My savior, ’tis of thee,

Sweet school of Liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land of hypocrisy!

Land for a perv like me!

Where I’ll pretend I’m Jesus-y.

Let freedom ring!

But get a load of the Greek system.

The sainted Urban Meyer resigns.

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

UD thanks Wendy.

… Louisville, expecting to find – I don’t know, another standard-issue striving southern school – I was stunned by its special quality of debasement, by the absence of even lip-service in the direction of intellect and integrity. τον αθλητισμό και τον αυτο-εμπλουτισμό (Sport and Self-Enrichment) seemed its motto, as administrators stole whatever money they could get their hands on while hiring psychos to coach the guys. Louisville indeed was basically a Greek university (steal everything) with teams.

UL’s in one of its mopping up phases at the moment, trying to figure out how not to be stupid and corrupt while at the same time trying to recover some funds from … well, from lots of people, starting with its last president, who set up quite the clever scheme to reward himself and cronies with all the money that should have been going to the coach… I mean… to the students? … professors? … But the last sicko coach, whose … non-standard… recruitment and retention methods led to his firing, is suing the school for tens of millions of dollars; and of course the prez is doing absolutely everything he possibly can to harass the school and make it give up its lawsuit against him.

It’s quite an edifying spectacle, higher-thought-wise — a university spending all its time and money keeping the football games (no one goes to the games — too grossed out) going and the suits and countersuits humming. Prez tried to get the whole thing dismissed (too vague, he said), which didn’t work; then he actually tried to make it so UL had to pay his legal costs which haha also didn’t work but you know it gummed stuff up a little more so maybe Jimbo would die down at one of his many Florida McMansions (financed with UL money) at some point during pre-trial proceedings or whatever…

Jimbo Ramsey-wise, when things were good, they were very good.

Former University of Louisville President James Ramsey resigned under pressure a mere 27 days into the 2016-17 fiscal year, but he was still the nation’s highest-paid public college president that year, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Chronicle, which maintains a database of compensation received by chief executives of public and private colleges, reported this week that Ramsey was paid about $4.3 million that fiscal year — more than any of the other 250 top executives for public colleges and systems included in its review.

Ramsey made millions despite stepping down as U of L’s president on July 27, 2016, less than a month after the fiscal year began on July 1.

Don’t get no better than that, baby! Don’t get no better! Let’s see Jimbo’s successor clean up like that! Let’s just see her try!

Sing it.

Bleeding eye, sucker punch
You know that we love you
We can’t help ourselves
We love you and nobody else

In and out the league
You come and you go
Leaving massive bloodshed behind
We forgive you a thousand times

When you snap a football or make a sack
We come a-running to you
You leave half-dead women behind
There’s nothing we can do

Can’t help ourselves
No, we can’t help ourselves

… Black Market Bistro.

Seen on an early afternoon walk through
Garrett Park, UD‘s hometown.

[W]hile Acosta’s record covering up for a depraved plutocrat makes him a good fit for the Trump administration, it should disqualify him from public service.

The prez of LeMoyne-Owen stole some of her motivational speech to students from another writer, and the school has a right to be appalled and to seek her resignation – especially since she denies she plagiarized.

But the real ground for eviction lies in her source material. Instead of reaching for Frost or Thoreau or even Dave Barry, she went for Mr Shit-Eating Grin himself, Joel Osteen.

This is not Ray Rice 2.0. Maybe we need to say that plainly, because this is another video of another NFL running back being violent with a woman in a hotel. People made that connection immediately… But [Kareem] Hunt is not dragging a woman he beat unconscious across the floor.

… appears in this New York Times essay about Brutalist architecture in Poland.

Poland’s Modernist structures had, in fact, first appeared as a form of change within the Communist system, a vernacular of liberation for the country’s architects, who were finally permitted to move beyond the strictures of Stalin’s Socialist Realism. Amid the general thawing of the Khrushchev era, many of these architects — among the most prominent were Halina Skibniewska and Jerzy Soltan, the latter of whom studied under Le Corbusier — were for the first time permitted to travel to countries on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The style they adopted was largely a replica of Western Modernism.

… okay, why do I love, found objects?

Why is the tan fringed scarf
I found on my morning
pick-up-trash-in-Garrett-Park walk
— filthy, soaked, trampled in the
street beside the Saturday market —
the scarf I love the most?

Why are the black riding gloves
I picked up on a sidewalk in downtown
Bethesda the ones I wear the most?

Why is this Martha Stewart Everyday
towel, left foul and abandoned on a
bench in our town’s cool new children’s
playground by the hapless Liz, and
lifted by UD only after weeks
of abandonment, my clear favorite?

Why is this log covered in fungus,
found while walking the dog through
our forest, worthy of display?

And why is this 1982 National Geographic,
which I found in our upstate house, discarded
by some guest or other, so cherished by me
that I ordered another one for Mr UD‘s last
birthday (the original remains in the house)?

It contains an article – “The Incredible Potato” –
whose enthusiasm for the spud I found hilarious.
Throughout that stay at the house, I read
excerpts – breathlessly – to anyone who would listen.

This is my trauma
Had it from birth
This is my trauma
Grandest on earth

But this is my trauma
To have and to hold

So maybe it’s a bit of a footnote to the big fat endless domestic abuse story in professional football, but University Diaries remains amazed at the failure of universities to delete webpages boasting about their luck in having recruited men who beat women. Way back in high school, coaches knew Kareem Hunt was bad news; despite his amazing game skills, mainstream universities wouldn’t take him, and he ended up at the University of Toledo, where, judging by his hero’s page, he remains a god.

…the Washington Redskins!

Grijalva attacks Ryan Zinke
Who hits back with G.’s problem with drinky.
Each man is a schlump
In the era of Trump;
It’s hard to say which is more stinky.