[Indiana State Police recently] executed a search warrant at his apartment and reported finding a Colt .45 handgun, 47 grams of cocaine, 13 grams of heroin, three half-smoked blunts and $920 in cash…
“[Antonio Allen] will practice tomorrow,” [Indiana State football coach Mike] Sanford said Wednesday.
A voice in a comment thread grapples with the latest mega-scandal at Rutgers University. (The football team boasts both an armed invasion gang and a coach who allegedly puts pressure on professors to pass players who have flunked courses.) The commenter attempts to argue that a thing which drains millions of dollars from a university’s budget has really nothing to do with the university. Hm.
If you actually show up for the emergency meeting about your criminalized football team and the man who recruited it, it’s liable to be embarrassing. Reporters will almost certainly ask you for a comment, the way they did ol’ Martin up there. And what can you say?
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UD found a great comment – she recommends board members use it, or something like it – in this comment thread:
This is dumb, can we move on, this has zero impact on the academic integrity of the average student at Rutgers, stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 players.
What’s great about this comment is that its player list can be easily expanded as more are arrested. In fact the current number is six, not five, so depending on when the board member uses it she can add numbers to reflect the latest total…. Stop blowing it up because of 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or even ten players.
Like Yeshiva University’s Richard Joel, Robert Barchi of mega-scandal school Rutgers is essentially a rich guy who wants to be left alone to attend corporate board meetings with people like himself. He doesn’t wanna know from his school’s massively catastrophic overspending on athletics, and he certainly doesn’t wanna threaten his classiness (doctor, university president, corporate seat holder) by grubbing around with lowlifes like sadist coach Mike Rice and recruiter-of-criminals coach Kyle Flood. (The governor of the state has expressed a close variant of this approach: “I certainly have a lot more important things than worry about what wide receiver is suspend[ed] for a few games recently. Being governor of New Jersey and running for president is a little more important than that.”)
So as per usual, as the fact of his football coach having recruited a bevy of armed home invaders becomes national news, Barchi’s remaining above the fray.
In this he represents – as you know if you read this blog – one of the, er, dominant typologies among jock school presidents.
Some JSP‘s are totally happily down and dirty with their having to devote their entire tenure to football and basketball scandals (these include not only … problematic players and coaches, but also regular gigantic buyout payments and litigation costs when coaches are fired or leave or whatever, plus other pesky matters like the new stadium that fucked the institution’s budget but good and sits empty because no one attends games, post-game student riots, drunk and disorderly tailgates, that teensy academic scandal over in communication studies, etc., etc.). But some JSP‘s, like Barchi, come to the job with a sense of themselves incompatible with, say, spending days desperately lobbying the state legislature for alcohol sales in the stadium. They just don’t see themselves as liquor shills, and you’re not going to get them to do this sort of thing, however much money the empty stadium is hemorrhaging. He’s a high-ranking academic officer, dammit, and there are certain duties he will not perform.
But if, on your presidential daily rounds, you refuse to visit your school’s field of dreams, its denizens are going to feel offended. Like this guy. He’s really pissed with the president, and he’ll tell you why.
First, though, he wants to share a photograph with you. Granddad Flood cradles an awed baby in his arms right after a win on the field!
Okay, now that we’re in the Coacha Inconsolata mood, let’s roll.
The writer begins by quoting another local scribe shocked at Barchi’s refusal to help Coach Flood out of this latest mess:
Ask President Robert Barchi to step in and help? He can’t even pretend he likes the big-time athletics part of his job…
How can he not like the big-time athletics part of his job? What’s not to like?
And now the writer, noting the fact of Barchi having left Flood to twist slowly slowly in the wind, expresses his incredulity:
The president of the university – the president of a school embroiled in all sorts of negative publicity, with a coach who is the most visible face of said university – hasn’t spoken with the coach about the latest issue? Really?
Football’s the front porch, which means coach is the front face, and if you’d just rather not deal with that, if you prefer a sense of yourself as resident in a cloister rather than a flophouse with a wraparound porch, you’re going to avoid the coach.
Now the writer quotes another outraged Rutgers fan.
[T]o leave Coach Flood facing the media alone for the crimes by students and student athletes announced this week just isn’t right… Rutgers is the size of a small city and will have its bad elements who should be disciplined and prosecuted as appropriate.
The pertinent crime committed was the recruitment of criminals. That crime was committed by Flood alone – he being the ultimate decision-maker (you don’t actually think there are admissions committees that look at these guys, do you?). As for the bad elements, when these turn out to be not just players but coaches like (base salary close to $700,000) Mike Rice, you’re not just talking elements. You’re talking about entire enchiladas (which is why no one’s surprised that Flood also turns out to be fucking with the academic staff).
Okay, so get out your hankies – time for the Coacha Inconsolata final appeal:
Flood has been standing alone. Facing the media….alone. And representing himself, his team, his university – and mine – with dignity and forthrightness. Alone. And that is shameful and wrong.
If you’re a current student at Rutgers University, this is what you have to look back on as football season gets under way!
If you’re not a current student, apply today, and join the fun!
