Regular televised “exposés” of the already fully exposed academic reality of big-time sports schools (the latest such broadcast is available for viewing on Tuesday, when HBO will tell you what you already know about what universities do to keep many of their revenue-sports players academically eligible) will, UD has long predicted on this blog, eventually disappear. Eventually most sports factories will make their head football coaches president of the university (Jim Tressel’s a candidate at Akron, from which he’ll make a move back to Ohio State; I think Nick Saban or one of his assistant coaches will be Alabama’s next president, etc.). The idea is a no-brainer: When you’ve got even a vaguely respectable academic at the helm, she’ll have enormous difficulty dealing with the SAT cheating, the fake classes, the hilariously named academic advising centers (“[A]cademic advising centers “operate as ‘schools within schools’ and are responsible for enabling student-athletes with elementary educations to graduate from big-time universities.”), and all the rest. But once it’s clear that your university really is just a sports factory, there’s no scandal to expose. The curriculum is all sports-specific; the trustees and administration are all former college athletes; there’s not a scintilla of pretense to intellectual activity, let alone intellectual respectability. It’s the wave of the future. It’s the only way to go.

Kind of a defensive headline, that. Why, when sleazeman Bobby Petrino (put “petrino” in my search engine) has again (this is a return gig) graced the University of Louisville not only with his presence, but with open practices, is everybody staying away?

[L]ess than [Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Make that Fewer than] 100 fans were on hand for Petrino’s first open practice inside Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.

Do you have any idea what one hundred people look like in a stadium built for 55,000 people?

… who cynically and with arrant disregard recruit violent and troubled men to their campuses and then make them sports heroes until they kill someone… UD is fascinated by the ways these universities do damage control. It’s especially intriguing to watch, er, repeat offenders deal with the body count.

Take nice little University of Maine. A pleasant inoffensive sort of place, except that their coaches are really unlucky in love. Jovan Belcher, and now “[Zedric] Joseph is the second former UMaine football player in just over a year to be linked to a murder.” Yes, two in a row, and of course in both cases there was evidence – in their pre-college past, and in their college behavior – that they were dangerous people. But, you know, exposing your undergraduates to people like Belcher and Joseph is all part of the game. Students at the University of Nebraska knew that risking standing in a line behind Richie Incognito was the price you paid for winning games. It’s all part of winning games.

But okay let’s see how you mop up the mess if you’re U Maine. First, as Deadspin’s Sean Newell points out, you take a page from Joseph Stalin’s book and unperson him. You just rub him out. You literally – as Yeshiva did with trustee Bernard Madoff – erase him from all real and virtual university surfaces. What… Belcher? Who…?

Almost one year to the day after he shot and killed his girlfriend before driving to the Kansas City Chiefs’ facility where he shot and killed himself in front of his coach and general manager, Jovan Belcher is no longer on the banner.

You know, the banner. The BIG banner that hangs in U Maine stadium boasting about their guys now in the NFL.

Newell then notes some of the guys still on the banner:

… Maine and Steelers lineman Justin Strzelczyk … drove 15 miles of a 40-mile high speed chase on three wheels, flipping off and throwing beer bottles at state troopers along the way. The chase, which began because of a hit and run, ended when he sped into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with a tanker, killing him instantly.

Strzelczyk, 6 feet 6 inches and 300 pounds, was a monstrous presence on the Steelers’ offensive line from 1990-98. He was known for his friendly, banjo-playing spirit and gluttony for combat. He spiraled downward after retirement, however, enduring a divorce and dabbling with steroid-like substances, and soon before his death complained of depression and hearing voices from what he called “the evil ones.”

It was later determined Strzelczyk’s showed signs of CTE.

Among the less-troubled on the banner are Stephen Cooper, Lofa Tatupu and Daren Stone. Cooper, a former San Diego Charger, was found holding 1,000 anabolic steroid pills during a traffic stop while at UMaine. He was later suspended four games by the NFL when he tested positive for ephedra. Both Lofa Tatupu and Daren Stone had their own minor scrapes with the law and were charged with DUIs.

