Whew! Finally a credible voice has come out to deny claims that the UL basketball program hired prostitutes to capture recruits. A former player sets the record straight:
Rick Pitino… don’t need to buy any kid pussy to get him to commit to the University of Louisville.
“Football makes a profit,” some claim. To that I would say, so what? Universities could make a profit running a casino too – should they do that?
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Let’s change this to:
“Football makes a profit,” some claim. To that I would say, so what? Universities could make a profit running a brothel too – should they do that?
“On the surface, it appears Louisville just skipped a sexy hostess program and went straight to the professionals,” [Armen Keteyian] wrote. “And given the high-stakes world of college basketball recruiting – and I’m not trying to be glib about this – it makes sense. This is like Hostess 5.0.“
Is this parody of a university actually parodying a parody? Are they aware of Dana Carvey’s famous wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture parody of George Herbert Walker Bush? Having been forced by a lawsuit to release the most recent auditor’s report of their crime-ridden money pit, UL says this:
Settling the lawsuit at this juncture is the prudent course of action for the University.
Much as UD would love it if university spokesperson Mark Hebert turned out to be doing a conscious parody of a parody, she figures he’s simply unaware that the hilarious formulation he’s chosen with which to cover his school’s ass has already been made notorious.
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How do you leach millions from a university?
Gotta get you a bank account.
As part of its examination, [the auditor] tried to determine how many bank accounts existed in the name of University of Louisville, University of Louisville Physicians or any derivative. The firm requested information from all banks in a 50-mile radius. The university provided a list of 11 authorized accounts at PNC Bank, as well as one account in the name of the University of Louisville Athletic Association.
The firm ultimately found more than 20 additional bank accounts linked in some manner to U of L. They include accounts for the German Club, the U of L Sports Administration Club, U of L Parking, and more.
[The firm] also learned of several accounts linked to University Medical Associates, the previous incarnation of University of Louisville Physicians. However, Fifth Third Bank told [auditors] that they were unaware of any accounts in the name of the university.
The auditing firm later found additional accounts linked to previous entities tied to University of Louisville Physicians, according to the report.
Andrew Wolfson, The Courier-Journal:
Under her watch, …university employees have stole[n], misspent or mishandled at least $7.6 million in schemes at the health science campus, the law school, the business school and the athletic department’s ticket office.
[Provost Shirley] Willihnganz also was criticized for approving about $1 million in buyouts for former high-ranking employees, some of which included agreements not to disparage the university or its leaders.
She also was forced to apologize to faculty in 2008 for failing to act against [Robert] Felner, the education dean, despite more than 30 grievances and complaints that he had intimidated, harassed, humiliated and retaliated against faculty, staff, students and alumni.
Willihnganz said at the time that she tended to dismiss the early complaints against Felner — including a no-confidence vote by faculty — because he was a “high performer” and because the complaints came from professors and staff “entrenched in their ways and resistant to change.”
She later told faculty at a meeting that she was sorry. “Mostly what I think I want to say is people have been hurt and something very bad happened, and as provost I feel like I am ultimately responsible for that,” she said.
Felner was sentenced in 2010 to 63 months in federal prison for taking $2.3 million from U of L and the University of Rhode Island.
Ave atque vale!
… she didn’t know exactly what big ol’ scandal they were up to now… But their recent hiring of the University of North Carolina’s finest stonewaller, Leslie Strohm, turns out to have something to do with their attempting to keep the results of an audit of the “KFC YUM!” arena (UD is not making this stuff up) out of the hands of the state attorney general.
He has explained to the university that it’s in violation of open records laws, but the university (which no doubt has excellent reasons to stonewall on this) continues to withhold the document. And who better to help them do this than the pride of Chapel Hill, Stonewall Strohm herself?
A sample of local press coverage.
That’s called earning the “U of Smell” nickname. This hiring stinks.
And so now here, with the University under fire for not turning over documents related to an internal audit of potential misdoing (on a number of issues, including The Yum Center), the school has hired someone who is alleged to be adept at covering up wrongdoing.
As UD explained here, one of America’s most ghastly jockshops, the University of Louisville, has scored quite the td in recruiting one of the architects of Chapel Hill’s undoing.
Here is one of her valedictories as she leaves UNC. It appears in UNC’s newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel:
TO THE EDITOR:
It is good news that Leslie Strohm is leaving her position as UNC Vice Chancellor and General Counsel.
I had strongly recommended to the administrative review committee that her contract not be renewed, following [ex-chancellor] Holden Thorp’s unfortunate resignation. I stated that “she is incompetent, dishonest and unethical.”
Her stonewalling on releasing records about the athletics scandal has only made things worse; with better advice, Holden Thorp might still be here.
Elliot M. Cramer
Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Do keep in mind, in case UD has not said it explicitly enough, that UL’s motive in hiring her is almost certainly her protect-the-dirty-sports-program-at-all-costs M.O.
Can’t keep in mind the details of each and every dirty sports program? Type UNIVERSITY LOUISVILLE into my search engine.
But just to whet your appetite: Here’s a sample.
You wonder sometimes what it really comes down to, the sort of people and customs it creates. You wonder about the actual daily nitty gritty of university life at schools where nothing matters but sports.
I’m not talking about the big public stuff, the big five-part Sports Illustrated feature on T. Boone Pickens’ Oklahoma State University and its multidimensional pigswill. I mean the microculture – the way people talk to each other; the way they dress; the way they interact, one on one.
For that, you need two types of stories that routinely hit the news:
1. the sadistic coach; and
2. the sadistic hazer.
