… that will almost certainly hurt its sports recruiting.

Iowa freshman basketball player Peter Jok was arrested early Saturday for drunken driving, according to police reports.

Jok, 20, was arrested on a black 2013 moped …

Something’s terribly wrong at Iowa. Jok was supposed to have been arrested driving a 2014 Chevy Tahoe. If word gets around that local dealers aren’t feeding SUVs to recruits, look out.

In Athens, the Olympic Ideal is not just for the Olympics. Scenes from the Greek Cup final:

[The game was] halted when a firecracker was thrown onto the pitch.

Before the match Panathinaikos supporters threw broken plastic seats at riot police on the pitch and flares, firecrackers and other objects were thrown between supporters.

Police used tear gas to bring order and the presidents of both clubs, Giannis Alafouzos of Panathinaikos and Ivan Savvidis of PAOK, pleaded to fans from the stadium’s loudspeakers for calm.

Outside the stadium a police car was destroyed by a firebomb thrown by a motorbike rider.

One coach carrying PAOK supporters was attacked with rocks by Panathinaikos fans causing minor damage to the vehicle.

A large section of Athens Olympic Stadium was left empty to separate the two groups of supporters while a police helicopter kept a watch from above.

… Police … arrested the two owners of a PAOK supporters’ clubhouse in the centre of Athens after confiscating fireworks, iron bars, bottles filled with petrol, knives and baseball bats.

Some 4,000 police officers were deployed to keep the peace in the Greek capital for the match.

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

And as for the Platonic Academy:

Photini Tomai, a Wilson Center favorite, and Director of the Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is running for the European Parliament. Her background:

Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos appointed her as the country’s special envoy for Holocaust issues, a decision that withdrawn that June after 40 historians and other figures petitioned the minister over their concerns at the “unethical way” Tomai has run the ministry’s archives.

They said access to the archives involved “a very complicated and lengthy process in which the head of the archive takes part herself, and sometimes intrusively”. They also claimed that the “30-year rule” is not applied in many cases, meaning files from the 1950s remain inaccessible. Nevertheless, Tomai publishes extracts from files otherwise out of bounds to researchers in her Sunday newspaper articles.

“In a time when dozens of civil servants are suspended without judicial or disciplinary convictions, we, the undersigned, believe that if Ms Tomai remains the head of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially after her conviction, it will raise major issues in academic ethics and in equal treatment. For the same reason we believe that Ms Tomai could not represent Greece in international organisations, conferences and meetings, jeopardising the prestige of our country.”

But that’s not all, folks!

In an October 2013 appeal court decision that has only recently been published, Photini Tomai, director of the foreign ministry’s archive, was told again that she must pay €20,000 in compensation to two authors after she published a children’s book that they wrote under her own name.

The decision confirmed an earlier ruling by Athens first instance court that Tomai was guilty of copyright infringement. That court ruled that a book entitled 1,2,3 … 11 True Olympian Stories, … was the work of screenwriter Eleni Kefalopoulou and her husband, film director Aris Fotiadis.

The couple told the court that, ahead of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, they came up with an idea to make an animated series on ancient Greek Olympians and sent a script to the national broadcaster ERT and a number of private companies. On the recommendation of friends, they also sent a copy to Tomai, in her position as head of the foreign ministry’s archives.

The authors received no offers and animation was never made. But in 2008, they noticed 1,2,3 … 11 True Olympian Stories in a bookstore and immediately recognised the characters in it as ones they had created. In many instances, they saw that text had been copied verbatim and the court agreed.

Oho no you don’t. If you think the president of the University of New Mexico – one of the scummiest sports schools in the nation (put the last name of its last president – Schmidly – in my search engine) – is going to let you vote on the athletics fee, you’re nuts. He knows you’ll vote against it, and that is not the outcome he and the trustees want. So shut your traps and let the president and his buddies have their money-losing fun. It’s your money, after all; not theirs.

Yes, sports is the university’s front porch, as we’re constantly told by the rascals who run football and basketball on campus; but … well, you know the rhyme:

When she was good,
She was very very good;
But when she was bad
She was horrid.

Looked at with any objectivity at all, of course, big-time university sports is horrid (intellectually and financially corrupting; crime- and riot-generating, university-bankrupting) even when it’s very very good — indeed, big-time university sports generally only gets to be very good (winning championships and tv deals) when it’s very very busy with recruiting scandals, buying out coaches at huge expense, hushing up team crimes, blahblahblah, you know the list. But the actual squalid vileness of the enterprise is usually managed. A dustup here, a dustup there, but the basic look of campus football and basketball is tidy, most of the malfeasance hidden.