The other classic response ingredients (this goes on at all schools where this sort of thing happens) involve focusing on

1. the shock and anguish of the coaches (How could anyone have seen this coming? They were like sons to me. etc.)

2. the tragic loss to the team’s win record (Defense is going to have trouble recovering from this absence from the lineup…)

3. the tragic nature of life in general (the school’s most articulate and sad-faced administrator blinks in front of the cameras and talks of the essential wounded enigma of being as such)

4. the remarkable compassion and competence of the school’s mental health professionals as they rush to deal with traumatized students

5. the way this has made the school a stronger place by bringing us all together through adversity.

Yes, yes, that’s how it’s gone, and no one’s surprised that John Junker, someone affiliated with universities and their use of public money, is now routinely referred to as a “kingpin.”

Criminal, university-affiliated, public money gangs being what they are, we shouldn’t expect only game fixing, gun violence, DUIs, theft of public funds for running decades-long pretend-class scams, and all the other low-level stuff to be the only news we get out of big-time university sports in America, the place where Richie Incognito got his education. We should also expect, at the highest level, at the level of the most powerful men in college football, to hear about bribing politicians, breaking campaign finance laws, diverting millions of dollars of public funds for strip clubs and all that other sex stuff that Nevin Shapiro made even more famous than it already was. As all of these guys will explain to you if you’ll only sit down and listen, there’s a certain culture associated with university football, see… A certain world that’s being admitted to the country’s universities… And coaches and boosters and university presidents (here’s looking at you, Graham Spanier) have to play to it.

Junker will go to jail for a bit, but don’t make no nevermind.

“There’s something about [the] society [of other people] and useful short-term distractions that takes your mind off [the fear of death],” remarks Julian Barnes, author of a whole book about the fear of death.

UD thinks that the people of Allen, Texas have much to teach us in this regard, having produced a gigantic, expensive, communal, engrossing distraction in their sixty million dollar high school football stadium that, two years after construction, has had to be shut down because of structural flaws.

One needs to look past the cruel verdict by one observer (see my headline) in this article’s comment thread and instead appreciate – even marvel at – the way an entire town has figured out how to do an end run around the whole timor mortis conturbat me thing by creating a massive unsound edifice around which the town will be able to rally and fight and pray for decades to come.

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

Centuries from now The Allen Stadium will have become the state’s sphinx, its obelisk, its omphalos, its ultima thule, around which, in seasonal rituals, people will gather and chant Who built this? Why?

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

UD thanks John.

Fine Arts and Rat Feces at Louisiana State University.

… When the ceramics studio ceiling crashed into a large sink that just about every student in the building uses, people around campus started paying attention to the [Studio Arts] building’s long list of issues. Problems with the building, which was constructed in 1924, date back much further and are not limited to that one studio.

One of students’ biggest concerns is lead paint and asbestos they have identified throughout the building using home test kits.

… There is exposed wiring throughout the building, some of which is near students’ lockers in the main hallway. When the ceiling leaks — which it often does in many places — students fear the mix of electricity and water and avoid going to their lockers.

Restrooms are not cleaned regularly and rat feces often appear throughout the building, [a student] said.

“I haven’t seen Facility Services in here until the ceiling collapsed,” she said. “Once we started the protest stuff, then we started seeing them here and there. … We’re only starting to get attention now that we’re speaking out about it.”

… At various times, the Studio Arts Building has been home to squirrels, rats, a raccoon and during summer 2013, a homeless man, she said.

“The shabbiness draws random people to it,” [a student] said.

… [On the up side, the building is] brimming with the kind of quirkiness that only art students could come up with… Someone drew the outline of a house around a hole in a wall where a rat that students named Leroy once lived.

Go, Rats! I mean, Tigers.

UD has said it before and she says it again: There are few nuttier locations in this country than Penn State’s Happy Valley.

… poll? What’s its secret?

Well, it’s a matter of priorities. Look at its public university system.

[I]t’s hard to find $900 million for a 60,000-seat domed college football stadium for a program that has had a winning record once in the last 13 years and resorted to giving away tickets for free to get people to go to its last home opener.