These two highly placed boosters carry the microculture in a way we can see, a way chronicled – since it maims people and generates trials and lawsuits – by the local and national press. Oklahoma State’s macroculture is the five-part series; OSU’s microculture is the secretary of the Interfraternity Council who pulled a loaded gun on pledges when they said they wouldn’t take a bullet for their brothers. He didn’t shoot them, but in his rage he shot out the window of the pick-up in which they were sitting. Because they obviously had no idea how serious the brotherhood of boosters was at OSU.
My post’s headline comes from a voice mail the women’s lacrosse coach at the University of Louisville sent to one of her players. The university’s system of spies had spotted a player wearing a shirt with the name of a competing university on it.
Darby, change your clothes, don’t bother coming to practice today. Do you know that I just got a phone call about you wearing a Michigan State shirt? You obviously have no idea how serious athletics is at the University of Louisville. I do not want to see your face today until after practice, but your butt better be up in my office with a Louisville shirt on your chest when practice ends.
Winston Smith would have no trouble recognizing this message. It is the functional equivalent of mandating burqas for university women.
The University of Louisville – read about its vile, all-enveloping sports culture here (scroll down) – is now enjoying national coverage of this coach and her alleged abuse of the students on her team.
Are you beginning to see how twisted these all-American settings are? Looked at from both macro and micro perspectives, the nation’s sports sluts get sicker by the day.
Scathing Online Schoolmarm reads the sports news.
Nothing says finger-lickin’ dignified like having your university graduation ceremony at KFC YUM!
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And now you got some reporter complaining about Rutgers University in this here headline:
CORPORATE SALES OF STADIUM NAMING RIGHTS FURTHER SULLIES COLLEGE ATHLETICS
First off, I think we can agree that big-time college athletics has long since reached sully-saturation, so let’s lose the further.
Second, High Points Solution is an information technology firm! That’s classy! It ain’t Kentucky Fried Chicken! Rutgers should count its lucky stars.
He’s more than reached that tipping point where accumulated institutional embarrassments demonstrate the failure of his presidency.
There’s the graduation rate.
There’s Rick Pitino (scroll down).
There’s the last dean of the school of education. (Background here.)
This list (I’m sure I’m missing stuff) describes a university president totally asleep at the wheel. Why hasn’t he been fired?
… involved a six-year-old obviously disturbed kid who almost killed but only badly wounded his teacher (she’s suing the school board for forty million dollars, but details of the virtually criminal neglect on the part of administrators suggest she should sue for sixty million) … Wounded, she still managed to save all the children in the room from the shooter.
Do you remember this case? I know all them massacres in Nashville and Louisville are crowding out your memory of this one and hundreds of others. But you probably remember this one because six-year-old gun-bearing would-be murderers are – even in this country, where the blood comes sweepin’ down the plain, pretty fucking amazing.
So, the latest is that, following in the footsteps of the bone-chilling Crumbleys, the woman who birthed this severely mentally ill little boy and left her gun lying around for him to take to school, has been indicted by a Newport News grand jury.
That’s very good news; but in both cases – and the tons of others on their way – we must send these people, once found guilty, to prison.
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From the wonderful family that brought you Alex Murdaugh on down, oodles of American assholes are currently leaving loaded guns all over the place. When their one year olds find them and kill their two year olds it barely makes the news, cuz it happens all the time. The babes need to shoot up a school to get our attention.
But they still don’t have our attention. Not sose you’d notice.
From prison, the Crumbleys and Deja Taylor need to be incentivized to star in a joint public service announcement, in which, sadder but wiser, they encourage other Americans to lock their guns and put them away.
Kentucky is one of our stupidest states, a fact reflected in its long list of terrible colleges and universities. I don’t know what this blog would do without the astonishingly, enduringly, scandalous University of Louisville; but UK and a bunch of other schools with “Kentucky” in their name are also real scum buckets. As a blogger dedicated to writing about what’s worst (and sometimes of course best) about American universities, let UD take this opportunity to say to that state THANK YOU. I believe the applicable cliche is The Gift that Keeps on Giving.
And now that Kentucky makes its benightedness official by banning abortion under all circumstances, it’s time for non-demented women to make it official and strike the entire state off their college-choice list.
Amid the sewage, though, there’s Berea, a deeply inspiring, profoundly impressive institution marooned in the swamp. As the state of Kentucky joins Mississippi and Alabama at the bottom of all quality of life lists, one hopes there’s some way to keep Berea afloat.
There’s a popular children’s book called Everyone Poops; UD has one in mind called Everyone Steals. Seriously, do you know anyone (yourself included) who hasn’t stolen? If I didn’t already know that almost everyone steals, sometimes at a high level, the keeping of this blog over many years has certainly drummed it into me.
And my focus hasn’t even been billionaires (“Whenever people say, “Oh he earned his money himself,” I always say the same thing: “No one earns a billion dollars. People earn $10 an hour; people steal a billion dollars.”), but rather universities and university people. Universities, where you might think rates of simple theft – much less systematic looting – might be less impressive than in corporate, for-profit, settings.
And I mean, for all I know they are. But I also know that alongside academic institutions historically laced with larceny (Yeshiva University; the University of Louisville; several others), there are zillions of institutions — especially those blessed with this nation’s biggest sports programs — thick with thieves. To really see the depth of embezzlement, though, look beyond the wowza money corruption of big-time school sports and consider the sweet li’l Varsity Blues scandal, full of people like the crisply outfitted tennis coach at Georgetown University, who in his pre-carceral days taught the Obama girls how to play. Relentlessly, over many years, with the help of various co-conspirators, he shook down parents desperate to get their dim spawn into Georgetown. Gordon Ernst made millions in this way.
Or like the soccer coach at UCLA who, with a years-long, mob-like persistence identical to the Georgetown tennis coach, charged rich desperadoes $100,000 a pop to sleaze their kids in. He explained to the judge that, you know, he bought a house he couldn’t afford.