… in Dublin yesterday, with a friend
who’s visiting from the States.

Flagging.

UD has never gotten gated communities. She was interviewed years ago for a job at William and Mary and was quite put off when in order to attend a faculty dinner near campus she had to get past two guards at a highly secured gate.

She was also baffled. Suburban Williamsburg? Surely this couldn’t be about crime.

Then what? Why would you choose to live – pay a premium to be – gated off from the world?

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Anyway, now maybe that very same gated community gracious enough to have allowed UD in for the evening after interrogating her is facing the sort of quandary that seems to UD, er, endemic to such places. The quandary is based on a simple principle: Gated communities are, for way obvious reasons, attractive to criminals. White collar criminals (hell, any kind of criminal if he can afford it) are people who don’t want to be found. At least they’d like to make it as hard as possible to find them. What better place to live than a location where guards (armed?) make it really hard to get in?

(Urban Dictionary: Gated Community: “An amiable term describing a prison for white collar criminals.”)

So chances are that the gated community you’ve paid through the nose for because you only want to be among the best people, the most affluent people, houses more than a few folk currently being pursued by the Justice Department or creditors or tax collectors or whatever.

I guess they might be classy people. Bernie Madoff (who – I wonder why? – lived in a cozy community “hidden behind 20-foot-tall ficus hedges and steel gates“) was certainly presentable.

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Anyway. If you were John Hinckley, who comes from a very affluent family and has just been released from prison, where would you go? You’d rather not be bothered by reporters and sundry gawkers, and you’d like to live in the style to which you had become accustomed before you destroyed the life of James Brady and almost killed the president. Hinckley’s mother – presumably no more eager to deal with the curious – has lived in gated Kingsmill for years. And now, as a resident of this snug little enclave, you get to be thrown in with John Hinckley in a very special intimate way – in the way of small village life.

If you follow University Diaries, you know that her response to the recent spate of banning confessionals is why did it take you so long. But anyway.

Our theme today is the way our universities’ love of football leads them astray, breaks their hearts, and damn near kills their students.

Mad about the boys, some universities import major league bruisers to campus, encourage their violent tendencies (Sign in the football players’ cafeteria at the University of Oregon: EAT YOUR ENEMIES), and even teach them to attack people as a team.

Of course the attack-objects the universities have in mind are opposing players, but ol’ UD has been following university football long enough to know that some players – some groups of players – have vision issues and cannot distinguish between on-field behemoths and skinny twerpy fellow students. If they’ve got a violent coach (we read about one of these about every two weeks) these players are going to be that much more inclined to just go ahead and beat the shit, en masse, out of everybody.

I mean, take a notorious head case coach like Mike Leach. (I’m not gonna rehearse his disgusting history of coaching violence here cuz I ain’t got the stomach for it. Put MIKE LEACH in my search engine and go to town.) Apparently six or more of his Washington State University players last Saturday started throwing lit fireworks at fellow WSU students at a party, and when some students objected, Mike’s guys – teamwork again! – sent all their jawbones flying and brains concussing (Leach himself has quite the history with player concussions).

SING IT WITH ME!!

Too many broken jaws have fallen on the pavement
Too many concussed sons have sued the school for millions
You lay your bets and then you pay the price
The things we do for love, the things we do for love.

They interviewed the father of one of the injured.

[A]fter police make an arrest, he intends to file criminal and civil charges against the individuals responsible for his son’s injuries.

“It’s obviously an unfortunate event. The irony is that my son has always been a WSU football fan. He ran the field when they beat Oregon last year,” Rodriguez said. “When somebody is down on the ground and you kick them in the face, that’s a huge character flaw and it shouldn’t be tolerated by any football program.”

Tolerated? The capacity to kick people in the face when they’re lying unconscious because you sucker punched them is … well, it’s Job #1 at big-time university football, ain’t it? I mean, ain’t that just the kind of guy you’re after when you’re recruiting? Do you think Nebraska had no inkling of psycho Richie Incognito’s … tendencies? They recruited him for them.

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

So. Let’s compare pricing. UD‘s friend John sends her word that the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (already a shining example of what football can do for your school) is going to have to pay about a million dollars in damages and expenses because of their most recently concussed student … and to make things worse, the four guys involved had to sit out one game!

What will WSU – which is willing to pay scary Mike Leach millions and can have no qualms about peeling off more bills on behalf of his violent squad – what will WSU have to choke up to make this go away while keeping the firecracker guys on the field? We’re told at least six players (the WSU newspaper says “between five and twelve“) were involved in one way or another, and there’s also apparently lots of video of the event available to police and lawyers … I’m gonna say about a million even for each of the players, so let’s say seven million… Then there’s WSU’s own attorney fees… And the humongous raise Leach is going to demand for having recruited such amazing players… so make that another two million directly arising from these events…

UD‘s going to predict that WSU will spend another few million on a radical revision of its student orientation program. WSU cannot help but have noticed that at certain other football schools students do not sue when players fuck them up. These students understand that physical injury is part of the price you pay for a really strong football program. Whether rapees or concussees, they understand that you must sacrifice for the team. At schools like WSU, where the word has not yet gotten through, change must start with new students. As part of their introduction to the culture of the school, and to the expectations the school has of them, they need to meet with students from violence-tolerant schools to understand the basis of tolerance, and ultimately to sign pledges releasing their university from any liability that might arise from a player rampage.

