Benjamin Chisolm is a University of Maryland lacrosse player who is now being called a suspect in a case of aggravated sexual battery – and it is stunning news for the College Park campus.
Prince William County Police say that on Sunday night at the Jiffy Lube Live concert venue, a 49-year-old fell asleep on her lawn and woke up to find a man lying beside her and touching her inappropriate.
Football is a religion, they say, and its god, these days, is the Godzillatron, the Adzillatron, the Jumbotron… like the deity, this massive high definition video screen with massive advertisements screaming at you from the moment you enter the stadium to the moment you leave, goes by many names…
Ever since 2009, when the University of Texas got the first one in the country, dozens of other American universities have gotten their own monster video display. The one proposed for a new stadium at the University of Nevada Las Vegas will run the entire length of the field.
What’s strange about the massively expensive Adzillatron is that everyone hates it; and indeed many people point to it as contributing in an important way to the emptying out of the university stadium. Where’d everyone go? Why are many students – even at places like the University of Alabama – not going to the games, or going but leaving early? Tons of explanations have been offered, but UD thinks that the phenomenon of the Godzillatron, while only part of the answer, is an illuminating focal point for any discussion of the terrific fiasco for which contemporary American university football is headed. Of course one has to toss into the too-disgusted-to-attend mix all the scandals – criminal, hemorrhagic, sexual, academic – plus all the overpaid coaches and castrated presidents blahblah… But the heart of university football is the stadium experience, and if that experience had been able to retain a shred of authenticity, the fiasco might have been averted.
Here’s what happens at a [Mississippi State] football game these days: 3rd & 7, we’re on defense, tie game, offense calls timeout. [Colubus Ortho Harlem shake, Kiss cam]. Everyone’s attention is drawn to the jumbotron, away from focusing on the task at hand – getting our defense pumped to stop the other team!
I don’t need a bunch of distractions. I’m there to watch a football game.
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[University of] Michigan football fans don’t just love football. They love Michigan football — the history, the traditions, the rituals — the timeless elements that have grown organically over decades. They are attracted to the belief that Michigan football is based on ideals that go beyond the field, do not fade with time, and are passed down to the next generation — the very qualities that separate a game at the Big House from the Super Bowl.
After the 2013 Notre Dame game, [our Athletic Director] said, “You’re a 17-18 year old kid watching the largest crowd in the history of college football with airplanes flying over and Beyonce introducing your halftime show? That’s a pretty powerful message about what Michigan is all about, and that’s our job to send that message.”
Is that really what Michigan is all about? Fly-overs, blaring rock music and Beyonce? Beyonce is to Michigan football what Bo Schembechler is to — well, Beyonce. No, Michigan is all about lifelong fans who’ve been coming together for decades to leave a bit of the modern world behind — and the incessant marketing that comes with it — and share an authentic experience fueled by the passion of the team, the band and the students. That’s it.
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Coach says: Thou shalt have no other Godzillatrons before me. Narcotic simulacral standardized screen gigantism is the heart of the postmodern doctrine being preached… Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled… But keep thine eye upon the Godzillatron which I have given to you and thine lip upon the fruit of the vine which also I have given unto you, and rest in the arms of the Lord forever… And yet in their ornery unpredictable way Americans are beginning to break away from the faith. They seem to be experiencing it as inauthentic. Not the true faith.
America’s adorable, folksy, opioid epidemic now has Chicago and other locales suing drug-makers for lying about the dangers of pain pills. More municipal lawsuits are on the way.
“For years, big pharma has deceived the public about the true risks and benefits of highly potent and highly addictive painkillers in order to expand their customer base and increase their bottom line,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement today. “It’s time for these companies to end these irresponsible practices and be held accountable.”
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What’s this got to do with a blog called University Diaries?
Without the pharma-sponsored labwork of university professors all over this country, this epidemic would never have worked out so well. You can’t put a price on being able to draw on the scientific integrity of universities when it comes to convincing a whole nation that it should be taking OxyContin. Without the close industry relationships forged by, for instance, the University of Washington’s Dennis Turk (updated information about Turk here; scroll down), you simply wouldn’t get the necessary information out there that you need to get out there (“100 million [Americans] … suffer from chronic pain”) (it’s true!) …
Here’s a good formulation of the problem:
This is a typical problem around the country. College demographics are changing and nowhere is that more clear that at the University of Georgia. The student body is approaching 65% women and 35% men. Higher admission standards coupled with more prestigious academic programs result in fewer legacy students. The typical Georgia student doesn’t show up for a basketball game.
