← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Infractions + Transgressions = Transactions

In a blog post about the latest sleaze under Florida coach Urban Meyer, Pete Thamel writes:

Coaches in college football have long histories of ignoring serious transactions for the sake of winning football games…

Interesting slip… Coaches in college football are of course very serious about one transaction: Their contract, with its millions of dollars in yearly compensation and its massive buy-out clauses and all. But when it comes to recruitment, the blogger’s correct: The transaction’s not serious at all. It’s this wild and crazy thing where you have the university admit people who aren’t going to be able to graduate, and who have significant criminal records, and then you just hope like hell they behave til you get some touchdowns out of them. It’s insane.

And then when they don’t behave – when they rob people or drive drunk or whatever – everybody rushes to sympathize with the coach, the same person who fucked up the university by admitting them… Poor Coach Meyer! How’s he holding up?

Coaches like Urban Meyer make Lawrence Summers look fiscally responsible.

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

Update: A commenter really gave Thamel hell about transactions. (Scroll down the comments a bit.)

Thamel thanked him and changed it to transgressions.

I’m less inclined to give bloggers hell about these things, because I know how easily mistakes get made when you’re blogging a lot.

On the other hand, you’re supposed to read over what you’ve written a lot, too.

And on the other other hand, if you write for the New York Times, don’t you have editors?

Margaret Soltan, December 1, 2009 10:45AM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=19785

3 Responses to “Infractions + Transgressions = Transactions”

  1. Joe Fruscione Says:

    Let’s add this report of one of his players being busted for DUI:

    http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-t25-florida-dunlap-dui&prov=ap&type=lgns

    I wonder, how long before this is "an in-house issue that has been dealt with," and the player is on the field for big games?

  2. AJ S Says:

    UD, I read major media outlet (newspaper and magazine) blogs and catch them on grammatical errors often. Most of the time, the errors are pitiful, especially from folks calling themselves pros. No wonder print media is going out.
    Keep up the great commentary!
    Note: writing this comment as I am having a .ppt read to me in a med school lecture hall.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Thanks very much for the comment, AJ S.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories