University Diaries » BIZARRE article in the local booster press about tanking ticket sales/attendance at University of Minnesota football games.

At no point in a long article about an insane drop in participation does the reporter even vaguely, even tentatively, allude to some of the likeliest reasons UM’s incredibly expensive newish (2009) stadium stands more and more empty.

Of course the stadium almost never filled up for football (it can seat 80,000! but they count 50,000+ as a sell-out), never made the money its boosters said it would. Goes without saying. Boys will have their big toys, and students will pay for them.

But now it’s really getting bad. Embarrassing, in fact, as cameras pan vast viewing deserts, and as the university hemorrhages money.

The reporter duly writes down what the athletics people tell her about all the shit they’re doing to make it ever so much more fun to sit in a hellhole full of troublesome drunks (UM has already desperately made booze freely available) than watch on your phone, or, best of all, not watch at all. She says nothing about a raft of player and coach sex scandals, enormous buyouts of said coaches…

Somebody needs to tell her that spending a lot of time and money cheering on really gross people and programs isn’t an attractive prospect for a lot of students and locals. You can throw all the incentives you want at people, but if your program keeps pumping out scandals (and what program doesn’t?), you’re going to keep losing your audience.

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=58986

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

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Archives

Categories