← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says:

As college football stadiums around America get emptier by the minute, we need writers like Dave Bratcher to remind us why we so love those Saturdays in the fall.

As we made our way into the stadium, a few things struck me. These things are applicable to life and need to be mentioned. Across the United States, Saturdays in the fall remind us of what true equality looks like, teach us why keeping score is important, and loyalty is not to be taken lightly.

When fans show up to cheer on their respective teams, discussions about race, religion, wealth, or family lineage do not factor into the discussion. The things which sometimes divide us, even on Sunday morning, are completely irrelevant on Saturday. Nobody cares what color, what church, how much money, or who their parents are. The identifying factors and circumstances of our lives are completely forgotten about when the teams take the field. This is to be praised.

Guess ol’ Dave missed the $100,000 per box luxury seating! Look up, Dave! See the rich people up there, divided behind glass enclosures from the yahoos? Only the rich people in the stadium get to drink alcohol, Dave! These things are applicable to life and need to be mentioned.

Margaret Soltan, October 24, 2013 7:43AM
Posted in: Scathing Online Schoolmarm, sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=41703

4 Responses to “Scathing Online Schoolmarm says:”

  1. Alan Allport Says:

    “Regardless of the win-loss record of your team, your support of them never dies.”

    Nothing like a motivational speaker to blur the distinction between normative and positive truth-claims, is there? Loyalty shouldn’t depend on winning or losing, says ol’ Dave – and therefore it doesn’t, all the vast amount of evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Don’t like the reality you’re seeing? Make up a better one!

  2. Daniel S. Goldberg Says:

    And lord knows race (race!) has never once affected any kind of college sports in the U.S. Not once. Ever.

    Goodness.

  3. GTWMA Says:

    There is, of course, one thing that divides us on Saturday, and that is what color uniform we wear. If you wear the other one, prepare for verbal abuse to be the least of the problems you face.

  4. charlie Says:

    Reading that Bratcher blurb caused violent flashbacks of every football coach I ever had to deal with. I suppose the Romans put aside all their differences and reveled at the sight of gladiators killing each other, or people being torn to shreds and eaten by lions and such. Universities are facing the very real possibility that many of their brain damaged footballers may one day start demanding some compensation for their addled states. Does it occur to those remaining fans that their putative school loyalties are based on the real maiming of their supposed student athletes? Does it occur to Bratcher that abysmal grad rates of those athletes underscores that few of them are capable of doing grade school work, and should be now where near a college campus? Nah, all that matters is that we continue in this contrived allegiance to some myth of college sports being something far more important than the quality of the education produced by that college. Gotta run, gotta get me to the latest NASCAR end of race crash….

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