From Andrew Sullivan.
Penn State University’s football program has the distinction of having nurtured – well, lionized – a man whose last name has now become shorthand for horror.
From Andrew Sullivan.
Penn State University’s football program has the distinction of having nurtured – well, lionized – a man whose last name has now become shorthand for horror.
A review of The Athletic Trap: How College Sports Corrupted the Academy restates the obvious.
… might as well lie back and enjoy it.
Some on the Florida State University faculty don’t see it that way, however.
Earle Klay, the director of [FSU’s] Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, says the university is better than its reputation. He says the reputation is that it’s a ‘southern football school.’ He says, “A southern football university is a place where it’s dominated by good ole boy politics, not by a primary concern for academic excellence. That’s what we were concerned about, that the process seemed to have been moving in the direction of what you’d expect of good ole boy politics.”
Football is a religion, they say, and its god, these days, is the Godzillatron, the Adzillatron, the Jumbotron… like the deity, this massive high definition video screen with massive advertisements screaming at you from the moment you enter the stadium to the moment you leave, goes by many names…
Ever since 2009, when the University of Texas got the first one in the country, dozens of other American universities have gotten their own monster video display. The one proposed for a new stadium at the University of Nevada Las Vegas will run the entire length of the field.
What’s strange about the massively expensive Adzillatron is that everyone hates it; and indeed many people point to it as contributing in an important way to the emptying out of the university stadium. Where’d everyone go? Why are many students – even at places like the University of Alabama – not going to the games, or going but leaving early? Tons of explanations have been offered, but UD thinks that the phenomenon of the Godzillatron, while only part of the answer, is an illuminating focal point for any discussion of the terrific fiasco for which contemporary American university football is headed. Of course one has to toss into the too-disgusted-to-attend mix all the scandals – criminal, hemorrhagic, sexual, academic – plus all the overpaid coaches and castrated presidents blahblah… But the heart of university football is the stadium experience, and if that experience had been able to retain a shred of authenticity, the fiasco might have been averted.
Here’s what happens at a [Mississippi State] football game these days: 3rd & 7, we’re on defense, tie game, offense calls timeout. [Colubus Ortho Harlem shake, Kiss cam]. Everyone’s attention is drawn to the jumbotron, away from focusing on the task at hand – getting our defense pumped to stop the other team!
I don’t need a bunch of distractions. I’m there to watch a football game.
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[University of] Michigan football fans don’t just love football. They love Michigan football — the history, the traditions, the rituals — the timeless elements that have grown organically over decades. They are attracted to the belief that Michigan football is based on ideals that go beyond the field, do not fade with time, and are passed down to the next generation — the very qualities that separate a game at the Big House from the Super Bowl.
After the 2013 Notre Dame game, [our Athletic Director] said, “You’re a 17-18 year old kid watching the largest crowd in the history of college football with airplanes flying over and Beyonce introducing your halftime show? That’s a pretty powerful message about what Michigan is all about, and that’s our job to send that message.”
Is that really what Michigan is all about? Fly-overs, blaring rock music and Beyonce? Beyonce is to Michigan football what Bo Schembechler is to — well, Beyonce. No, Michigan is all about lifelong fans who’ve been coming together for decades to leave a bit of the modern world behind — and the incessant marketing that comes with it — and share an authentic experience fueled by the passion of the team, the band and the students. That’s it.
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Coach says: Thou shalt have no other Godzillatrons before me. Narcotic simulacral standardized screen gigantism is the heart of the postmodern doctrine being preached… Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled… But keep thine eye upon the Godzillatron which I have given to you and thine lip upon the fruit of the vine which also I have given unto you, and rest in the arms of the Lord forever… And yet in their ornery unpredictable way Americans are beginning to break away from the faith. They seem to be experiencing it as inauthentic. Not the true faith.
Here’s a good formulation of the problem:
This is a typical problem around the country. College demographics are changing and nowhere is that more clear that at the University of Georgia. The student body is approaching 65% women and 35% men. Higher admission standards coupled with more prestigious academic programs result in fewer legacy students. The typical Georgia student doesn’t show up for a basketball game.
The question, then, is how to reverse these trends.