UD will close with the most important question of all: If seven of your football players – and maybe some of your best football players – have been suspended from play, what effect will this have on your win/loss ratio?

Here’s what UD has learned about this issue from prior cases. At its worst, a multi-player setback can indeed allow you to lose games. But it’s just as likely to inspire the sort of solidarity and sympathy that make your remaining guys play all the more fiercely.

———————-

Update: The real fun is when the details come out!

For every weapon used, add a hundred thou to Coach Leach’s raise this year.

So – fireworks, yes. But here’s another:

[T]he group had been causing trouble – prying off pieces of a wooden railing…

You gotta figure they used those pried-off slabs as blunt objects as they beat the Washington State University students senseless. Another hundred thou for Leach.

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From the comments section on one of a thousand articles about WSU’s football players:

So why don’t your players go six on one against another college kid who was just asking them to not throw fireworks at people…

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This incident spells nothing but trouble for the WSU football program. Not only is it likely that players will be criminally charged for the assaults, it is also likely that other players will be called as witnesses regarding what led up to the assaults and who participated in inflicting the injuries. This can only create turmoil within the program, disrupt team unity, and divide loyalties. A poisonous atmosphere that will make coaching the team more difficult and success on the field more problematic.

[Yes, but UD is optimistic that the lawyer for the player who sucker-punched a student then repeatedly kicked his head while he was unconscious will successfully argue self-defense. Those Washington State juries do love their football.]

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[Still, some of the locals do have a solid sense of justice.]

Whoever kicked the kid on the growned and who ever broke the kids jaw should probably be kicked off the team.

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Hopefully we’ll see a reprise of Leach’s punishment tactic of locking players in closets.

[Yes, Leach is famous for having done that. The player was concussed at the time.]

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Leach is famous for recruiting that kind of player.

[Yup. Also famous for doing that.]

*****************
UD thanks John.

While there, UD visited the family brick.

And her father’s brick.

In rain and one hundred degree heat

everything grows. Like lawn mushrooms.

Nir Uriel has been named the Rabbi Esformes Professor in Medicine, the University of Chicago announced last week.

The announcement coincided with another one, from the Department of Justice, about Esformes’ son, who has been arrested for the largest health care fraud case in American history.

The father gets double billing with the son in many press accounts, since Rabbi Esformes established the family nursing home business (rumored to be filthy for every one of the years Esformes has denominated the University of Chicago’s most distinguished medical school faculty) which his son merely expanded to its current scope.

I can understand the respect and esteem of one of America’s most corrupt political bodies.

But is UD‘s old school so hard up that it needs to slap these names on its faculty?

[Senator Tim] Kaine quotes W.B. Yeats a lot … most recently when talking about the Syrian refugee crisis where he pleaded that ISIS was the enemy not the refugees.

… “Yeats wrote [The Second Coming] after World War I, surveying the wreckage … [A]nd he expressed a real concern about the state of society at the time because what he noticed was … ‘the best lack all conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'”

Trump’s dominance politics, his chickenhawk machismo, remains under threat from avenging female angels — the very same sort of women who, during Argentina’s Trump years, gathered in city parks and publicly shamed the generals.

The latest attack comes from the mother of Christopher Stevens, the envoy killed in Benghazi. In a letter to the New York Times, she writes:

As Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s mother, I am writing to object to any mention of his name and death in Benghazi, Libya, by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party.

I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection. I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign.

Stevens’s mother seems to have tired of watching his body picked over by an obscene predator. She asks that it stop.

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

But it won’t. Free speech and all.

By and all I mean that a man missing both mind and heart will be unimpeded by this sort of appeal.

On the contrary, this expression of anguish will excite him to new depths of depravity.

But GW’s coach, who happens to be a friend of mine? Abusive? Gimme a break. Total crap. Didn’t happen. And if something maybe did happen, the players are pussies.

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A bunch of jock-buddies of Mike Lonergan promise us up and down that it’s all lies and there’s much more going on at GW but they’re not in a position to share it with you but when the real story comes out you’ll see it’s all crap.

It appalls her, and if you put endowment in her search engine, you’ll find years of UD being appalled.

These endowments are a classic rich-get-richer phenom, in which a hedgie, say, decides the best thing to do with his or her hundreds of millions of dollars is to give them to Harvard, so that Harvard’s endowment can go from $35 billion to $35 billion plus. To make matters worse, schools like Harvard hoard their endowments.

You don’t have to be Peter Singer to know that this is an unconscionable use of money.

Malcolm Gladwell has begun podcasting about how disgusting it is that “the biggest donations go to institutions that already have endowments larger than some countries’ gross domestic products.” Good.

