← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“I got nothin’ else. I got nothin’ else.”

If you want to understand the University of Tennessee, one of America’s most depraved locations, watch this clip from An Officer and a Gentleman.

To understand why UT protects accused rapists, hires scummy coaches who arrive on campus trailing their scummy pasts like bright streamers, puts its athletic program in 200 million dollars of debt, and in every conceivable way craps on the word university, you have to understand that for UT there is nothing else besides field games. It has nowhere else to go. It’s got nothing else. Take away ball games and you’ve got a big gaping hole that owes money to every crooked coach in America.

Why, UD has wondered for years, do the citizens of Tennessee keep paying for this? True, they live in what has long been one of the most corrupt states in America.… So maybe they’ve given up. Maybe they don’t care that the money they work for doesn’t educate their kids but keeps dirty coaches in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. In a sane world, Tennessee’s residents would have generated a popular tax revolt or two. Instead, UD envisions them – much like the depressed vodka-swilling citizens of the former Soviet Union – motionless in their houses with the tv on to some shitty UT game, knocking back bourbon.

***************

UD thanks John.

Margaret Soltan, April 14, 2016 4:01PM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=51538

9 Responses to ““I got nothin’ else. I got nothin’ else.””

  1. charlie Says:

    UD, no need to invoke the Soviet Union to find analogies for UT fans. Your description of TN inertia is unfortunately apparent on many Indian reservations, especially those in the northern Mid-west. My cousin taught briefly at Pine Ridge some years back. I guess that’s what happens when you mix despair with bureaucratic hostility…

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    charlie: It’s probably because of my Polish husband that I reach for vodka/communism analogies. But of course you’re right.

  3. charlie Says:

    I didn’t know that about Mr. UD….

  4. Jack/OH Says:

    Despair . . . bureaucratic hostility . . . inertia . . . vodka-swilling . . . knocking back bourbon . . . Soviet. How’d you guess my Ohio ZIP code?

    BTW-Tennessee, I think, is also the home of Hickok45, a You Tube guy who’s an articulate spokesman for America’s unique gun culture. Civic empowerment, a good relic of Northern English-Scots cantankerousness and distrust of government, historical and cultural artifacts, etc.

  5. charlie Says:

    Hey Jack, let me recommend something for you to read. It’s “Insurgent Workers: Studies in the Origins of Industrial Unionism.” The publisher is the UCLA Press and it’ll be very hard to find, but worth the effort. The book is a study of union insurgency during the 1930s. The part that is fascinating, imo, is what workers in Southern states were willing to do and endure, and the punishment they meted out to authority, including corp management, to get collective bargaining and industrial safety. When you see that legacy of getting off your ass and doing some god damn thing, then you have to wonder what hell has happened…

  6. Jack/OH Says:

    Charlie, thanks. A very good boss I had told me, “Respect the people who work for you. If you can’t respect them–fake it. They’re the only people you have.”

  7. dmf Says:

    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/14/university-of-california-davis-paid-consultants-2011-protests

  8. charlie Says:

    Thanks dmf, very much appreciate it….

  9. charlie Says:

    Jack/OH, your quote is what my dad said to me. “I guess I’ve got to get along with you. You’re the only kid I’ve got.”

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