The University of Michigan. Like the University of North Carolina, a real university. Not like those other places.

Front page coverage in the New York Times ain’t chopped liver, even if you live in backwater Tallahassee and really personally couldn’t give a shit. There’s your life as a well-paid security guy at endless violent Florida State University official and unofficial events (plus your life as a city cop), and there’s everything else Out There in the land of haughty elites who don’t get football.

But it’s not just the latest front page thing. Last month they did another long front page thing. Hell, back in April they did a big ol’ Sunday Magazine article with a pretty picture and all…

Until a couple days ago, we didn’t stoop so low as to even answer any of this slander, but now word’s gone out that we gotta say or do something.

As the statement in this post’s headline suggests, we haven’t quite worked out what plays we’re gonna call… There’s the conduct an internal investigation play and there’s the do not conduct an internal investigation play and we’re still working that one out amongst ourselves…

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Over at the university seems like they’re also moving away from the stonewalling strategy, since, you know, when the New York Times does a big wee-wee on you, every other news outlet in the country (plus we’re starting to get international coverage) has to whip theirs out too. FSU’s new president, who’s a veteran local politician so you know he can handle it when our ways of doing things down here get unwelcome attention from the elites (His only loss to them so far is when they ganged up on his pet project of establishing a school of chiropractic medicine at FSU.), has sent a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger letter to the FSU community:

Four experienced law enforcement officers were on site and none saw any indication of the driver being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The implication that anyone involved in the accident had anything to do with a burglary is totally unsupported and offensive. Finally, there is no indication of any special treatment of the student-athletes by the officers involved.

Alcohol, drugs, burglary, special treatment… There’s a lot the president had to cover in this letter, and I like the way he tucked it all in to one paragraph down toward the bottom… I also like the way the phrase hit-and-run did not appear in the letter…

I think if we can keep muddying the waters (yes/no to internal investigation) and if FSU can keep the denials coming, we should be able to weather this.

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Only thing I’m worried about: What if the New York Times decides to investigate the courses the guys have been taking?

… as your university’s faculty continues to game the athlete-eligibility system (The Tragic Fates of Petee and Boxill are possibly staying your jockshop’s hand of late), do not worry. Do not waste one sporty moment worrying that a rich enterprising country like yours will be at a loss to fashion new forms of system-gaming in order to keep the quarterback on the field 24/7.

In fact, La Nouvelle Vague is already firmly in place… It’s been there, really, all the time! Like that scene at the end of The Wizard of Oz when Glinda tells Dorothy “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.” Ever since universities discovered online courses, the eligibility problem has been solved. You yourself might have taken one or two of these in college – to pass that pesky statistics requirement without learning statistics, for instance… Some anonymous grad student drudge (or the drudge’s designated-drudge – there’s of course no way to know who’s actually giving and who’s actually taking an online course) cluttered your computer screen with messages for a few weeks, and you (or your friend who knows statistics) wrote back, and then you passed statistics.

Because online courses are profitable (you can enroll zillions of students at a time and pay the drudge or whoever doodoo), most American universities are as we speak enlarging their offerings like mad. No one’s going to notice the athlete-component of this vast enterprise.

Online is in every way a cleaner solution than independent study. There’s absolutely no messy wasteful human interaction with online, whereas under the ancien régime, Julius Nyang’oro had to meet the athletes and frat guys at least once, if only to inform them they’d never see him again. Nor is there, with online, any noticeable record of your having done the humanly impossible – conducted in one semester three traditional classroom courses plus 150 independent studies. (Petee’s downfall came when one of his colleagues for some reason got wind of his teaching schedule and found it… odd enough to report him.) With online, you can have 5,000 students in five classes and no one will look at you twice. Everyone understands that responsibility for online classes at the American university is far too diffuse and complex (tons of people have a hand in any online course: there’s the instructor, the instructor’s assistants, the on-campus tech group, the for-profit company overseeing implementation and management features, university administrators doing various forms of surveillance, etc., etc.) for anyone to understand what’s going on. Online courses have evolved to the point where they run themselves. They’re animated templates, perpetuum mobiles whose first note merely needs to be struck in order for the whole thing to beautifully play itself out.

The perfectly named Mr Thrasher
Thrashed this way and that at a basher.
“Yes, P.J. hit and ran.
But when he left his van
He moved like a hundred-yard dasher!”

… is that the attention of the first-string press (to put this in terms that people at FSU might be able to understand) has now decisively been drawn to all of this nation’s jockshops. The heavy hitters (still trying to keep this comprehensible to the folks down there) of American journalism, the elite squad of long-form writing — they’ve all assumed a very tight huddle right on top of schools like Florida State, and they’re peering intently down at them.

