Minnesota: Not just rape: Gang rape!
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Well, UM used to be a respectable school, and now that it’s going down the tubes the wise men are gathering (see this article and its various theories) to explain what happened.
The short version is of course reputational death by football. Like this:
ICK FACTOR ——-> INSTITUTIONAL FINANCIAL COLLAPSE
That is, your scummy team and its scummy coaches generate such massive alienation/disgust that the school hemorrhages money and reputation in every direction – ticket sales, coach buyouts, athletic facility debt repayment, lawsuits, SNL skits, declining enrollment, declining alumni support (see the comment in this post’s headline), blahblah.
Problem is, you can get this outcome in two wildly different ways: Through a president who’s nothing but a football coach, and through a president who is simply appalled to discover that a person of his or her cerebral delicacy is at a jock school, and who refuses to sully him or herself with the brainless assholes at Athletes’ Village. You can be Ken Starr of blessed memory (Ken’s still playing the last down); or you can be UM’s Eric Kaler. You can be President Booster (Oklahoma’s David Boren has held on the longest with this unremittingly nauseating approach) or President I’m Better Than This, Dammit! and you will still run an extremely high risk of implosion. Forces that transcend your provincial world (see this Bloomberg series) are in play, and only a genius tactician (like coach, president, chancellor, head trustee, and reincarnation of Jesus Christ Nick Saban) is going to be able to thread his way through the blockers.
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UD thanks Keith.
January 6th, 2017 at 8:13AM
I just can’t get my head around this:
“I think they want to take credit for being a Big Ten university, but in no way in the last 50 years have they made the commitment to football that’s necessary.”
January 6th, 2017 at 8:57AM
john: Yes. You’ve got to give and give and give to football.
January 6th, 2017 at 12:03PM
The powers that be haven’t given enough. Read between the lines … the discontent isn’t about scholarship athletes behaving badly, it’s about said scholarship athletes not reclaiming Paul Bunyan’s Axe.
To make matters more amusing, the gossip this morning is that another Mid-American coach with Northern Illinois ties will be the new Minnesota head coach.
His debut on the New Years Six scene … losing to Wisconsin.
January 6th, 2017 at 9:48PM
The WSJ article is behind a paywall, so I didn’t read that story. But from the others, we’ve heard from angry boosters/parents/journalists. What’s missing are the Faculty Senates, which I thought were the conscience of the academy. Or that’s what I was led to believe, otherwise what’s the point of tenure?
Sorry, but FS have, from I can tell, flat out failed. They failed to constrain the admins from pigeon dropping their students via financial aid scams. They seemingly said nothing when their uni admins decided that the most important institutional function was to become an athletic sideshow. I would have thought that all that assembled mental firepower would have been capable of mounting some defense against all that. Guess not, and if not, then again, why does tenure exist?
January 6th, 2017 at 11:52PM
charlie: Unfortunately, in most cases, tenure exists to (among other things) shield a professor from worrying/caring about the sports program.
January 7th, 2017 at 12:42AM
UD, your blog has chronicled the massive corruption and criminality taking place at unis. Part of that mechanism is the athletic department, which has, among other things, burdened the academic side with massive debt which is killing the institution. I understand the life of the mind requires a certain detachment. It doesn’t demand becoming oblivious….