Trump smiling is not a common sight. The scowl is easier to draw. I’ve noticed Trump has put on weight the last 10 years. I hope if he is elected, that trend continues. It’s natural to draw rich and powerful people nice and portly. I’m also hoping the job stress will cause him to lose hair, which will make his combover more pronounced and more fun to draw.

He told [one player], in front of the team, he should transfer to a “transgender league,” multiple players said.

At some universities, basketball coaches just go ahead and call players cunts or fags. At UD‘s GW, the coach allegedly goes that extra mile, lifts his comment above cliche, looks for a fresh way to say it…

Speaking of saying, though… Faced with some pretty persuasive evidence that GW’s got a real angry paranoid at the helm (don’t make his daughter cry), pulling down one of the highest salaries on campus (Don’t know how much. Will guess. Around $500,000? With this and that, could be a lot more.), UD‘s institution is abundantly not talking.

[GW’s Title IX coordinator] did not return an email, and a school spokesman said he was not available to comment. Interim Provost Forrest Maltzman declined to comment through a spokesman. Despite repeated requests, the school made no officials available for interviews. The school declined to answer questions about its inquiry into [Mike] Lonergan, or even acknowledge it, saying it does not comment on personnel issues as a matter of policy.

——

Brian Sereno, the executive director of athletics communications, did not immediately return the [GW] Hatchet’s request for comment.

——

Hokay! Get the message!

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Gets a bit colorful now, and UD knows that her readers are sensitive souls. So – SELF-ABUSE WARNING.

Five current and former players said Lonergan told players [GW Athletic Director Patrick] Nero requested the practice tapes so he could masturbate while viewing them in his office. The players said Lonergan also told them Nero had engaged in a sexual relationship with a member of the team. Players said they found those comments to be shocking and offensive, with no grounding in reality.

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You’re expecting some concluding words of wisdom?

Oh, go ask Bobby Knight and Mike Rice and the rest of them. They’ll tell you what it takes to win.

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Actually, UD does have some words of comfort for GW, as this story rapidly goes viral.

You know you’re one of the big boys when a whacked out scandal about your allegedly whacked out coach hits the mainstream media. You cannot buy the sort of publicity the school is about to get. Think of what that Saturday Night Live thing about Mike Rice did for Rutgers (start at 1:00)…

(Lonergan recently turned down a job offer from the selfsame Rutgers. People there seem to think they, uh, dodged a bullet. A second bullet.)

But okay look let’s take that last bit out of its parenthesis so that UD can share with you the following thought. This country is close to hiring as head coach a man just like Rice and Knight (Knight was in fact invited to speak at the Republican convention) and (allegedly) Lonergan and the scads of other abusive and twisted university coaches UD has followed over the years of this blog.

Every time Donald Trump steps on the brutality gas he wins more votes. Every time coaches step on the brutality gas they win more games.

It is quite obviously the way you win.

Because for every one sadist, there’s apparently one million masochists.

I have no idea what to do about it. Just noting it.

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Here’s a tweet:

Don’t know why coaches and schools refuse comments in these situations.

So yeah it’s odd and dumb to say nothing even as the story goes really really big. UD will tell you, if, like this guy, you don’t know why there’s this initial silence, what’s going on.

Think lots of moving parts. As we speak, an extremely large and complex institution is gathering and consulting with amazing numbers and types of people. Lawyers. Public relations experts. Players. University spokespeople. Administrators. Coaches. Trustees. Boosters. Atlantic 10 people. NCAA people.

You better believe that Lonergan is also lawyering up like mad. People like Lonergan are not in the business of losing. Lonergan is just like the Ur-Lonergan, who says

“We’re going to win so much. You’re going to get tired of winning. you’re going to say, ‘Please Mr. President, I have a headache. Please, don’t win so much. This is getting terrible.’ And I’m going to say, ‘No, we have to make America great again.’ You’re gonna say, ‘Please.’ I said, ‘Nope, nope. We’re gonna keep winning.’

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And all of this is taking place in the typical university context of interim provosts and ever-rotating deans and presidents who have just announced they’re leaving. Yet you need one strong singular voice in crises like these. It’s gonna take a bit of work.

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But wait, UD! Wait!

How did it happen?

Okay, so here’s the drill. Ambitious university is all agog because it’s got a respectable basketball team that brings in fans and revenue and attracts media attention. Sure, they’ve heard reports that suggest the coach may be el mayorly crazed motherfucker, but what coach isn’t? Bobby Knight threw chairs at people and today he’s an elder statesman. Florid complaints start to come in from the players, but it’s just a few malcontents and anyway when they get truly pissed they leave the program. Problem solved.

And now the new amazing contract with all that money, and the wins, and the adulation, have, let’s speculate, made the coach feel his methods are brilliant and he can get away with anything (see Coach Trump). His behavior maybe becomes so bizarre that a critical mass of players finally goes public with the problem.

The university now desperately needs a run and gun game, but because they’ve been in denial all they can do is dribble while Rome burns.

… choices…