Sure it’s hard. Sure! No one ever said life was easy. But the state of Nevada knows what matters, and UD is sure it will devote millions of dollars to this initiative.

And anyway you can’t say Nevada students don’t care about basketball! The other night, UNLV’s student body president got so excited he got thrown out of a game!!

“I was the leader of our group,” said [Mark] Ciavola, a 39-year-old political science major and the campaign manager for Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, R-Las Vegas.

“If you feel you have to escort someone out, you escort the leader, but multiple people on both sides were yelling and gesturing,” he said. “None of the [University of Nevada, Reno] fans were ejected for throwing things at us, but perhaps no one saw that.”

More detail from Ciavola:

… Ciavola had tried to lead a group of about 50 UNLV fans around the perimeter of the court to chant “Rebels,” something he had done at last year’s game between the two teams.

He said they were stopped by a security guard or police officer who told them to return to the bleachers or they all would be thrown out of the game.

‘We went back to our seats, but as UNR starting tying up the game things really got heated and the entire stadium started chanting “F— the Rebels,’” Ciavola said. “The section in front of us was flipping us off and throwing things at us – a water bottle and crushed up paper — and finally we gestured back at them.”

UD is enjoying following the latest Salvation Stadium story. In an earlier post, UD quoted a spokesperson at the University of New Hampshire using impeccable logic in defense of millions the university’s president wants to spend on a stadium expansion at a time when fewer and fewer university students around the country are attending football games, and when, at UNH in particular, almost no one attends:

UNH said it attracts about 750 students to Cowell Stadium, which seats about 6,500 but would grow to 10,000 under the new plan. UNH said a new stadium would attract more students to games and to the university as a whole.

Now the president himself has emerged to explain to the local paper why this is a great idea, a win/win for UNH, and there’s yet more impeccable logic.

There’s his statement in my headline: Since we’re obviously going to make big bucks on this idea (thousands of students will flock to the games because…), don’t you worry your pretty little head about our repaying the whopping loan we’re going to take out.

And if that’s not enough to convince you – twenty years ago we built another athletic facility and some people were opposed but now everybody really likes it!

“But it now has become a beloved fixture not only on our campus but arguably for the whole state. And I think the same thing will happen when the stadium gets renovated.”

And if you’re still not convinced, remember how we all peed our pants ’cause we got to some semi-final?

“I think the kind of excitement that I felt around here this fall when (the Wildcats football team) was making that incredible run to the semi-finals was palpable throughout the entire state,” Huddleston said.

Once we spend $25 million on a bigger stadium, get ready to pee your pants every day!

… on a story I’ve covered on this blog; and now, courtesy of Philip, a UD reader in Texas, I can do that.

I bitched back in 2012 that a high school in Texas had just built a $60 million dollar football stadium.

A high school! I was shocked. I was contemptuous of any state whose taxpayers would agree to this – I was incredulous that Texas in particular, with its pathetic secondary schools, would …

Blah blah blah. You know the drill. So what. No one cares. Let them bash their kids’ heads in. Forget about it.

But Philip wanted me to know that a mere two years after it was built, this stadium has been closed because of cracks in the concrete, and no one knows when it will reopen.

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

So now UD feels comfortable about the whole thing. Now we’re in her beloved Dada territory, where Tristan Tzara and his surrealist pals gave us exactly this sort of instruction in how to do Dada:

1. Build a sixty million dollar football stadium for a high school.

2. Immediately close it.

Absolute Dada!

Here’s how Ben Rohrbach describes it:

The voters in Katy, Texas, who recently rejected a $70 million high school football stadium proposal, must be breathing a sigh of relief after what has become one of the most expensive prep athletics facility in U.S. history built just 18 months ago by another football-crazed town four hours north on Route 45.

To put it mildly, the $60 million tax-funded Eagle Stadium that is home to the two-time defending Class 5A, Division I state champ Allen (Texas) High football program just became a disaster.

According to numerous reports out of Dallas, the state-of-the-art 18,000 seat facility has been closed to address “extensive cracking” in the concrete. The news comes less than two years after the stadium, which features a $1.3 million scoreboard and other extravagant features, opened to national fanfare.