The NCAA and the Knight Commission have big yearly meetings during which in a corporate pointless way they natter about the challenges and the issues facing the student-athlete as he aces calculus and kicks field goals during the same afternoon. These two entities – the NCAA and the Knight Commission – play a crucial role in keeping the actual nature of the university athletics endeavor hidden. They both look respectable; both bring knitted brows to the challenges and issues and prospects and promises of the grand endeavor. I think most people realize that these people are entirely empty suits – empty excellent suits – but no one cares. People care about the games, not the brow knitters whose job it is to make the system behind the games look legitimate.

So that’s when it’s good. When it’s good, it’s very very good, with tailgating and car tipping and bonfires and all; but when things go badly, they go really really really badly. Big-time sports is the front porch that keeps on giving, the big ol’ central spotlighted star of your campus, the only thing most people know or will know about your campus. So when one of your coaches fucks little kids in on-campus showers, the whole world gets to see that front porch; and when one of your professors – the highly compensated chair of a department – is running a fake courses racket for the teams, the whole world gets to see that front porch too.

That’s when we get to watch the sport of denialism. We get to watch Penn State trustees say it’s all a government conspiracy. We get to watch the University of North Carolina say it’s only that bitch Willingham plus that bastard Kane.

Children don’t like it when you take away their toys. It makes them very angry and vindictive. They like it even less when you punish them for their misdeeds. When they are bad, they are horrid.

… Give it some money… And watch its president ignore the overwhelming sentiment of its student body and give that money to athletics.

Eastern Kentucky University is in this neighborhood (the article I’m linking to is absolutely terrific, by the way). Its schools need to spend scarce funds on training and education, but the president of EKU wants to spend them on football. EKU students know the president is full of shit.

While the fee has yet to be approved by the Regents the student body continues to debate the hike, most recently represented by a survey. In this survey distributed by the Student Government Association, students overwhelmingly did not support fees for athletics. In fact, more students participated in said survey than voted in the most recent SGA election, showing just how much students care about this issue.

But no! says the president (who, with the board of trustees, will ram this down the students’ throats anyway). Our students can easily spend an extra four hundred dollars tuition on football! I mean look at Western Kentucky! They charge more than that!

Ah, Western Kentucky. One of our favorite subjects here at University Diaries. Feast your eyes.

Yeah – we want what Western Kentucky’s got! If our students are so stupid as to think we should spend that money on their education, they’ll just have to suck it up. After all, says the prez, consider the arguments for soaking our poor students for football:

“I don’t think we can afford to stand still — that’s my concern,” Benson said. “This may be our window of opportunity, and if it closes on us we may have forgone an opportunity that may not come around again.”

Touchdown!

… Funds to begin to make sense of a scandal like Sul Ross University. A terrible school with a graduation rate approaching zero, a school only lately on probation, Sul Ross naturally is all about athletics.

Back in November the entire football coaching staff was fired. Then the president of the university resigned days later.

There’s no there there, at Sul Ross, which opens the door to local bullies and boosters and hangers-on. No one’s saying exactly what happened (maybe everyone on campus is too addled to know), but the local press suggests the latest Sul Ross administration ran away because

There were claims that coaches were physically and verbally abusing players, that athletes were being bribed to incriminate coaches, and that coeds were being pushed to have sex with recruits.

Yadda yadda. Bottom line: When there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go, boys will get up to trouble. And Sul Ross is all about boys.

It’s odd to UD that Sul Ross is about anything. I mean, anything you and I have to pay for.

The [Jameis] Winston revelations are one more reminder of just how far universities and their apologists are willing to go to protect the multibillion-dollar enterprise that we call “college sports.”

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

Well, you know, we get these little eruptions; sometimes, as in the Florida State scandal, the New York Times gets involved and things seem to make slighter larger eruptions.

But keep this in mind. University athletes accused of rape, university athletes found guilty of rape — these events are a dime a dozen. (University athletes accused of beating the shit out of people are a penny a dozen.) During the life of this blog, UD has covered dozens and dozens of them. Sometimes schools like the University of Montana produce so many stories of this sort that they – and the one-watering-hole-per-square-inch towns that harbor them – begin to get a reputation. Enrollment suffers because parents don’t want their daughters living in a rape town. But overwhelmingly – as the NYT reports – these things go absolutely nowhere.

Wanna know why? Okay, here’s the list.

1. No one cares. People care about their team. They like their team’s aggressive players, and… you know… hard to keep all of that shit on the field. Too bad.

2. Billions of dollars are on the table.

3. It’s just girls getting hurt. Or – in the Sandusky case – underprivileged young men. Who cares.

Not only will things go nowhere. You can already see the rehabilitation of Paterno’s Penn State moving along nicely, with much of Happy Valley galvanized at the prospect of The Statue going up again… and at the much-discussed prospect of another statue of Paterno being commissioned for another high-profile place at Penn State.

