← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

You don’t have to look at the career of Gordon Gee to know how big-time sports lends gravitas to university leaders.

From Mile High Sports:

A long-time donor to the University of Colorado athletics department entered Folsom Field prior to Thursday night’s latest embarrassment on national television, as the Buffs fell 51-17 to Arizona State.

It just so happened he and his group ran into Phil DiStefano, the chancellor of the University of Colorado-Boulder.

The donor asked DiStefano about [rumored new] facilities.

[The chancellor] asked the long-time supporter if he “[had] $50 million to donate to make it happen.”

When the donor admitted that he would fall significantly short of the absurd total that flew out of the chancellor’s mouth, he [the donor] reminded him that he had donated significantly over the years.

“Donors need to donate to make it happen; if you can get $50 million, we can get the facilities,” he said over his shoulder as he stormed away.

The donor stood in shock, but not before yelling back out to the campus’ leader that his days of donating to the university were now over.

Spending most of your time deciding whether to sell booze in arenas; screaming back and forth about money in public — the august vocation of the American university leader.

Margaret Soltan, October 17, 2012 4:54PM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=37684

One Response to “You don’t have to look at the career of Gordon Gee to know how big-time sports lends gravitas to university leaders.”

  1. Jack/OH Says:

    I’m a non-prof higher ed friendly. Books are good. But–the most power-drunk/power-mad pieces of shit I’ve met are some Ph. D. administrators and some senior faculty. They seem to have completely given up the scholarly cast of mind for the sake of bureaucratic wire-pulling, money-gathering, etc. They’re a disgrace to the life of the mind and the pleasures of the study.

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