UD has noted it a thousand times: Some special American universities are willing to go the extra mile to recruit people who, sure, might kill their fellow students, but who definitely will win football games. Ordinary universities will typically pass on people like this, but Cal Poly is part of that small elite who will say What the hell.

… over the death of its football program.

The University of Hawaii Athletics Department won’t reveal ticket sales numbers for the upcoming football season, which starts in two weeks.

[A spokesperson said] it was still too early to estimate ticket sales, even though season tickets are sold well in advance.

Rumor has it that we’re talking about a little over 12,000 sold. The stadium seats 50,000.

And if UD were a Catholic (she’s Jewish) she’d be less than thrilled that Our Lady’s been dragged through the mud again and again by the drunks and academic frauds that play under her name.

Of course big-time university football besmirches all schools (one exception might be Brigham Young), but while the lowest of the low, like the University of Miami and Auburn, tend to be refreshingly honest about their total mindless commitment to sports, other schools, like the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Notre Dame, are constantly flouncing around telling everyone about their integrity. Both amply deserve what’s happening, and they certainly won’t learn from it. Both have invested far too much money in one of the dirtiest rackets going.

When it comes to bringing people like Richie to campus, cost is no object.

In a 2006 Washington Law Review Association article, the law professors Robert McCormick and Amy McCormick went so far as to call it “classic propaganda.”

… try switching to this one, featuring a University of Michigan football player beating the shit out of someone who rubbed him the wrong way. It’s great the way everything’s filmed these days. Always new material.

Maybe all cultures do. I don’t know. But I know my culture enshrines its most violent men as heroes even in universities. The hero at the University of Nebraska was and is Richie Incognito. They’re proud to say he chose them and they nurtured him before he went on to his celebrated professional career. Texas A&M, Johnny Manziel. The reigning hero at Florida State University is Jameis Winston.

Icky scary hyped-up babies – the highest-profile, most esteemed, representatives of America’s universities.

But here’s what I love about my country. (I love many things about my country. Here’s one in particular.) It knows it’s ridiculous, and if you push the deification-of-shits thing a little too far, the country will push back.

The idiots at FSU so worship their icks that they don’t understand this. They don’t understand that you need to keep the icky reality of the icks blurry so that America doesn’t have to look at them directly. If you decide to fashion a huge social media campaign around unmediated ick-deification… If you actually solicit questions the American people are panting to ask their baby buddhas about life…

A Florida State social media campaign turned ugly Sunday when the university’s athletic department opened its Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback to nationwide mockery.

The department attempted to engage fans on Twitter by soliciting questions to be used for a video on the team website.

The hashtag “#AskJameis” became a trending topic on Twitter for a time Sunday — for all the wrong reasons.

… The tweets covered a wide range from witty to malicious. Most were aimed at Winston, but others questioned why the university would risk this type of response.

One post read: “Do you know that you have to Buy One to get One Free at Publix [Super Markets]?”

Another read: “Who gave you better protection last year — your offensive line or the TPD?”

TPD is shorthand for the Tallahassee Police Department.

Oh Jameis King of the Library Tell Us! Shed Upon Us Thy Everlasting Light!

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So here’s a helpful hint to the FSU public relations people for next time.

Remember Bagehot on the British royalty.

A secret prerogative is an anomaly — perhaps the greatest of anomalies. That secrecy is, however, essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it. When there is a select committee on the Queen, the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.

The secret to maintaining the American university’s royalty is this subtle work of obfuscation. Would you ask Queen Elizabeth to take part in a Twitter campaign? The more you poke Winston the less he will be reverenced. Do not let daylight in upon him.

(Remember: If our reporters had followed this no-poking policy, Americans would be free to continue worshipping Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods. Keep it blurry.)

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Now that the NCAA’s in deep shit, brace yourself for long strings of cliches. Even from the New York Times.

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UD thanks Dirk.

Colorado State, one of America’s more markedly delusional, testosterone-run universities, has just said goodbye to its slightly too-delusional athletic director, Jack Graham.

To be sure, everyone in charge there – trustees, high-level administrators – appears to share the whacked-out, Blanche DuBois personality I’ve isolated so often on this blog when talking about schools like University of Nevada Las Vegas (panting to build a $900 million stadium) and Colorado State. Like Blanche, they have much less money than they need to live the grand life they fantasize for themselves; but – again like Blanche – this in no way stops them from traipsing around telling everyone that they’re rich and grand.

CSU, for instance, insisted its rich gentleman callers (to allude to a different Tennessee Williams play) would give it mucho millions toward the big ol’ football stadium it was gonna build. Indeed, just the other day the soon-to-be-erstwhile CSU AD – Graham, that is – announced to a gathering that fund-raising was going swell, swell! But then right after that

CSU’s vice president for advancement Brett Anderson told the Coloradoan a day later that only $24.2 million had been raised as of June 30…

Bummer! Blanche DuCSU sits around in her gauzy duds waiting for gentleman callers to cough up $110 million… She has always depended on the kindness of strangers… And then… the pathos of no one showing up…

On the other hand, Graham is a university coach, so his exit will be a little more secure than Blanche’s:

[CSU] still [has] to pay his annual $260,000 salary in monthly installments through November 2016…

For, you know, doing nothing… Standard operating procedure, and one of many reasons why big-time sports are such a boon to the American university…

But anyway. When the Lord closes a Blanche window, he always opens a new Blanche door.