Yes, this is what that university is all about lately. The important thing at Penn State is tons of people getting to work packing the board of trustees with true Penn Staters like Al Lord. (Note that Lord’s campaign page features not a picture of the candidate, but a picture of God himself, halo’ed in white.) Lord might well win a place on the Penn State board of trustees.

So before that happens, you want to understand the culture? Read and learn. Here’s Al’s position statement, with UD‘s commentary in parenthesis. (UD thanks an anonymous Penn State person for sending this to her.)

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

“I walked onto the Ogontz (now Abington) Campus mid-December, 1963. Since, I have felt an outsized, almost inexplicable affection for Penn State. [Almost inexplicable. The guy’s a hell of a writer – the sort who shoots himself in the foot, making the reader giggle.] Though a very average student I always have felt fortunate to possess a Penn State degree. [Try to puzzle out the logic of this statement. It might make sense to say Because I was an average student I feel fortunate… But Though?]

Penn State’s relentless evolution from just a state university to America’s best [Relentless. This is the macho sports guy talking – everything that happens has to be a heroic struggle, high drama. And did you know Penn State was the best university in America? Mere months after having hosted the nation’s most sordid university scandal?] has been a fifty year source of pride. Better than others, Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno created the healthy alliance of academics and athletics. [Okay, the guy’s got balls. The name Spanier and the word healthy in the same sentence. Okay.] Penn State wins national championships in several sports and graduates America’s best prepared students. [Penn State students are certainly prepared to talk in great detail about what goes on during man on boy shower action. They have learned all about that.] Both academics and athletics well—that is our Penn State. [Word missing before “well”?] Our Trustees and Louis Freeh see a different Penn State. [Capitalizing Trustees is strange.]

I seek a seat on the PSU Board of Trustees because I can no longer watch the willful, cowardly destruction of our Penn State. [This is the way Donald Trump writes and talks. This is a Trump guy. Rich hothead with a surfeit of self-regard, and knows – like Trump – that he knows everything and we know nothing.] Our Boardroom splits between pride and shame; yet still none know the facts. [Again – can you figure the logic of this last sentence?] “Freeh’s facts” are incomplete, selective, and largely unconvincing. [Quotation marks around “Freeh’s facts.” What does he mean by them? That these facts only appear to be facts? That Lord spits on so-called Freeh’s so-called facts? As with Trump, the character-age, if you will, of this writer is around fourteen.] Freeh’s report destroyed our past; left unchallenged it will diminish the future. [Again note the high-heroic tone, the would-be Lincolnesque rhetoric which comes off as bragging clueless nothingness.]

… Father of two grandfather of six. Wife of 48 years, Suzanne, received her Penn State PHT (Putting Hubby Through) in 1967. [UD finds this nod to the wife’s PHT degree particularly winning.] … ”

… Northern Kentucky University’s much-beloved athletic director, Scott Eaton. Ooh la la. Well, we already knew Scott was a bit of a rascal…a massively overpaid rascal… but … heck… you know, what AD isn’t? … But even with all the acclaim and money the desperate, pathetic, sports fans at would-be jock school NKU (jock school is pathetic enough; can there be anything more pathetic than would-be jock school?) threw at Eaton… w-a-all… lessee… (UD scratches her overalls in private places) seems like it jest wernt enuf. Hyuk! He done stole ’bout $350,000 and is going to jail for ten years. And people is kinda confused.

Many will wonder how Eaton could’ve gotten away with his theft for six full years, and had the former employee not come forward, it could’ve been even longer.

Jail will be especially challenging for Eaton, given his, er, needs.

An internal investigation determined that Eaton had “intimate, inappropriate relationships” with four university employees, including two he supervised, and a similar relationship with a student in a class he taught.

Hyuk. Is zat five? And that don’t count, you figure, all the rest which is too embarrassed to come forward.

Enjoy this photo from happier days. Read the chart behind him. And weep for schools like NKU, epicenters of the dumbest shit the American university has to offer.

Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, is on the case. Turns out it’s hard to reconcile outrageously rewarded brutality with civility.

Of course most sports aren’t like football. Hockey is; but most sports don’t demand absolutely insane intensities of aggression. Football does, and that’s why Nebraska and Oregon got to enjoy local heroes like Richie Incognito.

But – bottom line:

“More and more people have learned about the private lives of athletes, and they’re not surprised by these things. As athletes get in trouble and show questionable judgment, fans just become numb to it all. And they’re far more concerned about how it will affect their team’s play.”