The question, then, is how to reverse these trends.
… (see post immediately below this one about the University of Michigan), it doesn’t get much more cutting edge than the University of Kentucky, whose recently inked agreement with various local vendors … well, let’s have UK’s vp for commercialization tell it!
Eric Monday, UK’s executive vice president for administration, said Monday that many universities were looking to form more partnerships with the private sector, partly to make up for decreases in state funding.
In UK’s case, that could be taking an athletics sponsorship deal and enlarging it across campus. Another example, he said, would be new signs around campus. Those could be paid for by a private company, which would get advertising on the signs.
Examples? Well, UK already has an oral history project – subject, Kentucky bourbon – paid for by “the Kentucky Distillers Association and Bourbon industry.” UK already has a dorm – name, Wildcat Coal Lodge – paid for by the coal industry. So what you do, see, is you put up big brand new signs directing people to the library and to the dorm, signs paid for by bourbon and coal, and the signs got a itty bitty part saying, you know, go here to find the library or the dorm, and then a BIG ol’ part that says
COAL: CLEAN AS A WHISTLE!
or, uh…
… when it’s all about screens, it’s only a matter of time before the classroom and the stadium disappear. Why go to class if it’s about playing on your computer while some fool at the front of the room plays with PowerPoint? Why go to a football game if it’s about forced, game-long watching of football-field-length mega-screens (the famed Adzillatrons) screaming ads for used cars at you, while you wait for the people who control the home viewer’s television screen to decide those ads are over and play can resume? Why would any rational, self-respecting person continue either of these degrading and pointless activities?
Let’s be more precise. Let’s look at fabled sports school University of Michigan.
This spring, the Michigan athletic department admitted what many had long suspected: Student football ticket sales are down, way down, from about 21,000 in 2012 to a projected 13,000-14,000 this season.
The department has blamed cell phones, high-definition TV and student apathy sweeping the nation. All real problems, to be sure, but they don’t explain how Michigan alienated 40 percent of its students in just two years — and their parents, too.
Forty percent in two years. Wow. Let’s see how they did it!
1. Since the game-day experience is so wonderful, you raise “the price from $195 for six games in 2013 to $295 for seven games.”
2. “Because just about every major college game is televised, ticket holders have to endure about twenty commercial breaks per game, plus halftime. That adds up to more than 30 minutes of TV timeouts — about three times more than the 11 minutes the ball is actually in play.”
3.
While TV is running ads for fans at home, college football stadiums too often give their loyal season-ticket holders not the marching band or — heaven forbid — time to talk to their family and friends, but rock music and, yes, ads! To its credit, Michigan doesn’t show paid advertisements [most other universities do], but the ads it does show — to get fans to host their weddings at the 50-yard line, starting at $6,000, and their corporate receptions in the skyboxes, starting at $9,000 — Michigan fans find just as annoying.
Yes, advertising in the Big House does matter. Americans are bombarded by ads, about 5,000 a day. Michigan Stadium used to be a sanctuary from modern marketing, an urban version of a National Park. Now it’s just another stop on the sales train… Fans are fed up paying steakhouse prices for junk food opponents, while enduring endless promotions. The more college football indulges the TV audience, the more fans paying to sit in those seats feel like suckers.
(By the way, all of this will be okay when the University of Las Vegas builds its new football stadium with the world’s largest Adzillatron. Las Vegas is Suckers Central.)
4. While waiting for the ads to finish so those precious eleven minutes can begin to tick, fans can contemplate the AD’s “$1 million salary, almost three times what [the previous AD] paid himself — and yes, the AD does pay himself — plus [the current AD’s] $300,000 annual bonus, which contributes to a 72-percent increase in administrator compensation; not to mention an 80-percent increase in “marketing, promotions and ticketing”; and a 340-percent increase in “Hosting, Food and Special Events.”
What? What? Knock me over with a feather! You’re telling me that money doesn’t go to academics??????
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Attorneys for the plaintiffs also questioned Petr on why revenue numbers the NCAA provided Congress with show 78 percent of D-IA schools reported revenue greater or equal to the their expenses. In this trial, the NCAA contends only 18 schools showed a profit in 2012.
Bwahahaha!
Yet another determined cocksman takes over a university and kills it.
