So UD‘s nodding off to yet another article about the beyond-belief-lucrative degeneracy of American football, when she lit on the sentence in this post’s headline. Which reminded her of one of her blog’s most consistent themes: The professionalization of revenue sports at our universities has put more and more of our students at risk from the dangerously violent players universities routinely recruit. Nebraska got to deal with Richie Incognito, about whom it still boasts; and of course the lovely University of Florida program got Hernandez:
Since Hernandez’s arrest for first-degree murder, [then Florida coach Urban] Meyer has been under heavy scrutiny for allegedly allowing Hernandez to engage in inappropriate acts while a member of the Gators football program. Gainesville Police reports indicate Hernandez was questioned in a shooting investigation in 2007 where a witness described a suspect meeting his general description. Hernandez was also reportedly involved in a 2007 bar brawl where he broke a bouncer’s eardrum, and allegedly failed multiple drug tests. A Sporting News report indicated that Meyer shielded the press from learning of one drug-related suspension by having Hernandez wear a walking boot and fake an injury.
Here’s UD‘s take on the highly compensated monsters of professional American football: Americans love the monsters’ violence, on and off the field. The world’s most violent sport is by far this country’s most popular. And we’re making our players more violent by the day. Okay.
But college. You know? College? Colleges are importing pumped up nutbags on their way to the NFL.
The American university president makes $400,000 a year intoning about the sacred duty to keep our students safe; his football coach makes four million dollars a year doing everything but going down on Richie and Aaron to get them to come to campus.
September 11th, 2014 at 12:17AM
In 2012, the University of Florida dropped its Computer Science department, claiming they didn’t have the $1.4 million needed to maintain it. At the same time, U of FL increased its athletic budget by more than $2 million, with most of the money going towards football. All that underscores the degeneracy and depravity of our football franchises; unis need more money to lure psychopaths such as Aaron Hernadez, while degrading academics. In all fairness, U of FL admins restored the Computer Science department, but only after academic institutions worldwide demanded to know what are you thinking? But it does indicate admins/boosters/Wall Street priorities….