“Today Auburn does not have to take a back seat to nobody academically or in sports, especially in football, and a big part of the reason is Bobby Lowder.”

… goes to the University of Alaska, for refusing to talk about accusations of plagiarism against the dean of students, one of whose jobs was “enforcement of the university’s plagiarism policy.” The dean has just resigned, as it happens, and that’s the end of the matter.

.. slavishly imitates the Ivy League.

Fired.

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The Petrino valedictories are already rolling in.

College football is better off this morning than it was the day before. We don’t get to say that very often about the dirtiest sport in the country, do we?

Readers sometimes wonder why University Diaries spends so much time on big-time university sports. It’s the dirtiest sport in the country, kiddies, and it’s happening at America’s universities.

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And as with the beaten-to-a-pulp-by-football-players problem at Colorado State, don’t even bother wondering about the reputational damage (though read this – you’ll enjoy it.) Just think about how much money it’s going to cost the University of Arkansas. Petrino “seems to be leaning in … [the] direction” of a lawsuit; the woman on his motorcycle might want to try her hand at a lawsuit too; there’s the cost associated with a new coach, who will certainly ask for a premium given the shit he’s walking in to. Think of how much money this public university will pay to vet candidates for that job in order to avoid another liar who can’t control his motorcycle.

But hey. The state of Arkansas is doing a great job educating its people. No problem siphoning off that tax money.

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[B]y putting his girlfriend on the state payroll, Bobby Petrino sealed his fate. And cost himself $18 million…

UD loves that shit. She’s heard it so many times from so many university coaches over the years of this blog. We didn’t recruit the football players who beat four of our students to a pulp (the students filed formal complaints at Colorado State University today). It was those other guys…

What other guys? The coach before you? Like you don’t have a recruiting staff? Like it’s not made up of the same people who brought the school the three horsemen of the apocalypse? Like it was just that guy, the bad guy, and now you’re here, and you’re the good guy…

Oh. Is that all.

When your university’s endowment is 32 billion dollars, every penny counts. Anything that might threaten it needs to be resisted.

So you can understand why Harvard Management Company representatives refused to appear on a panel with a person critical of their management of the endowment. What if something that person said discouraged people from giving to Harvard? What would become of Harvard if its endowment sank to 30 billion?

Yes, we few, we happy few, selectively admitted to American universities because we’re sons of bitches who can tackle. Are we bad at distinguishing between on- and off-field tackling? Yes, but everyone will put up with this because we play football! If the university that admits us has to sacrifice a few raped or beaten students to our violence… well… okay!

But it’s so unfortunate when newspapers run pictures of the latest batch of students we beat the shit out of. There they are with their eyes sealed shut and their teeth broken and shoeprints on their backs. Parents can thank the Colorado State University recruiting coaches. Parents can say a totally fucked up kid is more than worth it. Go Rams!

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While watching this interview, imagine you’re the chief financial officer of Colorado State University. Forget reputation and bad publicity and all that. Simply consider how much this is going to cost you in court fees, buyouts of athletic staff, settlements, attorneys.

The fact that some of the same players, only a few weeks ago, got into a violent fight and CSU did nothing about it is really not going to help you. Words like negligence come to mind.

A couple of updates:

1.) The University of New Mexico athletics will run a two million dollar deficit.

Reasons? All the classics: Gotta pay a vile ex-coach hundreds of thousands in buyout bucks. Nobody comes to the shitty games. Current coach costing almost a million.

Solutions? All the classics: Stick it to the students — up their fees. (Nothing says grow your fan base like the combination of a bad team, an overpaid coach, and ripped off students.) And take out a whopper of a loan.

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2.) The University of Hawaii will run a two million dollar deficit. Same as UNM.

Reasons? Same as UNM.

Solutions? Same as UNM.

— the fifth in my series of Inside Higher Ed columns about what it’s like to teach a MOOC, is here.

… will shortly be available. It’s a close reading of Sunday Morning, by Wallace Stevens.

My fifth in a series of posts at Inside Higher Education about doing a MOOC will also be published soon. I’ll link to it.

“It’s like saying, ‘I don’t like Pollock because he splattered paint,’” said Nina Rappaport, chairwoman of Docomomo-New York/Tri-State, an organization that promotes the preservation of Modernist architecture. “Does that mean we shouldn’t put it in a museum? No, it means we teach people about these things.”

Actually, disliking a local Brutalist building and wanting it demolished – see this New York Times article about townspeople in upstate New York interested in getting rid of a Paul Rudolph thing – is nothing like that. When you’re in the mood, you visit a Pollack painting in a museum. You don’t live or work in a Pollack painting. You don’t look at it every day whether you want to or not.

You don’t get to say I’m thrilled to have a job working for the city of Boston, but I’m going to work in a building I prefer.

It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to work for the FBI, but I’ll be moving into a space in the Old Post Office, thanks.

No, people feel strongly about architecture because it’s ubiquitous, inescapable, having profound quotidian impact.

Nina Rappaport can teach ’til she’s blue in the facade, but it turns out that no one likes to be brutalized.

… from the European Union.

“[One and done] makes a travesty,” said [the head of the NCAA], “of the whole notion of student as an athlete.” One might call that poetic justice since for nearly a century colleges have been making a travesty of the notion of athlete as student.

Why does anyone give a shit whether great athletes (“most basketball and football players who wind up in the pros had little or no interest in going to college in the first place”) go to college for a year — or, as is horrifyingly proposed lately, two?

[C]ollege basketball doesn’t depend on the existence of the pros, but the pros could not exist without the colleges. Not only does the NBA pay not a dime in player development, it has always benefitted enormously from the fact that its best players were already household names by the time they were drafted. It costs the NBA nothing to wait another year or two to get the players and works much to their advantage if they’re even more famous when they put on an NBA uniform.

And American universities? Why would they want to go from one and done to two and through?

With so many players leaving school so soon to go to the pros, the appeal of the game has eroded. Regular-season college basketball TV ratings and attendance have been slipping now for several years.

A marriage made in heaven:

… Note that one never hears about the NCAA and NBA getting together to make pronouncements on this subject; that would seem too much like collusion. One might call their relationship, as Dana Carvey’s Church Lady used to say, conveeenient. After all, there’s no need for conspiracy when both parties are in agreement.

Allen Barra, The Atlantic.

… goes on, with the former Evergreen State University professor skipping out on his big ethics fine from the state of Washington. He stole lots of money from Evergreen State and now seems to have departed the scene, with Washington’s hapless Executive Ethics Board vaguely on his tail.

He’s even been able to sell his condo, so Washington can’t recover that money either.