… the core values of a university.”
As the nation slips into post-Happy Valley tristesse, people like the ex-president of the University of Michigan begin to tell the truth about big-time university football. Turns out football isn’t the university’s front porch. It’s the shower stalls out back. Plus, as this guy notes, big-time football is in fact an aggressor against the university, a predatory embodiment of anti-university attitudes and behaviors: Groupthink, authoritarianism, fanaticism, secrecy, brawn over brain.
As we slip, too, back into business as usual at university sports programs – the coach arrested for his third DUI and afterwards put right back to work coaching; a player only dismissed from a team after his fourth arrest – it’s good to recall that this campus activity is structurally corrupt, subject at all times to sex scandals, money scandals, crime scandals. When you consider all the elements in play in football – recruitment, staff salaries, tailgating, alcohol, the absurdity of the NCAA, academic cheating, a culture of secrecy, etc. – you know that Shalala’s Miami and Spanier’s Penn St. are chapters in a never-ending story.
November 14th, 2011 at 10:35AM
“Baton Rouge, La. – The Western Kentucky University football team gave #1 LSU all it could handle, but in the end the top-ranked Tigers proved too much as they brought an end to the Hilltoppers’ five-game win streak with a 42-9 victory.”
42-9. All LSU could handle. It appears that the WKU coach may not be the only WKU employee with a drinking problem.