It all started with [Columbus State University] president Tim Mescon’s obsession with the school keeping pace with Kennesaw State, where he worked before coming to Columbus. Specifically, Mescon wanted to bring football and Division I status to Columbus State, just like Kennesaw State has done.
The Great Columbus/Kennesaw Contestation! Watch as one man’s obsession carries him and his school to Victory!
Adding sports did not boost enrollment.
In fact, campus enrollment has declined. Why? Online enrollment has become so popular that many “traditional” students are opting for it.
Online students do not have to pay athletics fees. So while the athletics department expenses have shot up due to adding sports, the revenue to fund them has decreased.
So just cut back on sports, right? That would be the logical answer. But the administration doesn’t want that.
GAAAAAAAH!!! CHARGE!!!!
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Lalalalalalalala.
[President Richard Joel] offered a small statistical comparison between the performance of YU’s long term investment pool since 2002 versus that of all other university endowments over this period. The comparison purports to show that the compound annual growth rate over the period was 6.3% for YU’s pool vs. 5.3% for the other university endowments, meaning that YU’s investment strategy produced superior results. But a close reading of the comparison raises disturbing questions. For example, why was 2002 chosen as the starting point for the measurement as opposed to fiscal year 2005 (the year in which, according to the article, YU’s current leadership assumed control of the portfolio and sold off more than half of the endowment’s conservative investments)? Why was the comparison made to the endowments of all other universities rather than to peer university endowments with over a billion dollars? Finally, and most troubling, the comparison is based on YU’s “long term investment pool”, which in President Joel’s words, “includes the endowment”, but apparently includes other things as well. What are they? And why didn’t President Joel just offer a simple apples-to-apples comparison between YU’s endowment and other peer endowments? The answer, not surprisingly, is because that simpler and more honest comparison would have told a very negative story: according to the NACUBO Endowment Study used by President Joel, in 2005-2013, YU’s peer endowments grew by a compound annual growth rate of 5.6% while YU’s endowment grew by only 0.37%. That’s less than the inflation rate over this period.
President Joel’s attempt to reframe the discussion as a comparison of returns is also fundamentally mistaken because the proper benchmark for a portfolio’s performance is not its nominal return but rather its “risk-adjusted” return. Riskier portfolios often produce higher results to compensate for their higher risk profile — but does that mean that YU should invest its entire nest egg in a high-risk portfolio? Ultimately, that’s the question — not a comparison of nominal returns – that needs to be addressed when examining whether YU’s leadership was reckless with its endowment money. And President Joel’s response speaks to only one small aspect of YU’s financial performance discussed in the article; he does not address, for example, YU’s massive operating deficits which, according to Moody’s, may cause YU to run out of cash next year.
We have indeed fallen very far when the President of YU responds to an article claimed to contain “half truths and inaccuracies” with his own half truths and inaccuracies. But it did not have to be this way. President Joel could instead have offered a full accounting to the community of the decisions that were made and why … He could have openly acknowledged such mistakes as were made, the lessons learned, the corrective steps being undertaken. He could have laid out a roadmap for YU’s recovery. Like the [initial] article, he could have offered facts and figures. And he could have said, “I recognize that I will have to ask our staff, students and supporters to make painful sacrifices, in part due to decisions that I helped make. Therefore, I am tearing up my employment contract, which under the current circumstances is inappropriate, and will continue to serve as President only for as long as the board wants me and with compensation that is determined by the board to be commensurate with my efforts and accomplishments.”
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A comment on the Failed Messiah blog:
[D]oes he take us for fools? If there’s no problem, why has Moody’s steadily downgraded their debt and issued warnings? Why is YU frantically selling off many apartment buildings? Why no mention of the approx. $400M in deficits over the last 5 years?
An important reminder that the gender apartheid we’re seeing in public events at British universities is nurtured before women get to British universities.
See UD‘s posts on enforced gender segregation at universities here.
Yes, it’s all guys; and this moving eulogy to what used to be a university ponders the grotesquerie of universities as settings for the ongoing drama of one’s struggle to be a man. John Shelton Reed’s opinion piece makes the point that the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill used to be a good school until a group of rich men with their manhood at stake began to stick their dicks in it.
Other famous dick-stickers are Oklahoma State’s T. Boone Pickens (the entire university lolls open to Pickens; his dicksticking into the hedge fund and death payout markets really fucked the place up, but no one cares) and the University of Oregon’s Phil Knight, who has ginned up his new pleasure palace for UO football players with huge lettered signs saying things like EAT YOUR ENEMIES.
