You recall UD’s post about this Louisiana University’s effort to update its mascot.

It came up with this image —

— which generated a lot of controversy.

Here’s a nicely written letter to the editor about it:

As [a] native of Louisiana and former resident of Thibodaux, I have observed the controversy regarding the newly unveiled Nicholls mascot with great interest.

I must admit that when I viewed the new Colonel Tillou mascot for the first time my own thoughts were of a Bolshevik cavalryman from the Russian Civil War. The politically correct forces claim they began a campaign to replace the old mascot in an effort to improve the university’s image. Unfortunately, the new mascot conjures up an image of a murderous Red Army dragoon slashing his way through a Ukrainian village. This is definitely not an improvement on the university’s image. Instead, it tarnishes the school and everyone associated with it. This whole experience should finally demonstrate the folly of political correctness and its various progeny.

What makes this matter even more distasteful is the knowledge that an out-of-state design firm and focus groups participated in this travesty. In the end, the entire endeavor that created “Colonel Bolshevik” has been a waste of money, time and university resources. The university should bring back the old mascot and issue an apology. Once it does that, it can return to more-fruitful endeavors, such as educating the young adults of Louisiana.

How long can a university football program remain on automatic?

A hollowed-out, expensive, stadium; a perennially losing team; staggering costs to students and faculty; a statewide embarrassment… Yet on it goes, tearing down the reputation and finances of a university forever and ever.

Take University of Kansas football. This 2015 article called the program “doomed,” but it wasn’t, even though the millionaire coaches, million-dollar buyouts, and on-field losses continue.

Increased football spending was supposed make more money for the entire Kansas athletic department. It has not. Instead, there has been a domino effect of failure: Kansas is second to last in the Big 12 in the number of men’s and women’s teams it fields…

This fall, Kansas fans figure to have a front row seat to the worst college football team money can buy — and a up-close view of how everyone else loses in the process.

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Apparently it’s all finally too much for one KU professor – a guy in the law school has tweeted:

What’s the argument for continuing KU football (serious question)? It’s an enormous money loser for a cash-strapped university. Life-altering injuries and cumulative brain damage are inevitable. Wouldn’t this money be better spent elsewhere (e.g. more scholarships)?

To charge KU students higher fees to support the football team (the biggest drain on KU’s athletic budget) just seems wrong. With yesterday’s loss to Nicholls St., it seems like an appropriate time to ask: why have a football team?

Not that this guy’s tweet will go anywhere; but UD thinks it’s worth noting that at least one person on KU’s campus is asking these questions.

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UPDATE: And then there’s the University of Maryland. A columnist in the school newspaper first reviews the program: Lots of seriously losing seasons; excessive and expensive coach changes; shitty game attendance; the heatstroke death of a player on the practice field; damning reports in the sports press of a “toxic culture” in the program.

In light of these problems and others, the time has come for frank discussion of a question seemingly absent from the discourse surrounding athletics at this university — namely, whether the university should continue to sponsor a varsity football program at all. There are a few compelling reasons to think the answer is a resounding “no.”

The whole massively costly football deal is “a project that will be useless to the vast majority of the student body.” Football players get concussed and may suffer lifelong brain injury.

Very nice final paragraph:

President Wallace Loh’s favorite metaphor for athletics is that they’re the “front porch” of the university, the face we present to the public. Allow me to extend the metaphor. If your front porch regularly required multi-million-dollar improvements, caused brain disease in those who sat on it and recently left someone dead, wouldn’t you consider removing it?

Bravo.

No, there are no alternatives; none at all. The outgoing president of obscure Nicholls University (big-time athletics was going to put it on the map, but …) reviews the athletics-generated academic fraud plus APR-score penalties that marked his term in office. (The article is behind a paywall.)

Hulbert complains that “it is hard to fight battles with a state government that takes money away from higher education.” But Hulbert doesn’t mean higher education; he means athletics facilities. He’s upset with the state because it won’t fund athletics facilities.

President Hulbert does not grasp the distinction between athletic facilities and educational facilities.

… later this summer. She’ll meet up with Mr UD after he gives a paper there, and they’ll stay in the mountains for awhile.

UD will also make a little pilgrimage to American Fork, where her graduate school mentor, Wayne Booth, was born.

She’s reminded to mention this because Utah’s in the news this morning. The NCAA has finally decided that two semi diploma mills that give diplomas to high school flunkies recruited by Division I universities don’t any longer make the cut.

That leaves about twenty other semi diploma mills catering to recruits.

Or rather twenty-two. The NCAA’s decision represents a business opportunity.

The NCAA said Tuesday it no longer will allow teenagers to use online high school course credit from BYU to beef up their grades in key classes. The NCAA also announced it won’t recognize transcripts from the American School correspondence program in Illinois.

The move is part of new NCAA rules that require “regular access and interaction” between teachers and students in the 16 core courses required to establish initial eligibility for new college athletes.

The changes don’t affect NCAA Division II schools, but a panel representing them will reconsider the measure in June.

I’m sure those Division II schools will be along any moment now.

The NCAA in its announcement framed the prohibition as part of a larger effort to clamp down on online or mailed-correspondence courses taken by athletes. But for the moment, the NCAA is only banning online courses from BYU and one other institution, the Illinois-based American School.

The NCAA, in the press release on its website, said BYU and American School were “two of the programs most frequently submitted to the NCAA Eligibility Center.”

… Students trying to get or stay eligible to play sports at the University of Kansas, University of Mississippi and Nicholls State University …have been found to have improperly taken BYU correspondence courses. In the case of Nicholls State, some athletes didn’t know coaches enrolled them in the BYU courses.

Can there by any more pitiful sports program than Nicholls State? It cheats to get its guys on campus, and then no one comes to its games…