Tyler Shannon, who represents the pro-stadium group Be Bold group on the advisory committee … says donors have committed quite a bit more money to the stadium than the $24.2 million that’s already in the bank.

It’s all still hush-hush, mind you! We can’t let the information out yet! But there’s a LOT more money where that came from, believe me!!

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Local commentary sees the same DuBois pathos in play:

Please. Fort Collins is an affluent community. Just say it like it is. [CSU’s president] finally figured out that CSU completely botched selling the community on the project, and anti-stadium proponents effectively derailed the project. [CSU’s president] finally became uncomfortable, which was not unreasonable. Making music with Graham wasn’t working, and [the president] decided to save [his] reputation and let Jack go because Jack wasn’t giving up his dream.

Presumably CSU’s president has been peeing himself over the idea that the now-gone AD (a multimillionaire) was another Phil Knight (a billionaire). That Graham would, uh, ride in like a Knight in shining armor? … to put the few extra cents needed for the stadium into the piggy bank… ?

Sad, sad. Butterfly net time.

A former president of notorious Florida A&M gives a talk in which he mentions nothing about the academic mission of the university (at least the reporter reports nothing), and in which he simply commands people to be positive about the place.

“We can’t have naysayer[s]; people who doubt and let the doubt overcome them in terms of what they are willing to do. …This year, we need to all get behind Florida A&M and don’t accept negative viewpoints about the university.”

But, you know, why? Why shouldn’t people be free to act on their ethical judgement and do what they’ve been doing since the violently hazing marching band beat one of its members to death not long ago? Why shouldn’t people stop coming to football games where the band plays, and stop giving money to the university? The university conducted itself hideously through the hazing scandal, basically blaming his death on the student himself.

And this is the aspect of the school’s culture – athletics and the marching band – that the speaker wants to make the top priority.

Florida A&M could begin to put a dent into its nagging athletic budget deficit in a short time if the Marching 100 band and the football program are given top priority, Frederick Humphries said Friday at the 220 Quarterback Club’s luncheon…

“The best indicators for black colleges; two things give the greatest visibility that they have,” he said. “It’s the athletic program and the marching band.

“If you were to put it in priority where you should spend some money; you keep your athletic program strong and keep your marching band strong.”

Yes, athletics – that’s the ticket.

At the University of Oregon, presidents come and go (“for the third time since 2009, the state needs a new president for what University of Oregon supporters insistently refer to as the state’s flagship institution”) but Phil Knight goes on and on.

Forbes:

Athletics have been an ongoing point of contention at [the University of] Oregon. The Chronicle [of Higher Ed] notes that the faculty has long felt that the athletic spotlight has overshadowed the university’s academic mission… [Nike] money has allowed the athletic department to become financially independent from the university, which has led to questions of accountability. [Campus football] scandals only support the claim that there is none. Further, while athletics have had all the focus in the past few years, the academics have suffered.

Oregon has fallen in our ranking of America’s Top Colleges for the second time in a row (210th in 2012; 217th in 2013; and 236th in 2014).

… We wish Scott Coltrane, the university’s provost and now-interim president, the best of luck, and hope that he refocuses the school on academic success. What better time to do that than while the football team is on probation?

Your cartel days are numbered.

America’s dumbest state dumps the dome on its flagship university’s sooooooooper dooooooper fuuuuuuuuture stadium, and UD is disappointed. Où sont les $900 million 55,000 seats d’antan?

The University of Nevada Las Vegas is talking about shrinking the mofo too! This place was going to be huge, and its Adzillatron was going to extend the entire length of the stadium!

Remember this picture?

Well, forget it. Everything’s going to be smaller. Plus, to get a more accurate sense of the place, take all the people out of the shot.

At UNLV’s state of the athletic department address and free lunch held last week at Buca di Beppo near campus, the Rebels’ new sports marketing guy said football season-ticket sales were at 84 percent of last year’s total. Which at first sounded promising. Until somebody said UNLV sold only 3,890 season tickets last year... [W]hen it comes to revenue streams, which is what the UNLV football team must generate to become self-sufficient, just how much is 84 percent of 3,890 season tickets sold anyway?

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Meanwhile, there’s another tragedy in the making at Colorado State University. Their stadium was going to cost a pittance compared to UNLV’s – only $226.5 million – and they were real sure they could drum up a lot of that via all those football fans out there in Fort Collins, so…

Two years after CSU announced efforts to raise private money to build the stadium, fundraising totals do not look promising. Officials acknowledged in July that the university has raised just $24.2 million as of June 30 for the stadium, less than a quarter of the amount that CSU President Tony Frank has sought to raise by this October.

Wha’ happened?

30,000? In these fans-disappearing-from-university-stadiums days, there’s a lot of numbers massaging going on… Let’s check another source on how many San Diego State people show up to watch their football team play.

… SDSU’s official attendance isn’t what TV audiences see… SDSU counts total tickets issued instead of turnstiles turned. … 61,619 fewer fans attended in 2013, or an average of only 22,954 per game.

So SDSU desperately pours more and more public money into its football program in an effort to … what? It’s already a perfectly respectable team with an okay record of wins.

San Diego State football kicks this month, poised to push its bowl streak to five. USA Today ranks SDSU at No. 58, Lindy’s Sports picks the Aztecs as West Division champs in the Mountain West, and sophomore running back Donnel Pumphrey is a player to watch for the nation’s top running back award.

One popular idea is to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a small on-campus stadium. Small enough so that 15,000 or so in attendance doesn’t make it look empty.