… when it’s all about screens, it’s only a matter of time before the classroom and the stadium disappear. Why go to class if it’s about playing on your computer while some fool at the front of the room plays with PowerPoint? Why go to a football game if it’s about forced, game-long watching of football-field-length mega-screens (the famed Adzillatrons) screaming ads for used cars at you, while you wait for the people who control the home viewer’s television screen to decide those ads are over and play can resume? Why would any rational, self-respecting person continue either of these degrading and pointless activities?
Let’s be more precise. Let’s look at fabled sports school University of Michigan.
This spring, the Michigan athletic department admitted what many had long suspected: Student football ticket sales are down, way down, from about 21,000 in 2012 to a projected 13,000-14,000 this season.
The department has blamed cell phones, high-definition TV and student apathy sweeping the nation. All real problems, to be sure, but they don’t explain how Michigan alienated 40 percent of its students in just two years — and their parents, too.
Forty percent in two years. Wow. Let’s see how they did it!
1. Since the game-day experience is so wonderful, you raise “the price from $195 for six games in 2013 to $295 for seven games.”
2. “Because just about every major college game is televised, ticket holders have to endure about twenty commercial breaks per game, plus halftime. That adds up to more than 30 minutes of TV timeouts — about three times more than the 11 minutes the ball is actually in play.”
3.
While TV is running ads for fans at home, college football stadiums too often give their loyal season-ticket holders not the marching band or — heaven forbid — time to talk to their family and friends, but rock music and, yes, ads! To its credit, Michigan doesn’t show paid advertisements [most other universities do], but the ads it does show — to get fans to host their weddings at the 50-yard line, starting at $6,000, and their corporate receptions in the skyboxes, starting at $9,000 — Michigan fans find just as annoying.
Yes, advertising in the Big House does matter. Americans are bombarded by ads, about 5,000 a day. Michigan Stadium used to be a sanctuary from modern marketing, an urban version of a National Park. Now it’s just another stop on the sales train… Fans are fed up paying steakhouse prices for junk food opponents, while enduring endless promotions. The more college football indulges the TV audience, the more fans paying to sit in those seats feel like suckers.
(By the way, all of this will be okay when the University of Las Vegas builds its new football stadium with the world’s largest Adzillatron. Las Vegas is Suckers Central.)
4. While waiting for the ads to finish so those precious eleven minutes can begin to tick, fans can contemplate the AD’s “$1 million salary, almost three times what [the previous AD] paid himself — and yes, the AD does pay himself — plus [the current AD’s] $300,000 annual bonus, which contributes to a 72-percent increase in administrator compensation; not to mention an 80-percent increase in “marketing, promotions and ticketing”; and a 340-percent increase in “Hosting, Food and Special Events.”
Yet another determined cocksman takes over a university and kills it.
It all started with [Columbus State University] president Tim Mescon’s obsession with the school keeping pace with Kennesaw State, where he worked before coming to Columbus. Specifically, Mescon wanted to bring football and Division I status to Columbus State, just like Kennesaw State has done.
The Great Columbus/Kennesaw Contestation! Watch as one man’s obsession carries him and his school to Victory!
Adding sports did not boost enrollment.
In fact, campus enrollment has declined. Why? Online enrollment has become so popular that many “traditional” students are opting for it.
Online students do not have to pay athletics fees. So while the athletics department expenses have shot up due to adding sports, the revenue to fund them has decreased.
So just cut back on sports, right? That would be the logical answer. But the administration doesn’t want that.
GAAAAAAAH!!! CHARGE!!!!
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Lalalalalalalala.
Student attendance at university football games is plummeting all over. Here’s a local columnist on the University of Michigan.
Hundreds of cable channels and dedicated networks ensure that practically every game is available in HDTV quality. Social media has transformed the game-day experience from a passive activity to one where fans can interact with hundreds or thousands of others in near real time.
Students are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Administrators who believe that winning will solve the student attendance problem are ignoring the cultural shift that’s taking place among the next generation of football fans.
Michigan and other traditional football powers need to offer fans a compelling reason to attend games, or the next renovation at the Big House might be a downsizing.