But what about the voters in Deepshit Texas who are about to approve an $80 million high school football proposal? Stay tuned, y’all.

Pointing to slides projected on a large screen, [the provost], a scholar of organizational behavior, accused [UNC athletics whistleblower Mary] Willingham of making slanderous statements about the academic abilities of Carolina football and basketball players. Her assessments “are virtually meaningless and grossly unfair to our students and the university that admitted them,” he said. “Using this data set to say that our students can’t read is a travesty and unworthy of this university.”

The verdict, recorded on videotape, was swift: The assembled scholars erupted in applause.

“In 25 years of faculty meetings, I’ve never seen anything like it,” [a history professor] said later. “It was a public conviction and an intellectual execution.”

Typical dullard editorial in the local booster press complaining about one of the few signs of social progress coming out of the south: People are refusing to go to football games. The Gainesville Sun editorial board, puzzling over growing indifference at the University of Florida, has it figured out:

Noon and 12:21 p.m. kickoffs certainly don’t help in attracting late-to-rise college students.

Yeah, I mean, you’ve got, what, eight home games a season?

On Dec. 15, shortly after Army football’s 12th consecutive loss to the U.S. Naval Academy, the superintendent of West Point, Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, announced that he was considering institutional changes to build a winning program. “When America puts its sons and daughters in harm’s way, they do not expect us to just ‘do our best’ . . . but to win,” he wrote. “Nothing short of victory is acceptable. . . . Our core values are Duty, Honor, Country. Winning makes them real.”

See if you can follow along on the logic of this chick with me. Ms Caslen argues that there is a direct link between victory on the football field and victory on the battlefield. This babe thinks it appropriate to allude to people dying in armed warfare in the same breath as people playing a field sport. How can we, she asks, expect our sons and daughters to die for their country if we don’t also expect them to win football games? After all, winning on the gridiron is the same as winning on the outskirts of Baghdad. Winning on the outskirts of Baghdad isn’t real; it only becomes real when Army is also winning football games. Words like duty honor and country are hollow cliches until we beat Navy.

Does it worry you just a tad that the people running the nation’s defense don’t grasp the difference between football and warfare? Does it worry you just a tad that operational logic is in the hands of people who are, uh, nuts?

… the next guy can!

Tetched in the head University of Tennessee is on its way to another bought out coach.

As David Climer points out, $1.56 million is

a lot of money to pay somebody not to work. But it’s nothing new for UT. The Vols rank among the national leaders in buyouts.

UT is still on the hook for the bulk of Derek Dooley’s $5 million buyout, which is being paid in installments through December 2016. And don’t forget former athletics director Mike Hamilton. UT still owes four more monthly payments of $37,083.33 to fulfill his $1.335 million in parting gifts.

It all adds up. Over the last decade, UT has paid more than $15 million in buyouts to athletics department personnel.

Bankrupting a university in pursuit of a winning season – that’s UT all over.

… Kentucky University. Among America’s worst universities, WKU has a president who, faced with hard facts (via the Knight Commission) about his school’s indifference to anything other than athletics, says “There’s no good that can come from making statistical comparisons to try to prove a point.”

From the moment one of its trustees told a faculty member worried about the school’s switch to Division 1-A football that “People on this board dedicate their time for free. They have better things to do than let some university professor just keep talking,” UD has had a weakness for brainless, money-hemorrhaging, Bobby Petrino-worshipping WKU.

WKU spends over $36,000 per student-athlete and only $11,000 per full-time student — nearly a $25,000 gap — according to a study by the Knight Commission, a third-party organization that looks at both academic and athletic spending for universities across the country.

Faculty regent Patricia Minter raised concern over the spending disparity in last month’s Board of Regents meeting, citing the study and other statistics in her sole opposition [to] new head football coach Jeff Brohm’s contract.

“Faculty find it devastating that we continue to pay such large amounts of money for something that is ultimately really nice and fine, but it’s not the essential part of the university mission,” she said. “Apparently, we don’t have a problem underfunding the vital parts of the university mission, and that continues to be troubling.”

Sole opposition. Some broad. Figures.