Words from a University of Maryland student to emblazon on all of their advertising, yes? Come study at our university. Why? Just listen to wide receiver DeAndre Lane: I felt like I was the only one who cared about my brain.

Meanwhile, amid the heat deaths and concussions, it looks likely that the disgusting state of the football program at Maryland will take down a whole bunch of people, including the president.

It would appear the Board also believes the AD and President either knew about what was happening with the football program and failed to report it, learned of it and didn’t react accordingly, or simply didn’t do enough to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Of course, you’ve also got the Board of Trustees… Trustees, you know… AKA Regents… They’ll feed us some horseshit about having been kept out of the loop (this narrative plays out so often, there’s a game plan they all use) and, satisfied by the humiliation and possible criminal culpability of the big guys, we’ll let it go.

But mes petites. You and I know that the rah-rah trustees bear just as much responsibility for the abattoir. If any of them have any decency, they will quit the Board.

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UPDATE: The larger picture.

UD is grateful to a reader for linking her to this Guardian article about university football player deaths. Excerpts:

The sport is needlessly and heedlessly killing athletes…

Athletes are asked to do too much, too fast, for too long, performing workouts that are untethered from both the sport’s demands and basic principles of exercise science. Too many college coaches use offseason workouts as a tool for developing mental and emotional toughness – as a way to inflict physical pain and suffering, the better to push the limits of what their players are willing and able to endure.

… “Pick a stakeholder or constituency group [in college football],” [one observer] says. “I’ve had conversations over and over with them about conditioning and preventing deaths. And it’s not just me. Others have been involved as well. It just hasn’t resonated as a point of priority within the culture, period … Because it happens so often, there gets to be a little bit of acceptance of things…‘Well, football players die of heatstroke. That’s just a risk.’ I’m kind of wondering what body count we’re waiting for before we take some action.”

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And back to Maryland:

[University of Maryland football player] Jordan McNair died because his humanity was secondary to the egos of the members of the Maryland coaching staff. He died because he was physically abused in the course of what was supposed to be training for the upcoming season. He was a victim of both workplace violence and of domestic abuse.

… The death of Jordan McNair opened up a chamber of horrors for all to see. ESPN’s subsequent reporting has produced tales of almost inhuman abuse under the guise of coaching, and a reckless disregard for the health of the athletes in the name of “coaching.” Players forced to eat until they vomited because coaches thought they were fat. Verbal abuse more suited to the SERE training given to Navy Seals than to young football players in a college weight room. The Maryland football family was an abusive family, like so many others around the country. The essential dynamic is there for all to see. Jordan McNair is the kid who gets beaten to death in the third-floor walk-up after which everybody stands back and wonders how it all happened. They seemed like such a nice family.

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UPDATE: Details, kill rate.

You know how many kids NCAA football coaches have killed with conditioning drills in [the last seventeen years]? Twenty-seven. I say “kill,” because that’s what it is, when tyrants force captive young men to run themselves to death, out of their own outdated fears of weakness. Why is the NCAA tolerating this kill rate, which is unmatched at any other level of football?

… Only the NCAA tolerates – and refuses to regulate – unhinged dictators who think football has to be conditioned with sadistic extremes.

“They get to dictate these things, and we get to keep burying athletes until we make definitive changes to the culture,” said Dr. Douglas Casa, a kinesiologist who serves as CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut.