UD‘s pal Dan Kane thinks it’s time for the University of North Carolina to recall – in a four-part series – its august academic history.

WSU COACH UNHAPPY WITH POLICE ARRESTING HIS PLAYERS

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Unhappy coach
Left all alone
Playing to the press
Playing warden to your team
You are trapped in recruitment
Of your own device
And you can’t believe
What it does to me
To see you
Crying

Unhappy coach
Fly fast away
Don’t miss your chance
To field another team
You are dying in a prison
Of your own device

UD‘s university found itself with a basketball coach accused of verbally and emotionally abusing players. After a brief investigation, it has fired him. Background here.

No doubt Lonergan is considering a lawsuit.

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Duh.

… has died.

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UD has spent decades quoting lines from “Who’s Afraid.”

Martha: You’re going to regret this.

George: Probably. I regret everything.

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George: I didn’t make her throw up.

Martha: What, you think it was sexy back there? You think he made his own wife sick?

George: Well, you make me sick.

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Ah hell. Just go here. They’ve got some great ones.

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[It is] not valid for a critic to criticize a play for its matter rather than its manner — [doing that represents] a type of censorship. To give an extreme example, … if a man writes a brilliant enough play in praise of something that is universally loathed, … the play, if it is good and well enough written, should not be knocked down because of its approach to its subject. If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme… In the thirties a whole school of criticism bogged down intellectually in those agitprop, social-realistic days. A play had to be progressive. A number of plays by playwrights who were thought very highly of then — they were very bad playwrights — were highly praised because their themes were intellectually and politically proper. This intellectual morass is very dangerous, it seems to me. A form of censorship. You may dislike the intention enormously but your judgment of the artistic merit of the work must not be based on your view of what it’s about. The work of art must be judged by how well it succeeds in its intention.

No, I don’t suppose you’ll find this under Educational Mission on Washington State University’s welcome page, but students there are beginning to sense what’s up. Of course WSU’s athletics deficit is in the trillions, and of course they’re raising undergraduate student fees like mad and trying to fudge the numbers – that’s life in these here States.

But the question is whether WSU students will ever – in sufficient numbers – comprehend what’s being done to them. The grown-ups want to put on games. The young’uns don’t go to the games in great number. They have schoolwork. The grown-ups like to be invited to the president’s box during games, where they can get tipsy with him and talk money. The students wonder why they’re paying for the president’s box.

The sight of young people remonstrating with adults for the adults’ irresponsibility is strange and unseemly. But there you are.

As students and as an editorial board, we believe this proposed fee sets a precedent that students can be charged every time a university department goes into the red.

No matter how costly the fee, students should not have to pay extra due to poor budgeting by any department, let alone Athletics… [W]hy are students being asked to foot the bill for [the AD’s] budgeting decisions?… [W]hy is [he] spending money before he has cash in hand? … This fee does nothing to improve the education of WSU students, many of whom choose not to attend any sporting events and most of whom are not student athletes.

As an editorial board we believe imposing an athletic fee on the general student population is unfair to students and rewards financial irresponsibility. Schulz and Moos shouldn’t have to charge students to fix the Athletics deficit.

But sit tight, kiddies! We haven’t yet heard from the Cannabis and Liquor Board!

Other revenue sources included in the plan are doubled donations from the Cougar Athletic Fund by 2019, totaling $2 million in that year; beer sales in Martin Stadium, though the Liquor and Cannabis Board has yet to approve this; and increased single-game and season ticket sales for football and men’s basketball.

Once they approve beer sales (can marijuana be far behind?) you’ll forget about all your money worries.

In ten years or so, the university will be selling propofol at the games.

… eventually. Until that time, gutter-school University of Kentucky’s football coach Mark Stoops will have to content himself with a behemoth salary and a $12 million buyout – a buyout so obscene that this utter loser of a coach, playing to rapidly emptying stadiums, seems to have UK by the balls.

Stoops entered 2016 with a sense of security thanks to a whopping $12 million buyout that Kentucky, after dropping $126 million on a stadium renovation and $45 million on a new training facility, seemed unlikely to pony up and pay no matter how this season unfolded.

But one of America’s poorest states will pony up. (And it’s actually $18 million.) You know it will. When the only games going at your state university are football, basketball, bourbon, and coal, you’re going to spend what paltry resources you have on those games and nothing else. You have a proud legacy of filthy coaches, crime-ridden teams, blahblahblahblahblahblahblah to protect.

… would fail to put out red flowers.
Here’s a very encouraging sign.

This local booster cannot believe it! One Washington State University football player after another is getting arrested!

Opened the paper this morning – the electronic version of it anyway – and saw a story by Jacob Thorpe about a Washington State football player being arrested for assault. A different Washington State football player. What the heck is going on? Let’s recap for those of you who haven’t been paying attention. There was a fight this summer in which some still-unidentified WSU players were allegedly involved. No one has been charged in that incident. Yet. Then starting safety Shalom Luani missed a week after an assault arrest. And now linebacker Logan Tago has been arrested, charged with assault and robbery in an incident that dates back to early June. Really? You thought Hangover II was bad, this is worse. And, in our version of Hangover III, we’ll also say the same thing we said when Luani was arrested. This has to stop. Again, we don’t have any idea of veracity of these charges. That has to be determined by the court system. But just the idea of high-profile athletes being even peripherally involved in such incidents makes us shudder.

Just the idea! Even peripherally!

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And when you’ve got those guys, and Mike Leach, and all, how can this be happening? Another shocker.

This University of North Carolina student (yes! UNC again – talk about scandal fatigue) – the student UD quotes up there – isn’t quite up on the M.O. of big football schools, so UD will help her. Listen up, oh latest victim.

Football schools are looking for big mean bruisers to play on their football team. Not all bruisers are nasty off the field, but some are, and football schools tend not to care much about off-field behavior. If Richie Incognito beats up a few Nebraska students, BFD. Put a guy like that on a campus full of wussses and they’re bound to irritate him at some point. As for coeds… are you kidding me? There are athlete dorms in this country which have been converted to whorehouses.

There are costs to winning, see. Students are of course obliged to pay the monetary costs. But there’s also surgery on that dislocated jaw (a player didn’t like the way you looked at him) and a lifetime of humiliation and rage because the school made fun of you when you claimed a player raped you.

Not that there aren’t costs for the school itself. Lawsuits galore from many injured parties. Ten million dollar buyouts to make foul sadistic cheating coaches go away. I could go on.

This latest UNC outrage will, UD reckons, be a big story. This blog will follow it every step of the way.

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UD thanks David and Ken.

Featuring many of the schools we’ve come to know and love at University Diaries.

[T]he deployment of Irish Naval vessels which began in May 2015 with the LE Eithne to be followed by the LE Niamh, LE Samuel Beckett, LE Roisin and LE James Joyce, was an important element in Ireland’s response to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean.

… and makes her wonder what Joyce and Beckett would have made of it.

Now you can do this on campus as well as off! Y’all come down.

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Our students’ safety and well-being are paramount at the University of Texas.

SWAT officers ordered the suspects to come down with their hands up.

“Seeing that in West Campus is really just alarming,” [a student] said. “I saw the guns on them and the shields, so I was pretty terrified.”

Well, hold onto your hat, UT student! Booze, frats, and guns galore: Life of the mind, Texas.

A fight broke out on a field between opposing local college football teams.

Big deal. Happens all the time.

One of the players punched a referee trying to break up the fight.

Rarer, I grant you. But in the lovely world of football/soccer, not all that rare.

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Truly rare is the statement just released from the referee puncher’s junior college. Let’s have a look.

After closely reviewing video footage and interviewing those involved and outside witnesses, [Mt. San Antonio College] maintains that the student-athlete, Bernard Shirmer, unintentionally hit the referee. During a disagreement after a play, numerous people surrounded him and pulled him away from the opposing player. Out of frustration, Mr. Shirmer struck himself on the helmet, a habit he often does to calm himself down. In doing so, he inadvertently hit the referee and initially believed someone else had done so. Mr. Shirmer expressed deep remorse about the incident and any harm to the referee.

Talk about playing defense! When interrupted while fighting people, our lad calms himself down by hitting himself on the head. (Cue Monty Python.) Unable to find his own head, however, our player found himself hitting the referee, though in a strikingly dissociated moment, he was convinced someone else was hitting the referee. He’s really sorry about it now.

In an effort to give their students the best education possible, the McKinney (Texas) School District is building a $70 million football stadium.

… Melnyk.