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1. A portion of the team is an armed home invasion gang.
Lloyd M. Terry Jr., 20, of Wrightstown, was arrested Wednesday and charged with armed robbery, armed burglary and conspiracy to commit the armed robbery.
Terry is the sixth football player at the university to be charged this month with either the home invasions or a separate assault of a student in April…
In all, 11 current and former Rutgers students are facing charges in these two cases.
2. Although the football coach (salary well over a million dollars) recruited and/or retained these players, and has even reportedly put pressure on faculty to give passing grades to one of them so as to allow him to stay on campus, he remains in good standing.
3. Although a number of Rutgers students have been assaulted by football players, you can rest assured that “university officials [have] announce[d] efforts to bolster security on campus.”
“[T]he university will begin reaching out to nearly 10,000 students who live south and west of the College Avenue Campus to offer window alarms and light timers and advise them on ways to be more safety-conscious.” Number one way: If the football team shows up wanting your stuff, give it to them.
… but the captain of Pace University’s football team has managed to squeeze a lot of striking if slightly incoherent stuff into this picture… the Confederate flag… the Ku Klux Klan… the Nazi salute…
Some students got hold of it and complained, and now Tyler Owens is suspended from the team.
I think before doing a major official wee-wee on the White House lawn, the school should … Well, as the joke about the strong brew in an Australian town has it, the koala-tea of Mercy is not strained. Give the jerk a break.
… Richard Joel steps down as president, leaving this junk bond status entity to … Well, what does University Diaries live for but to watch universities implode? Let’s see whether Zygi Wilf, for instance, transfers his attentions from running the Vikings to running Yeshiva, where he is already a trustee.
… as in real actual fact checkers… might have helped here; but, really, in a context of close to zero critical capacity in regard to contemporary American poetry, plus an eagerness for ethnic balance, what do you think is going to happen?
Ol’ Yi-Fen is refreshingly honest:
“As a strategy for ‘placing’ poems, [using as Asian name in place of my all-American name] has been quite successful for me,” [Michael Derrick Hudson] said, noting that “The Bees” had been rejected 40 times under his own name but only nine times under the pseudonym before it was printed by the journal Prairie Schooner.
And then picked up for this year’s Best American Poetry collection.
Will it make Best of the Best?
UD doesn’t think so. UD notes that the poem and the poet have given the poetry world major tsuris. Yi-Fen Chou Michael Derrick Hudson looks headed for inclusion in Least-Liked American Poets 2016.
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A far more elaborate Asian-author hoax is discussed here (the discussion includes a quotation from Margaret Soltan UD SOS). It’s also mentioned here, in connection with this latest Let’s Pretend.
Yet more on the Araki Yasusada hoax here. Funny how everyone’s reminded of it.
(My 2000 article on Yasusada is here, but you need to have/buy access.)
(Plus I wrote a follow-up to that piece:
“The Bicameral Mind: Response to Bill Freind’s ‘Just Hoaxing’.” Angelaki 6.3 (2001): 221-24. MLA International Bibliography. Ames Lib. 31 Mar 2008.)
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A limerick? Must I?
Okay.
I cannot help noticing how
When I put words like Yi, Fen, and Chou
At the top of my page
I become all the rage
But everyone’s mad at me now
The grill itself is divided into four sections. There’s even an observation deck from which the sausage-curious can watch Williams cook. The Big Taste Grill truck requires a space 20 by 90 feet to park and is driven by a man named Al Acosta.
… must be current Job One for the trustees and boosters at Indiana University. Jock school presidents are supposed to keep their mouths shut about rule-breaking and cheating and crime on their teams. They’re supposed to leave the We’re waiting for all the facts to come out announcement to the Athletic Director.
Can you think of anything the president of the University of Alabama has ever said?
Page One in the jock school workbook quotes Gordon Gee, veteran jock school president.
Asked whether he had considered firing [Coach Jim] Tressel, Gee said: “No, are you kidding? Let me just be very clear: I’m just hopeful the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”
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There’s something both inappropriate and pathetic about a jock school president who thinks what he says matters, and who actually lets himself get all puffed up about an athletic program that has absolutely nothing to do with him.
Indiana University President Michael McRobbie issued a blistering warning Tuesday to members of his athletic department staff, telling them player misbehavior had to stop.
McRobbie’s stern admonishment came during remarks at the department’s annual all-staff meeting, at which the president often shares his thoughts on the academic year ahead. Departing from his usual position as supportive but passive when it comes to athletics, McRobbie didn’t mince words when discussing the recent spate of off-the-field incidents that have made unwanted headlines in Bloomington.
… “What I do not want to see is any more stories of repeated student misbehavior. They embarrass the university, they embarrass all of you in Athletics, and they are a complete distraction from our primary role as an educational institution,” McRobbie said. “This misbehavior simply has to stop.”
Supportive but passive: The ideal jock school president is the iconic ‘fifties housewife, with a twist of Kay Adams-Corleone. McRobbie will soon be out on his ass.
