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Big time athletics turns your university into a parochial, corrupt, and deeply twisted little city.

If that’s what your school always has been (see Auburn University), no sweat. But say you’re the University of Michigan, a school that has a distinguished past. What do people know about you now?

They know that your football coach is a strange and desperate man who gets way too choked up on the rubber chicken circuit.

They know that your athlete-mad professors get all expense paid junkets to the big games, even though those same professors are supposed to be policing the program.

In January 2009, the full faculty senate voted 19-11 to approve a resolution calling for the free trips to end.

President Mary Sue Coleman to the faculty senate: Fuck you!

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These and many more embarrassments have made the University of Michigan look like Gary, Indiana — a kooky, corrupt, dot on the map.

Margaret Soltan, December 8, 2010 12:09PM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to “Big time athletics turns your university into a parochial, corrupt, and deeply twisted little city.”

  1. Stephen Karlson Says:

    That’s a cheap shot … at Gary, where people still know how to make a decent coil of steel.

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    I simply did a bit of research on most corrupt cities in America, Stephen. Not a cheap shot. A targeted shot.

  3. Stephen Karlson Says:

    As far as I know, Gary’s corrupt public officials haven’t imposed a special assessment on the steel mill to underwrite the operating deficits of the Gary SouthShore Railcats, a minor league baseball team. Professional ward-heelers know something about what makes getting re-elected possible, something that serial administrators (and coaches, the football coach at Northern Illinois recently having hired out at Minnesoduh) don’t always understand.

  4. theprofessor Says:

    The last residents haven’t left Gary yet?

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