Taking off from the University of Illinois admissions clout scandal, a writer for the Huffington Post shows you why SOS is always telling you to control your emotions if you want to argue something. Let’s take a peek.

… [In a recent] issue of the [Chicago] Tribune, the venerable sportswriter Bob Verdi refers to the NCAA and college sports as “our intercollegiate sewer system.” [Nice use of a strong quotation. So far so good.]

Yes, the Clout University scandal is shady, shabby, ridiculous, pathetic, disgusting, despicable, etc. But what irritates and baffles me is the public’s indifference to our wasteful, unconscionable, unfair, unreasonable practice of giving, not dozens, but tens of thousands of tickets of admission into our universities to young people many of whom would have no chance of being accepted into a higher-ranking university, or any university at all, strictly on their intellectual merits. [The first ridiculously long list is fine; the writer seeks to summarize what everyone’s saying, and he’s doing it in an exasperated, amusing way. But the rest of the paragraph’s also over-written, and here it’s not strategic; instead, it’s angry and uncontrolled.]

Of course I’m talking about the so-called “student-athletes.” [Two sins in one sentence: The juvenile so-called, and the quotation marks. Just as he’s packing too many words into his sentences, so he’s overloading his point about the inauthenticity of students selected for their athletic skill. Once you’ve said so-called, you don’t need the quotation marks; or, if you go with quotation marks, you don’t need the so-called. Though if you ask SOS you don’t really need either of them. Just use the term student-athlete and be assured that your reader will understand, from the prose around the phrase, that you disbelieve in the concept.] Our Illinois politicians, dastardly sneaks as they undoubtedly are, were not the first, nor the most culpable, offenders against intellect. We all decided long ago that many qualities were more important than mind in deciding who goes to college.

For example, community service. And extra-curricular activities. And exotic hobbies. And “a wide range of interests.” And being closely related to a previous graduate of the college. And, most important by far, performance in organized high school sports. [Why the quotation marks around wide range of interests?]

The truth is that none of these activities and qualities should enter into a decision about who gets into college. That’s right, none. [The writer makes it easy to reject his argument by taking so extreme a position.]

To deny the validity of what I’ve just said and to tacitly endorse a “system” [Note that he can’t stop with the quotation marks, which continue to add a juvenile element to his anger.] which awards seats in an institution of teaching and scholarship to the stupid, the indifferent, the anti-intellectual, and the duffers is to take a low revenge on Intellect, cultivate mediocrity, and degrade and prostitute the Alma Mater we say we cherish. [Way over-written. There’s a weird nineteenth century elaborateness to his style, complete with capitalization and grandiloquence.]

As indefensible as the custom of letting politicians decide who goes to school and who gets scholarship money may be, it does far less harm to higher education than our worship of sports and athletes.

“Beer and circus.” That’s what Murray Sperber, Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Indiana University, called the sports-spectacle atmosphere of college athletics two decades ago. That’s what we’ve turned our colleges and universities into. [The argument never gets going, does it? Reason: He settles for bombast and bitchery rather than substance.]

College presidents and faculties aren’t running higher education. (How many letters to the editor decrying the politicians’ influence on admissions have you read from faculty members at the University of Illinois?)

Young, male, beer-sodden dolts and screeching ESPN announcers give the predominant tone to our universities….

SOS should love this piece, shouldn’t she? But it doesn’t do her side any good. The writer merely exhibits his self-righteousness.