Now see, that’s good. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to read the newspaper, note disastrous academic scandals that have exactly the same M.O. as stuff going on at your campus, and alert academic authorities.
John Blanchard was a senior associate athletic director at the now-notorious University of Carolina Chapel Hill, and he has said, in an interview with some of the many people reviewing that sorry school’s decades of academic fraud (a fraud only uncovered by a very determined local newspaper), that he did just this. He said look at POS Auburn – do we really want to be like them?
But although Auburn was discussed, nothing came of it. The head of UNC’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies continued proliferating bogus courses for athletes, exactly the way Auburn’s chair of sociology, Thomas Petee, did.
Actually, UNC went further than Auburn. It hired a sports agent, with ties to current players, to teach a course.
There was talk about how environmentally friendly the structure would be and how, included among the luxury suites and private boxes, would be recruiting areas, not just for athletic officials, but for department heads who wanted to impress upon potential faculty or students how great the university is.
Faculty recruitment at the proposed new Colorado State football stadium.
… if you need a little pick-me-up about university football, complete with excited invocations of ‘shirtless boys,’ read this. Its title is It All Begins With Football, and ain’t it the truth. This one little essay will put all your angst right in the shade and get you pissing your pants all over again for the team.
… would wait a decent interval before the it had nothing to do with Auburn football bullshit started up. But here it is, bright and early Monday morning:
This is not a sports story. It has a sports element, but it is not a sports story.
As such, it is not a reflection on college athletics or Auburn specifically. It is a reflection on our society…
Auburn football players, past and present, were involved, but that is not the story. The story is that young people have had their lives snuffed out far too soon. The story is that we as a society have issues that need to be addressed.
… The sadness and anger that is being expressed today, the questions that are being asked, should be focused [on] the loss of lives, not that some of those involved, some of those who died, used to play college football. To make the sports angle the focal point of this story is to miss the greater issue at hand.
If you’ve read University Diaries for awhile, you know what I call this tactic: Going Cosmic. This thing that happened, this problem that confronts us, can’t be understood (the writer uses the word ‘senseless’ four times in his senseless opinion piece) or even in a modest way solved. No, no… it’s society, society, society.
It doesn’t occur to this fool that Auburn is a society, a self-enclosed world designed to generate bad outcomes. Its board of trustees is full of former Auburn football players. For decades the school was for all intents and purposes run by Bobby Lowder, a football-obsessed trustee. Cheating is endemic – player payments, bogus courses, you name it.
You want to understand the heart of Auburn society? Here’s an ESPN writer:
Here’s what we say to athletes from a very young age: Here’s a scholarship for excelling at a violent game, here’s fame for excelling at a violent game, here’s a chance at millions for excelling at a violent game. We reward young, immature people for excelling at a violent game and then, when that violence crosses over the constantly moving line of what’s socially accepted, we all jump back and gasp in faux horror like total phonies and call for drastic action.
Senseless! Tragic! Society’s to blame! Or, to quote again from this unconscionable local opinion piece: “What’s the world coming to?”
Oh Lordy Aunt Bee yes what’s it coming to??? I declare I need smelling salts.
*******************************
Tons of these coming in now. Just a senseless random event having nothing to do with Auburn’s football culture.
This writer is particularly pissed that an article in the New York Times about the murders quotes someone suggesting that “guns and marijuana appear to be a part of the culture around the Auburn football program.”
*********************************************
Auburn football and guns? Nah.
We find one faculty member, and one administrator, to set up a system of bogus independent studies for our football and basketball players. The faculty member pretends to have taught these courses to the athletes, the students keep their traps shut, and the administrator signs off on everything. The players stay eligible without any university-related distractions from their games, the professor gets all kinds of salary bonuses for working so hard for the athletic program, and everyone’s happy.
It’s happening at a big sports school near you. The only reason my title singles out Auburn, Binghamton, and UNC is that these jerks got caught.
You’d expect some statement from the president, but schools like Auburn don’t really have presidents. Just coaches.
… seems to have scared the University of North Carolina into doing something about its rancid football program. They’ve fired the coach.
… is arrested for a chain of pharmacy thefts. Twenty years old. A freshman.
Seattle-area basketball star Tony Wroten will be allowed to enter the University of Washington – but only if he passes his final semester Spanish class, the Seattle Times reported Thursday… The Seattle Times reported the Athletic Director at Garfield High School, Jim Valiere, gave Wroten and classmate Valentino Coleman ‘C’ grades in an independent study Spanish class. But the class never met, didn’t have a textbook and had no coursework...
… Thug U, but the University of Miami – the original Thug U – still shows you how it’s done.
University of Miami linebacker Ramon Buchanan, who was arrested early Friday morning in Coconut Grove, allegedly told a Miami police officer, “I’m a UM football player and I don’t give a [expletive] what you do. I’ll get out of it. [Expletive] the police.’’
Details.
And after all, writes a fan, putting it in perspective, “Very different from a confirmed AK 47 shooting.”