama for special categories of student – is reviewing footage of their woman-beating…

Maybe, say, they’re comparing the recently admitted Jonathan Taylor’s woman-beating to that of Ray Rice… How does Taylor stand up next to a more seasoned pro?

I’m figuring that only when they’ve completed a comparative review of domestic violence footage (not of football plays, because that would involve athletics in the admissions process) does the admissions committee get down to the hard work of determining which woman-beater most fully meets the academic standards of the University of Alabama.

These proceedings are of course hush-hush. So, as I say, this is pure guesswork.

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There are a few naysayers:

I don’t think handing out athletic scholarships to two-time offenders who have felony assault charges pending qualifies as just giving a kid a second chance.

… but the melody lingers on.

Florida State University will miss its hero! But it’s got a rape-related lawsuit to remember him by.

University Diaries has been tracking this meme for about a year. A guy recounts in lurid detail this lurid sport that – as described – only a moral degenerate would follow, let alone get excited about every week.

[L]ast year was uniquely disastrous for the game. Heisman-winner Jameis Winston’s off-the-field behavior—rape allegations, petty theft, a brief suspension for obscenity—stalked a league already burdened with lawsuits from former athletes … [T]he best running back was suspended for whipping his son with a branch, domestic abuse cases seemed to materialize weekly, and the Ray Rice saga exposed the commissioner to be exactly as dense and cynical as many already feared…

Then the guy comes up with elaborate theories as to why he keeps excitedly watching the game anyway. But, as in this latest article, one really obvious explanation doesn’t occur to the guy. He loves violence, and the more violence the better.

After all, as he himself notes, football is more popular than ever.

He said that academics and athletic success have an inverse relationship.

Yet another American university – this time it’s Temple – is up against the CAB (Cock And Balls) problem.

In response to its president’s decision to build a football stadium, a local writer slowly, painstakingly, in the manner of a kindergarten teacher, explains why it’s total madness…

Temple has nowhere near enough money to compete in the big leagues.

In fact (let’s put this as simply and slowly as we can…): State taxpayers already hugely subsidize the money-hemorrhaging program, and the stadium will add another hundred million of debt.

At best, Temple would play six or seven [poorly attended] home games a year at the new stadium — even if it doubled as a track-and-field site, you’d still end up with a hulking facility (and, probably, parking lots) that go unused the vast majority of the year.

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So how do we account for the president’s absolute conviction a new stadium will be great, great, GREAT?

Well, it’s like answering the question Why does the University of Nevada Las Vegas president think a billion dollar stadium will be equally great?

It seems clear to UD that these men are thinking not with their big head, but with their little head.

UD proposes a clause in the president’s contract mandating, upon a majority vote of the faculty senate, a regime of Depo-Provera.

Now that’s pretty, ain’t it? You can always count on the profit motive to generate people like Jeff here, who explains La Nouvelle Vague for us.

Empty seats in all the student sections? Big deal. Universities don’t care whether people who have anything to do with them go to football games! Especially since students are poor. Not to mention sloppy drunks. Plus, as an economist at Temple University (which will probably build a new stadium although virtually none of its students attend football games) explains:

“[T]oday’s students aren’t coming to games. That’s a problem all over college football. Even at Minnesota, student attendance didn’t increase from when they played at the Metrodome.”

It’s a national trend, see. We’ve been following the trend on this blog for quite some time. But who cares? Why should Temple care? Only the silent invisible corporate guys in the luxury suites produce any real revenue; the whole show’s for them.

I mean, the whole show’s also for tv networks – they set when the games start, how they’re run, etc.

It’s a beautiful synergy, when you think about it. Players who aren’t students perform in front of local businesspeople who aren’t alumni. These two groups also have in common massive subsidies from… uh… from the students who don’t go to the games. And from all the rest of us.

And listen – if the only two audiences that matter are the guys in the upper decks plus the national tv audience, why build a traditional yawning stadium at all? UD proposes introducing what she calls boutique stadia, on the model of boutique hotels: Small, luxurious, extremely expensive, with vastly more amenities which would include an expanded bar, a gym and a spa and … hell… bedrooms.

The savior of FSU endures yet more mocking.

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Lesson for FSU? Gotta keep an eye on the I-could-puke factor. Eventually your university gets so disgusting that you can expect these public outbursts.

Yes. Looked at with a smidgeon of rationality – not to say self-respect – the situation for students at the University of Akron (as at so many universities) is less than optimal. They pay a lot of money every semester in athletics fees. Yet they are not told how much, because the university doesn’t itemize the general student fee number. Ms King up there – a current UA student – would like the school to disclose this information so that she can get a better grip on the strange situation in which she finds herself: She’s a student at a school where interest in athletics is “poor,” but the money she and her fellow students cough up every semester is making the athletics program “rich.”

So lookee here.

UA estimated that $400 of the $428 fee per semester goes for athletics.

Wow. That’s a lot. In fact, UD thinks UA should be honest and rename the UA “student fee” the “athletics fee” because who’s kidding who? Basically the whole thing goes to athletics. You pay close to a thousand dollars a year at UA to support a sports program about which you probably could care less.

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Now in Virginia things have gotten to the point where politicians are stepping in. Their effort to cap student fees will go nowhere, but it’s certainly suggestive that the House majority leader is at least giving the cap idea a try.

“In Virginia, only about 3 percent of college students will play intercollegiate athletics. But mandatory student fees account for, on average, 69 percent of athletic program expenditures,” [Kirk] Cox said. “In other words, we are asking non-athletes and their parents to cover two-thirds of the cost of college sports. In my view, we simply cannot ask students who will never play a minute of college sports to bear such a disproportionate share of the costs associated with these programs.”

I mean, it’s already so classy to subject examination students to camera surveillance…

You might as well also hire coaches who show them how to cheat the surveillance…

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Sure, I hear you. It’s expensive! Plus it’s absurd! The university is spending immense sums of money to install security cameras all over the place, plus it’s spending immense sums of money on athletics personnel who train athletes to cheat the cameras!

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It’s getting so you’ll be able to tick one of three boxes on your annual giving form.

Where would you like your donation to go?

____ the greatest need
____ surveillance cameras
____ cheating the surveillance cameras

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The most sacred phrase in the contemporary university athletics playbook is online independent study. Those three words will make the Lord’s face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you, and grant you peace.

[The fixer] wrote down the player’s online log-in and password, and completed [the player’s course] by himself.

The setup was so simple…

He made some students believe they were completing the classes, handing them packets of practice problems he had picked up from the math lab at his community college and making sure they logged time in study halls as if they had done the work. After they finished the packets, he would toss them in the trash. Then he would log in to BYU’s website to complete the real assignments.

Such compassion! Let the little ones believe they are going to college!

… Virology.

A local newspaper does an end of the year tip of the hat to one-hell-of-a-mess South Carolina State University. Although basically bankrupt – financially, intellectually, and certainly morally – it continues to spend money it doesn’t have on athletics.

I mean, SCSU has no money at all. It’s tens of millions of dollars in debt. It’s on probation. Its board chairman’s on his way to jail, and its chief counsel just got six months’ probation. The state’s going to give it some bail-out money, but it won’t be enough, and students are fleeing in droves.

But the games must go on.

And that’s the kind of decision-making that earns you one of the highest salaries in the state of Mississippi!