… the scummiest university in America. It isn’t there yet – there’s a good deal of competition from states like Hawaii and Alaska – but UD would be very pleased to see a winner from the mainland for a change, and ASU, as of now, is definitely the front-runner.

What pushed it over the top is its mandatory $150 a year student athletics fee, imposed (no student vote – why do that? – they’d only vote against it) on every student to pay for all the shitty games no one goes to, plus for all the overpaid loser coaches.

Add to this ASU’s mentally challenged regents, its charming student body, and its amazing frats, and you get an institution profoundly symbolic of twenty-first century higher education in America.

… and this one, in the Kansas City Star, is a classic. The background is of course super-squalid – University of Missouri athletes and coaches staggering and slashing their way around town…

Seven Mizzou football and men’s basketball players have been arrested eight times since January… That tally also doesn’t count an independent investigation scheduled to be released Friday about the alleged rape and eventual suicide of former swimmer Sasha Menu Courey… [A] football coach was suspended after a drunken-driving arrest two years ago, and [a] basketball coach was suspended last season by the NCAA.

Tickle me pink! These laddies!… But put the thing in context:

As far as athletic-department problems go, North Carolina would probably trade its apparently deep-rooted academic scandal for a string of arrests.

Those poor suckers at UNC! They’d give anything to have our puny string of arrests! PLUS: And here’s really the only thing that matters:

Plus, in the big picture, the last year or so of Missouri sports has been wildly successful.

You wanna know the big picture, that’s the big picture! We’re winning!

And, you know, end of the day, it’s all a learning opportunity:

We’d all like to see the family inside the MU athletic department, and in particular the football program, support [one of the most-arrested of the players] with tough love, guidance and motivation to help him move off this precarious path.

Big hug!

[C]ases of “jock” behaviour on campus remain rife and college sports are actually swelling in terms of commercial and cultural power…

Perhaps that is not surprising: as anthropologists know, every society has power networks and rituals that enable groups to coalesce. But another truism of anthropology is that rituals are most effective in upholding power structures – however distasteful – when nobody talks about them at all, be that on Wall Street or university campuses. In that sense, then, the good news about the 2006 [Duke lacrosse] scandal was that it spurred debate about standards.

The bad news, though, is that [the basic] question remains largely undiscussed: why should universities be so dominated by sports?

… but no one else is. I guess she just needs to puzzle it out logically, and if she does that she’ll join the rest of America, which yawns at news stories about whole squads of university students – venerated revenue sports players – roaming the bars near campus and, with remarkable violence, beating students up. She admits to being amazed that no one seems to care about American universities going to great lengths to recruit and retain frighteningly violent people to their campuses. You’d think students would be a little nervous, since they’re the ones getting beaten up. But they seem to welcome these scholarship students.

Logically, though… Logically, you’re looking for the most violent people you can find – it’s football, after all – and you’re doing all you can in grueling team practices to make them even more violent… So the reasonable way to look at this is … If you want a winning team, you’re almost inevitably going to end up admitting a few people, every few years, who can be expected to damn near beat random undergrads to death. Price of doing business.

Like this student at Lehigh University who, with some of his teammates, hit the bars one night and got into a fight with another group of students walking out of the place. No reason for the fight – he and his buddies were just drunk and belligerent… Spoiling for a fight, as they say.

So this particular football player just kicked the living shit out of this student.

When police arrived after receiving reports of a fight, they found [the student] unconscious on the ground and the former Mountain Hawk defensive back running away. Police managed to chase down [the player] and arrest him, according to court records.

Witnesses told police Phillips kicked at Graham as he lay unconscious and defenseless. Graham testified today the attack broke his jaw in two places, and he had to have his mouth wired shut, leaving him unable to eat or speak. His injuries delayed his education by a year, and he is still in counseling over the attack, he said. He cannot yawn without paralyzing pain, he said, a condition doctors say will stick with him for the rest of his life.

Hell of a tackle there, and UD is sure the pros will be all over this guy when he gets out of jail. I see him playing shoulder to shoulder with Richie Incognito. Dream team.

Since the move to Division I, UC Davis has struggled greatly as evidenced by the 9-22 record for men’s basketball and the 5-7 record for football this year. Compare this to UC Davis’ Division II career, when it won six Director’s Cups, which are given to the top Division II university in the nation.

But at least it’s destroying their non-revenue sports and bleeding money from the school.

Sure, laddie.

Listen up.

Until Hillary’s in power, you’ll never rustle up enough guys to do this. President Obama is a major jock, and he sets the tone. Forget it.

And … you know what? Forget it when Hillary takes over too. When that happens, the guys will get even more jockish. In reaction.