← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Sometimes, pity almost keeps me from covering certain universities.

Almost.

Western Kentucky University drew UD‘s attention years ago, when a brave faculty member, Robert Dietel, stood up at a regents’ meeting to try to stop the school from switching to Division I-A football. (The link takes you to an old post – 2006 – which doesn’t make clear that, except for the final paragraph, it’s taken from a local newspaper article.) He was shouted down by the idiots who run the school.

Now proudly I-A at enormous expense to the students, WKU is “the only winless team in the country in 2009.” As the local writer explained in 2006:

To stay in Division I-A, WKU will have to average 15,000 fans at its home games. But it hasn’t even been filling L. T. Smith Stadium, where attendance has been 10,279 so far this year and was 12,795 last year — despite all the interest built up as the school won the 2002 NCAA Division I-AA national championship and went on to complete 10 consecutive winning seasons.

Let’s see how ticket sales are going now.

[The team] sold about 7,300 season tickets this year. Last season they topped out at 7,506 — a significant drop from the 8,648 sold in 2008.

You shouldn’t let idiots run universities. An obvious truth, but it seems to need restating.

Margaret Soltan, July 30, 2010 7:32AM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=24660

3 Responses to “Sometimes, pity almost keeps me from covering certain universities.”

  1. University Diaries » UD only calls in Mr UD when she is truly, deeply, honestly… Says:

    […] pressing this story on University Diaries because, like the scandal at Western Kentucky, it’s shaping up to be the paradigmatic corrupt university sports story — it’s […]

  2. University Diaries » “Western Kentucky University’s board ran roughshod over faculty regent Robert Dietel last week, as it rushed to embrace Division I-A football…. WKU’s board told Dietel to shut up. Contempt dripped from [o Says:

    […] Dietel can take no pleasure in what has ensued over the last few years, though I’m sure he’s not surprised. He told the idiots at WKU what would happen. They didn’t listen. The school is now a money-hemorrhaging laughingstock. […]

  3. University Diaries » It’s been a small but distinct pleasure over many years for UD to watch… Says:

    […] 2009, WKU was the only winless team in the country. Moving briskly to 2011, things look just as bleak. 2012 was all about hiring major […]

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