The cultural problem is that everything about the university football game experience is designed to be attractive to old men. The stadium experience is way retro. You fire up the Oldsmobile and sit in traffic; during the long walk from the parking lot you chew the fat with your golf buddies about the team’s glory days and about what the old guys who run the NCAA are doing wrong; you spend the game disapproving of the behavior of the whippersnappers in the student section and ogling the breasts on the cheerleaders…
As an old guy, you’re good at sitting still for long periods of time, unlike the restless whippersnappers who dance around and then leave the stadium the minute it looks as though the team will lose the game…
Given that students are abandoning university football to the point where soon the only students in attendance will be players or cheerleaders, and the only people in the stands will be horny old guys, UD proposes that universities accept this situation and make it a win/win in the following way:
Create a much larger cheerleading component, made up of the usual busty cohort plus the guys who used to play on the team. Choreograph these students to perform routines that will, uh, be attractive to your fan base.
The new football team, drawn from your university’s women students, will be modeled on what NBC Sports calls “the fastest-growing pro sports league in the nation.”
… for the University of Nevada Las Vegas —
Several resort industry officials on the UNLV stadium authority board balked at the list of taxes suggested to pay for the stadium. Some questioned why tax dollars are being considered at all.
“I don’t support the use of public funds,” said Paul Chakmak, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Boyd Gaming. “The state and the county have fiscal needs. To prioritize a stadium ahead of those seems like it’s not the right place. We all have to be responsible.”
Kim Sinatra, senior vice president and general counsel for Wynn Resorts, said, “A billion dollars is a lot of money. If we want to spend a billion dollars on UNLV, is it a stadium?”
— UD is pleased to see that a true understanding of the logic of the university football stadium is still there, and at the very highest levels:
[The university’s president] tied the stadium project to UNLV’s larger aspiration of becoming a top-tier research university…
Ever wonder what these departments look like? Here’s the one Chase Garnham’s talking about.
There is a required internship for all HOD majors.
UD would be interested in knowing how the football players satisfied this requirement, since Garnham seems to be saying that they barely had time to take HOD classes, let alone do an internship. Similarly, how many of the football players’ HOD classes were online? Independent studies?
… Ellen Staurowsky?”
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Ellen: And you want to know the clincher?
NCAA: NO! NO! NO! NO! … You will not say this!
Ellen: The hell I won’t.
NCAA: I’LL KILL YOU… YOU SATANIC BITCH!
Oh, plus there are lots of regular, non-student, empty seats.
Yes, TCF Stadium, when the University of Minnesota made its case to hit up state taxpayers and students for it, was going to be such a big deal, such a big success…
Since the 50,800-seat stadium opened in 2009, the number of student season-ticket holders has dropped from 10,248 to 4,953 last year.
Oh and we’ve been treated, since the opening of this pathetic hole, to the entire panoply of excuses – no alcohol (they fixed that), the team loses sometimes, heavy traffic, it’s really a commuter school (but TCF Stadium was going to strengthen the campus community!), bad WiFi, competition from tv…
Hey. Did anybody mention all of that while people were discussing whether they wanted to spend everyone’s money on a huge new stadium?
Did anybody talk to any students?
… [W]hen I arrived at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 2005, I didn’t identify myself as a Gopher. I came to study and get my degree, not to frolic in the flamboyance of our college sports teams and most certainly not to fund a $288.5 million TCF Bank Stadium. Yet this was an identity that was forced upon me. It was built into my tuition. It was assumed, because I lived within the University community, that of course I was a Gophers football fan and that I would have no qualms about chipping in for the sake of sport. It is a ridiculous and insulting assumption … We should be fighting for the separation of university life from collegiate sports. … Yes, TCF Bank Stadium has already been built, but we still have time to rethink the future of university sports. The recession affords us the opportunity to look critically at the institutions we have designed, modify them and maybe even start over…
OTOH, that separation she’s talking about is definitely happening. Professional coach, professional players, professional stadium, almost exclusively non-students in the stands… It’s happening!
Hell, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. They do that, and the professional-league coaches, Saban on down, will bolt as their several million dollars a year salaries plummet. Right now, the highest paid public employee in most states is a college coach. That will start to change if you go the Mike Slive route.
… UD will go ahead and make it again. The most corrupt states have, with a few exceptions, the most pathetic public university systems. Here’s the list:
1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. Tennessee
4. Illinois
5. Pennsylvania
6. Alabama
7. Alaska
8. South Dakota
9. Kentucky
10. Florida
Think too of how many of these lucky finalists boast corrupt big-time sports programs, with Penn State lately leading the pack, of course.
But Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida are also University Diaries perennials.