You are going to love this account of life at a modern American university.
The piece is a review of a documentary about the amateur sportsmen at the University of Miami, and it touches on many significant aspects of contemporary American higher education. Some highlights:
…There are four main periods of time (with some overlap between sections) that the documentary deals with: (1) the Pell Grant Scandal and rebuild under Butch Davis through the beginning of the Coker Era, (2) the decline under Coker post Fiesta Bowl, (3) the Nevin Shapiro Scandal, (4) the continued malaise under Shannon and Golden…
[T]here was foreshadowing of tragedy a decade in the future, when … one of [football coach] Butch Davis’ disciplinary measures was to force players to give up their guns…
[The team’s downfall] started on the field with multiple brawls, and tragically spread off the field, with the murder of Bryan Pata.
One of the more chilling moments was Randy Phillips recounting the Pata murder, where he nonchalantly says that if he was there, things would have gone differently because he was always armed, and would have engaged in a gun battle with the attacker. It’s a stark reminder for sheltered fans that these players came from a different place. They moved to Coral Gables, they became Canes, but their past often followed them. This discussion is in stark contrast to Butch Davis’ disciplined approach where he tried to disarm, literally, the Miami players…
The severity of the Pell Grant scandal, with players being arrested, and an administrator being sent to jail for three years, with the loss of scholarships amounting to 31 is put up against a scandal that was all hat and no cattle, ultimately resulting in a loss of only nine scholarships…
December 22nd, 2014 at 10:35AM
“T]here was foreshadowing of tragedy a decade in the future, when … one of [football coach] Butch Davis’ disciplinary measures was to force players to give up their guns” sadly one can see this applying to US politics writ large, imagine how this sort of phrase would play in the Bible-belt…
December 22nd, 2014 at 11:33AM
And after his time at Miami Butch Davis was hired by the University of North Carolina. Davis’s lawyer says a trustee assured him that he could recruit anybody he wanted, because “a system” was in place to keep players eligible. We know how that worked out.
December 22nd, 2014 at 8:02PM
The “Davis cleaned up Miami”story line is nonsense.