[College of Faith] was held to negative 100 total yards against Tusculum College in Tennessee this season, an NCAA record. The final score was 71-0.
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UD thanks Andrew.
High school refs and umps are falling left and right. This tyke killed a soccer ref; this one killed … a soccer ref! But this one… I mean, haha, these two… killed… nah hell they just assaulted him give them a break… a football ump.
Football comment threads now routinely feature remarks like the one in my headline, in which the writer sweeps up our fondest, most recent, game memories into one long sentimental sentence.
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As soon as these two are out of jail, Baylor’s gonna come knocking, since the guys have demonstrated a capacity for violence our highest-profile sports factories get off on.
If, on release, they film themselves gang-raping someone, their recruitment at our very top-ranked football universities is guaranteed.
————
Ah, Texas. Special Texas coverage of a Texas event. Headline in the Dallas Morning News:
WHEN PASSION TURNS TO VIOLENCE
Ah oui, so it was love’s burning passion! There’s a thin line between love and hate, and those lads, bless them, entered the field with so much love for the game burning in their hearts… But love can lead us astray… There’s that book, Men Who Love Too Much… They should read that book…
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Thanks, Texas! We’ve made it into the international leagues. Even footballers are impressed.
UD thanks Mondo.
Playing big-time, winning football is hard enough when you’re a high school team. There may be excesses. Occasionally some of the guys are maybe gonna get excited and start forcing digital anal penetration on the new recruits. The way they did in Sayreville, New Jersey.
Playing big-time, winning football is even harder when you’re a university, which Richard Mendoza, who lives in Sayreville, is in a privileged position to understand. Mendoza goes from a setting of local games where teenagers lucky enough to make the cut are anally raped, to state-wide games where players form packs and just for the hell of it break students’ jaws. Talk about a font of wisdom. Mendoza’s been there. What does he have to share with us about football, high school, university, etc.?
We … have to understand that [Rutgers is] trying to play and move up to big-time athletics … There are going to be missteps. There are going to be kids you bring into the program who are of questionable nature. But you’re trying to win games. You can’t tell the coach, ‘Win, win, win — but never have a problem.’
Now, I’m not condoning this at all. Coach (Kyle) Flood has to deal with the repercussion of this. … He needs to answer why he’s not bringing people into the program who are great. But at the same time it’s an interesting dynamic. They want him to win but they also want him to be a great citizen; sometimes that’s a difficult road to walk.
Mendoza and his buddies, interviewed at a Rutgers game
believe that Flood’s career 24-16 record is the key reason that the arrests and Flood’s alleged meddling in a player’s academic issues are national headlines. They point to recent arrests and accusations that other programs’ players have faced, like at Alabama. “It just seems to be glorified because he’s not winning as much as these other coaches,” Mendoza said. He suggested that if the program were 8-0 at the moment, these off-field issues would not be as big a deal. His buddies nodded in agreement.
“The difference between Bobby Knight and Mike Rice? 790 wins and three national championships,” said Michael Porcaro of Scott Plains, N.J. “All the things Mike Rice did, Bobby Knight did. Bobby Knight does it, he’s the leader of men. Mike Rice is a monster.”
Rice was fired as Rutgers basketball coach in 2013 after ESPN aired video showing him mistreating players in practice.
“Not that what Mike Rice did was right,” Porcaro said. “If he worked any job, what he did would get him fired. But you know, when you’re mediocre they’re less likely to look over (something).”
It’s an interesting philosophy. You’d think it would be just the opposite – that the high-profile big winners would get noticed by everybody, rather than the under the radar losers. But Rich and the guys are saying that winning solves everything; that when you win all is forgiven.
I mean, they certainly seem to be saying that about themselves, Jersey guys, Jersey football fans. Win and who cares too much about the sort of people you recruited to do the winning. After all, as one of the guys notes, a grand transition is taking place right before their eyes:
“I think we’re going through the growing pains, going from being just an academic university to a big-time sports university. There are going to be growing pains.”
If we’re going to move Rutgers from being just an academic university to where it deserves to be, in the firmament of universities, there are going to be growing pains.
Or, as Coach Ulyanov was famous for saying: “If you want to make an omelet, you must be willing to break a few eggs.”
… courtesy of the players – or their teammates – themselves.
But don’t get too excited. It’s rather speculative at this point.
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If you’re interested in comparing this particular move from school to school, here’s last year’s best-known play:
Five football players from California University of Pennsylvania, who reportedly chanted “Football strong” as they left after brutally beating a 30-year-old man outside a popular off-campus restaurant, were arrested Thursday.
Numbers are a little shaky – UD seems to recall the U Cal number rose to eight suspended players, whereas so far the Rutgers team seems to have had five members – and of course it’s not fair to compare when one team has a numerical advantage.
But let’s say both teams had five members. The U Cal team did practically kill a guy, whereas it looks as though Rutgers was only able to break a guy’s jaw. Nor do I think Rutgers did a team shout-out of Football Strong or something like Football Strong.
But then again I don’t think the U Cal group filmed their play, while maybe we should give points to Rutgers if their guys did that.