What you have to understand is that backwaters like FSU traditionally get covered only by the local booster wins-and-losses press. If anything having to do with their corruption manages to get published, it’s going to be written up by the local cynical wags as the big ol’ joke corruption is in Florida. Think Carl Hiaasen. That’s the prose model.

But now you’ve got these guys in New York takin a fine-tooth comb to the way we been doin things down these parts for a long time. Take for instance this paragraph in a New York Times article one of UD’s readers, John, just sent her:

The Tallahassee police said officers have discretion in deciding when to press charges and issue citations. They provided The Times with seven other cases in which someone hit a car and left the scene but were not charged with hit and run. A review of those cases, however, found that none was comparable in severity or circumstances to the Oct. 5 crash. Four involved cars bumping into each other in parking lots, one caused no damage at all, and the other two were very minor; in no case did a driver abandon a wrecked vehicle in the middle of the night and flee the scene after totaling someone else’s car. Notably, most of the seven crash reports contained far more narrative detail about what happened than the report on the Oct. 5 accident.

That pesky Oct. 5 accident! Happened to involve some of our Most Valuable Players, sure, and, sure, they fled the scene, but no one was hurt and, you know, they’re just kids. Yes, yes, driving on a suspended license, overdue fees from an earlier speeding ticket, whatever. Who said it’s any of your business?

*********

UPDATE: Don’t wanna say I told you so about ol’ FSU, but a reader sends me the response of the FSU fans to the New York Times article.

Before I tell you what they did, recall the reaction of Penn State fans to the Sandusky scandal. Do you remember? When Penn State finally fired the man who helped make it possible for Jerry Sandusky to do what he did for so long, the fans rioted. As Gawker put it in a headline: Thousands of Students Riot Over Firing of Child Rapist’s Protector.

FSU fans launched a Twitter block. They flagged the article as spam. They made it so you can’t read it.

… are the words of wisdom you need to hear as you seek to understand what has been going on in Morgantown. From her you-are-there perch in WVU’s sociology department, Karen Weiss has written Party School, a first-hand account of what Clifford Geertz might have called “deep play” at America’s colleges. These are excerpts from an interview she gave at Inside Higher Education:

Many residential universities, such as the so-called party schools … have become so well-known for their super-charged party environments that it would be very difficult to change the culture without negatively impacting enrollments that are now dependent upon the lure of this party scene. Moreover, many of the disruptive behaviors that I document in the book (e.g., burning couches, riots) have become “traditions” for both current students and alumni. As such, traditions are very difficult to change.

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[People who live in bad neighborhoods] feel terrorized, they change their routines to avoid certain streets, they don’t leave their homes at night. In many college towns, residents are beginning to experience similar problems (albeit less life-threatening) as a result of a minority of extreme partiers who make life uninhabitable [I think Weiss is conflating two phrases here: life unendurable and neighborhoods uninhabitable.] for their neighbors.

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

While it is easy to see why bar and club owners are reluctant to eliminate drink specials or other promotions – after all, they make their profits from student drinking – it is more difficult to understand why university administrators, police and local town officials have not been more effective in reducing some of the problems caused by the party subculture. In the long run, it really boils down to a rather controversial reality: the party school is itself a business, and alcohol is part of the business model. Schools lure students to attend their schools with the promise of sports, other leisure activities and overall fun. Part of this fun, whether schools like it or not, is drinking. Thus, even as university officials want to keep students safe, they also need to keep their consumers happy. This means letting the alcohol industry do what it does best – sell liquor.

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

That last bit is way important. All prospective university students interested in drinking know where to go – Cal State Chico, UWV, University of Georgia, University of Texas, almost anywhere in Wisconsin – to fit in. It’s like – who doesn’t know that Key West is a better place to drink yourself silly than Salt Lake City? And just as Key West’s business model – the thing it does to attract tourist dollars – involves the provision of alcohol every five steps or so down Duval Street, so central to UWV’s business model – the thing it does to attract applicants – is the provision of alcohol five steps off campus in every direction. Many of its most high-profile traditions (Weiss cites couch burning and rioting) are about alcohol.

You expect eighteen year olds who may have chosen WVU because the joint is gin-soaked not to drink gin once they get there?

You expect UWV to change its business model?

As Weiss points out, it’s not just a business model. It’s a way of life.

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Update: DRC, a reader, updates UD on the student. He has died.

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Don’t forget: The president of West Virginia University is Gordon Gee.

From one scummy sports program to another.