Famed Penn State had, of course, multiple and varied dick-stickers.
If the only university arena for at-stake manhood were athletics, it would be bad enough; but as ol’ T. Boone’s hedge fund maneuver demonstrates, sports programs already rife with financial, sexual, and academic perversion are only part one. Like “Big Stones” Larry Summers, who lost Harvard over a billion dollars on interest rate swaps (“No one had the stones to stand up to Summers when it came to this high-risk strategy of essentially borrowing at Treasury rates and investing the proceeds in an illiquid long-term endowment…”), T. Boone out-balled all voices of reason at Oklahoma State and lost the school an unimaginable fortune.
Yet Harvard is so rich, long hot Larry barely made it break a sweat. Ditto for T. Boone. Bouncy bouncy. Big deal.
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Now, soon-to-be-ex-universities like Yeshiva – that’s another matter. It does matter there, because – unless at the last minute Big Berries Rennert decides to give the place a couple of billion dollars – that school is permanently post-coital. (One of the characters in Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer says to his lover, “I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked.” Insert Yeshiva in place of Tania.) Its trustees – trying to compensate for their loss of testosterone when sooooooper-macho fellow trustee Bernie Madoff went to prison – hedge funded away money Yeshiva didn’t, couldn’t, and wouldn’t ever have.
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University Diaries thinks it’s time to open the chemical castration conversation.
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Update: At-stake manhood strikes again:
Polish anxieties about who’s blowing who and who’s got the biggest dick are apparently going to bring down the government.
Student attendance at university football games is plummeting all over. Here’s a local columnist on the University of Michigan.
Hundreds of cable channels and dedicated networks ensure that practically every game is available in HDTV quality. Social media has transformed the game-day experience from a passive activity to one where fans can interact with hundreds or thousands of others in near real time.
Students are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Administrators who believe that winning will solve the student attendance problem are ignoring the cultural shift that’s taking place among the next generation of football fans.
Michigan and other traditional football powers need to offer fans a compelling reason to attend games, or the next renovation at the Big House might be a downsizing.
The cultural problem is that everything about the university football game experience is designed to be attractive to old men. The stadium experience is way retro. You fire up the Oldsmobile and sit in traffic; during the long walk from the parking lot you chew the fat with your golf buddies about the team’s glory days and about what the old guys who run the NCAA are doing wrong; you spend the game disapproving of the behavior of the whippersnappers in the student section and ogling the breasts on the cheerleaders…
As an old guy, you’re good at sitting still for long periods of time, unlike the restless whippersnappers who dance around and then leave the stadium the minute it looks as though the team will lose the game…
Given that students are abandoning university football to the point where soon the only students in attendance will be players or cheerleaders, and the only people in the stands will be horny old guys, UD proposes that universities accept this situation and make it a win/win in the following way:
Create a much larger cheerleading component, made up of the usual busty cohort plus the guys who used to play on the team. Choreograph these students to perform routines that will, uh, be attractive to your fan base.
The new football team, drawn from your university’s women students, will be modeled on what NBC Sports calls “the fastest-growing pro sports league in the nation.”
… for the University of Nevada Las Vegas —
Several resort industry officials on the UNLV stadium authority board balked at the list of taxes suggested to pay for the stadium. Some questioned why tax dollars are being considered at all.
“I don’t support the use of public funds,” said Paul Chakmak, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Boyd Gaming. “The state and the county have fiscal needs. To prioritize a stadium ahead of those seems like it’s not the right place. We all have to be responsible.”
Kim Sinatra, senior vice president and general counsel for Wynn Resorts, said, “A billion dollars is a lot of money. If we want to spend a billion dollars on UNLV, is it a stadium?”
— UD is pleased to see that a true understanding of the logic of the university football stadium is still there, and at the very highest levels:
[The university’s president] tied the stadium project to UNLV’s larger aspiration of becoming a top-tier research university…
Michael O. West, who was on the UNC faculty with [Julius] Nyang’oro for six years until 2002 and still considers him a friend, said he has often wondered why his former colleague has said nothing in his defense for years. Nyang’oro could face up to 10 months in prison if convicted.
“He is a man of patience and forbearance. Long-suffering is his strong suit,” said West, now a professor at Binghamton University in New York.
People hate professors because a professor will describe a fellow professor who spent years offering bogus courses that never met, and getting paid close to two hundred thousand dollars a year in exchange for this activity, as long-suffering.
