What’s nice about this rather typical appraisal of America’s many football schools is that the writer names names. I mean, he doesn’t say this school and that school are no longer schools. He simply provides the data and lets you arrive at the obvious conclusion.
So the standouts, the almost-entirely-without-discernable-academic-missions, are:
University of Arkansas
University of Nebraska
University of Oklahoma
Auburn University
These are the Big Four, the prime nullities, that this particular author highlights – schools that spend huge sums on games and stadiums and all, and vanishingly little on education. So little that their academic mission is pretty much gone. There are plenty of other such places, including almost every school in West Virginia.
These four schools naturally take up a lot of air time on University Diaries, each of them a massive military industrial academic fraud violence against women drunk driving plus all them other naughty big boy thangs complex. Nebraska loved to death two of America’s current high-profile bad boys – Richie Incognito and Dominic Raiola – so that place (along with the University of Florida ’cause of loved-up Aaron Hernandez) is at the top of Google News lately. But Auburn, with its long tradition of massive cheating, and its board of trustees packed with former Auburn athletes, is perennially in the news, as are vastly corrupt Arkansas and Oklahoma…
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Speaking of tradition — that whole tradition thing, so important to all of these schools, can really backfire. Just like Penn State, all four schools on this guy’s list seem to think they have these glorious traditions…
When things go wrong in nullity schools, when the essential scumminess of what they’re about becomes too public, they often try to play this tradition card, as if the act of reminding people of the essential glory of what they’ve always been about will make people’s backs straighten… Yet these places forget that although they might have won many games over a long period of time, the scumminess was always there and everyone knows it…
So – here’s an example of the problem.
Louisiana State University is trying to get its students to stop commanding their game day opponents, in unison, on national television, to suck their dicks. How to go about this?
LSU decided to initiate something called Tradition Matters, which is essentially a series of notices all over campus, signed by the president of the school, asking students to stop saying suck my dick in unison on national television.
An LSU student journalist writes:
I didn’t realize how sleazy [the cheer] made my university look until I sat in a press box last season and watched my professional colleagues shake their heads in disgust.
Yet in what way will an appeal to LSU’s traditions help the matter? LSU qua football school has always been pretty sleazy… Indeed sleaziness is kind of a point of pride for the entire state of Louisiana... traditionally… It seems fully in keeping with Louisiana’s traditions that the president of an academic institution there would devote his time and the institution’s money to plastering campus with a plea that its scholars not get drunk and invite a national television audience to suck their dicks…
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So you see the problem. Nullity schools cannot make an appeal to their academic traditions, to the ethos of reason and moral reflection at the heart of non-null universities; they are forced to make an appeal to their athletic traditions. But athletic traditions at schools like these are as much about decades of publicly pleading for people to fellate you as they are about clean-limbed sportsmanship.
December 14th, 2013 at 4:20PM
Before anyone living and working in DC points a finger and labels another location as “sleaze”, maybe they ought to address the cesspool where they sit.
Don’t look too close, UD–your students are getting competitive in the “scholars getting drunk” competition.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/11/alcohol-illness-transports-up-70-percent-at-george-washington-university-96484.html
December 14th, 2013 at 4:44PM
GTWMA: I point the finger at my own world plenty on this blog. I point in all pertinent directions.
December 14th, 2013 at 7:45PM
This is probably a result of my own football-obliviousness, but I know U Nebraska for its press, and its work in the digital humanities — both excellent.
That doesn’t mean that football isn’t undermining, or threatening to undermine, the school’s academic mission, just that pockets of excellence (including some fairly cutting-edge ones) remain.
All the more reason to save the place.
December 15th, 2013 at 8:46PM
CC, how many undergrads @ UNO would you imagine know that they have a press there let alone read any of the books they publish (unless faculty are assigning their own)?
December 15th, 2013 at 8:47PM
oops UNL, tho here in Omaha as well I suppose…
December 16th, 2013 at 1:04PM
The OECD has released data indicating that USAAmericans between the ages of 16 to 24 are dead last among the 25 industrialized nations in math and science achievement. The American Library Association studies reveal that few Americans read more than three books a year. The book “Academically Adrift” chronicles the collapse of academic rigor on college campuses, and the massive increase in “socializing,” otherwise known as getting laid, loaded and drunk, at those same schools.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that colleges will spend more on beer and circuses rather than academics. The bulk of their customers don’t want, nor will accept, a university that makes them work too hard. Marketing copy has told those little darlings that they’re coming for the “college experience,’ which is partly the reason that far more students, including those at UD’s GWU, are getting dangerously shitfaced. That’s what’s expected….
December 16th, 2013 at 6:58PM
Regarding the University of Arkansas, both my grandparents attended, one of them became a doctor, in fact was the first MD in northwest Arkansas, the other, after serving as superintendent of schools for Springdale, went on to become a professor of classics at Smith College. My father, the son of the MD, was a math prodigy and started UA at age 13. To demonstrate his ability for admissions, he was required to write a book report on The Vicar of Wakefield. UA served our family well, and our family contributed to Arkansas. What’s wrong with this model? Isn’t this what a land-grant university is supposed to do? I know that there are still good people at UA, but it is a shame that the football culture is so dominant.
December 20th, 2013 at 12:17PM
It is sport culture in general. Did you see the article in the NYT about Army? They are thinking about lowering the admission standards at West Point so they can better compete in football. I enjoys sports but I think it is more important to have the best qualified candidates to be officers than to have a winning football team. I’ve given up on regular universities and schools in this matter. My 10YO is the only kid on his team that misses practice if he has too much homework. We also were the only parents who wouldn’t pull him from school for an out of state tournament.
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