If you’re the University of Louisville, you’re looking desperately for people like Chapel Hill’s Leslie Strohm. The University of Louisville is one of the worst jockshops in America. It must be thrilled that it has wooed Strohm away from Chapel Hill.

Strohm was one of the key players behind a public records battle with the media as reporters attempted to look into a scandal involving student athletes and allegations of academic misconduct. UNC, with Strohm’s legal advice, used the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to deny numerous public records requests at the height of the scandal.

Attorneys for ABC11 and eight other media organizations sued UNC, claiming the university was illegally stifling public records requests stemming from the initial football investigation that led to NCAA sanctions.

Among the records the media was fighting for: un-redacted phone records, player parking tickets, and a full list of tutors including salaries.

ABC11 and other media outlets won the lawsuit, and the records were released.

Okay, she lost that one; but Louisville knows it’s going to have to do some major stonewalling of its own as national attention turns to our sports factories and the way they run.

And Strohm – well, she’s been through baptism by fire. She’s been at Chapel Hill. Time for her to turn her talents to another, uh, troubled university.

Welfare and development at the University of Cincinnati.

Best detail: Their coach is Tommy Tuberville!

But UD loves it when the school’s name is… I don’t know, for example University of the Incarnate Word… So that the headlines couple that name with Coach Accused of Roughing Up Player. The more pious the name, the more hilarious the coaching game…

We follow these on University Diaries. Oh my sport I love it so! I’ll never go! All my life is just despair. But I don’t care. When it takes me in its arms the world is bright. All right! What’s the difference if I say I’ll go away when I know I’ll come back on my knees someday. For whatever my sport is, I am his, forever and ever. Evermore!

Though you should probably wonder about any game in which it is customary to have an ambulance in attendance, the violence is not staying on the field where it is channeled and controlled. Much attention has been focused on two incidents at the high school level: the 2012 sexual assault of a 16 year old in Steubenville, Ohio, and the more recent hazing of younger players in Sayreville, New Jersey.

Following the game at the college level is a little bit like reading a crime blotter. And last year’s Heisman watch took the cake with Jameis Winston and his school, Florida State, the subject of extensive reporting by the New York Times regarding allegations of a rape and the school’s casual attitude toward the victim and her rights. Everything seemed to be subordinated to Florida State’s bid for the national championship.

… In all honesty, I doubt that I will ever be able to wean myself from the game.

One or two university presidents are prone to these. They almost always happen at the very beginning of a president’s tenure – before he or she has been tutored in Right Thought about the football and basketball programs.

Finally a University of North Carolina insider willing to trot out the whole 2+2=5, War is Peace, routine! Anyone can condemn the football and basketball scandal at that school as America’s largest instance yet of the way big-time athletics destroys our universities, and indeed in the past couple of weeks everyone has – in a myriad of opinion pieces – done just that. Lawsuits are flying, alumni are pissed, heads are rolling, etc., etc. It’s Penn State all over again.

Only a few people, under these weighty circumstances, will have the guts to go against the grain.

SOS knew that such people would have to come out of UNC’s business school.

So say hello to Michael Jacobs. Mike, c’mon down! We’re gonna do a close scathe of your prose, because you’ve earned it.

Paragraph #1:

For years we have been hearing about the “athletic” or “academic-athletic” scandal at UNC. Maybe I am missing something, but where was the athletic scandal? Were teams shaving points? Were tennis players intentionally making bad line calls? Were soccer players taking performance-enhancing drugs? Were athletes competing on the field who were academically ineligible?

Establish a peeved, above-it-all, know-it-all tone from the outset and come out swinging. No apologies, no concessions. Your first paragraph should contain no use of the word football or basketball. You are going to concentrate instead on the sports that really matter at UNC, the high-profile revenue tennis and soccer teams.

Paragraph #2:

No doubt, there has been a scandal at UNC. But what happened in Chapel Hill was an academic scandal. This is not just about semantics. How you characterize the problem dictates how you devise the solution.

Jacobs has copied the response to the scandal that the entire leadership of the school attempted before it couldn’t anymore: Nothing to see here sportswise! (Penn State tried exactly the same thing: It wasn’t an athletic or an academic scandal there: It was just this one creepy guy, Sandusky, who showed up on campus occasionally… ) The UNC scandal is simply about bad business practices, and I’m a biz school guy, so I should know. I’m all about getting it done, solving problems, and I’m going to let UNC in on how to get out of this mess because – I’m now going to share one of those impressive b-school insights – ‘How you characterize the problem dictates how you devise the solution.’

This crucial sentence should really be rendered as it appears in its natural PowerPoint presentation habitat:

How You Characterize The Problem DICTATES How You Devise The Solution.

Paragraph #3:

Athletes were not the only ones enrolled in bogus AFAM classes. They might have been the intended primary beneficiary, but the scandal appears to have been germinated and incubated by the academic side of the university. Paper classes were the brainchild of “academicians” in the college of arts and sciences.

The first sentence is correct, and it means not that the scandal therefore was only academic, but that the scandal was endemic to the university as such. That is, it operated throughout all aspects of the institution, including fraternities (frat boys were the other big beneficiaries of the hoax), athletics, administration, and faculty. The second two sentences are incorrect. The scandal was the brainchild of Deborah Crowder in association with coaches, the hilariously titled Academic Counselors, and Julius Nyang’oro. It seems to have enjoyed tacit acceptance everywhere, all the way up to the woman now chancellor at a sports-above-all sister school, University of Kansas.

Note also Jacobs’ penchant for quotation marks. They designate the can-do biz guy’s contempt for the enemy – intellectuality.

Paragraph #4:

The irony is that now a vocal group of UNC faculty members is questioning whether big-time athletics can co-exist with a prominent academic research institution. The corruption of athletics is tainting the pure quest for knowledge, they contend.

SOS says: This is fine. He’s extending his point about stoopid “academicians.” But she would urge Jacobs, on rewriting, to put the words tainting and pure in quotation marks as well. Like this:

The corruption of athletics is “tainting” the “pure” quest for knowledge, they contend.

SOS knows what you’re saying. Put corruption in quotation marks too! But three q.m.’s in one sentence is too many, she contends.

Paragraph #5

The simple answer is yes they can co-exist, as they do at reputable institutions all across the country, if the academicians will run the academic program with integrity.

Here we see the cut through all the bullshit approach of the b-school boys. Simple, pragmatic, nothing fancy, just square your shoulders and get the job done. All you need is the guts, and unfortunately academicians are gutless. Notice that we’re in the fifth paragraph and the words football and basketball have still not appeared. Certainly reputable institutions across the country have been able to run their tennis and soccer programs with integrity. UNC can too, and this is how:

Paragraph #6:

The breakdown at UNC was due to a lack of appropriate controls and accountability systems within the college of arts and sciences. The primary gestation period for this scandal occurred under the watch of a chancellor who was a musician. While universities need scholars in all areas, including music, music is probably not the optimal background to manage a complex $1.5 billion organization.

Cherchez le musicien! You can get some pansy who fiddles while Rome burns, or you can bring in me and the boys to clean up the mess. It’s your choice! It’s your funeral! It’s your Requiem! Your complex organization (suddenly all that stuff about simple has become complex) needs Men, not Mice.

Okay, we’ll skip a bit, as Brother Maynard says.

Here’s the heart of the thing:

Many in the college of arts and sciences squirmed because [the new post-scandal provost] did not come from among their ranks. The fact that he was an expert in organizational control systems and accountability rather than romance languages made some faculty members uneasy. But Chancellor Folt had defined the problem correctly.

It was all those violinists with French poems dancing in their heads who did this to us, who dragged our fine complex institution into the dust! If you want to clean things up, you obviously have to go to the money guys!

Perhaps the scholars in Chapel Hill who are screaming from the mountaintop that we need to purge our research universities of athletics should pause, take a deep breath and internalize an insight from that great scholar Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and they are us.” The best scholars don’t make the best administrators.

Bravo, says SOS. Jacobs has managed to write an entire opinion piece about football and basketball at UNC without ever mentioning either sport. He has also failed to mention the existence of athletic directors and coaches — the people who, as more and more players now attest, ran the scam from on high for twenty years.

I mean, it’s very odd, isn’t it? The fact is that UNC has been following Jacobs’ advice for ages, and that indeed the athletic program was run brilliantly, generating massive profits and wins. So what happened?

What happened is something that the Jacobs model, to its everlasting peril, overlooks. What happened is that one rogue academician squealed. Mary Willingham is what happened, and no university management system, however complexly and pragmatically run, can control for the rare, bizarre emergence of an honest, non-Orwellian person in its midst.

The only way to control for the enemy within is indeed, to use Jacobs’ appropriately Orwellian word, to purge her. So this is how SOS would suggest revising the piece. Add this.

The screaming scholars of Chapel Hill have it exactly backwards: We don’t need to purge our research universities of athletics. We need to purge our athletics of research universities.

Football, basketball. Things are getting desperate.

I thank God I have the opportunity to be here and to work along a Hall of Fame coach like coach Williams.

What the hell. Might work.

… State!

O MAGNUM MYSTERIUM
That thou shouldst attend no class
Yet score naught but A’s!
Alleluia.