It’s because of the intellectual luster he lends the place. Challenged on the pathetic graduation rates of the students for whose progress he’s responsible, he explains:

“If everybody stays, our graduation rate is great… But some guys just don’t stay. If somebody had an answer, I’d love to hear it.”

Boeheim earns close to two million dollars a year for his policy of saying

1. If they would graduate, they would graduate; and

2. Fuck if I know.

We’ve got it all – the article written before the stabbing (one of several fights) at our first basketball event of the season (“We have the best fans in college basketball!”), and the article written after the place was evacuated and the stabbed guy was taken to the hospital (“We were saddened to learn…”).

Students and administration at Syracuse seem to be taking a lot of comfort from the fact that the guy who was stabbed, and the guys in all the other fights (“[The police] received multiple reports of fights breaking out in the concourse areas near the concession stands prior to receiving a report of the stabbing…”), weren’t students, but so what? If your university has created perfect conditions for riots (the event is free and open to the public and being shitfaced is de rigueur), you’re not going to be impervious to the weaponry by virtue of having a student i.d.

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The solution won’t be to change the nature of the event. The event recruits fans who will purchase tickets, and the school needs the money. The solution – a familiar one, adding delight to these free-spirited celebrations – will be to turn the arena into a police state.

Don’t focus on Arne Duncan’s bold ideas for turning sports whorehouses like Syracuse and San Diego State into shining universities on a hill. Focus on the responses of the NCAA.

I’m not going to sully my screen with the actual content of the NCAA’s response to this latest idea. I’m not even going to type the name of the head of the NCAA. There are (to paraphrase Martha’s George) limits. A blog can put up with only so much without it descends a rung or two on the old evolutionary ladder…

But I invite you to go here and read this man’s words for yourself.

But if students from another university are within striking range, our students will attack them.

How to approach the delicate topic of football culture and the gifts it has given the American university? It’s not merely the obvious stuff – the pointless stupid scary violence that scads of sports heroes like Richie Incognito bring to campus (idle Google Newsing turns up the latest helmet-bashing-in-the-campus-locker-room, this one at the University of Delaware, where last February another player “was charged with assaulting three other students at a party.”).

This violence has turned professors into police:

Days after the incident, [an Oregon State student who got beaten by team members] said that one of his professors noticed several football players milling outside the door of a classroom and the professor told him to exit through a different door because she was afraid they were going to harass him.

The violence is hard-wired, of course, into the coaching of both university football and basketball, so that on a routine basis latter-day Bobby Knights are filmed and parodied (start at 1:15). The coaches are quickly replaced, sometimes by women, who are symbolically part of the clean-up routine cuz you know women just want to mother the team and would never be violent…

In fact, let’s pause there and think about the incredibly important role of women in big-time university sports. I don’t mean merely as tools of recruitment (several schools attract players via, er, dates with carefully selected female students), and objects of rape, assault, and harassment (see, most recently, the Norwood Teague unpleasantness at the University of Minnesota). And I don’t mean merely the importance of trotting out mom, post-assault, on Good Morning America. (Or, as Matt Hayes puts it, “GMA’s utterly repulsive decision to allow De’Andre Johnson on television to apologize for punching a woman in the face.”)

I mean, think about Donna Shalala’s tenure as president of Miami University. Her main role was as cover for a team that got in big on-field brawls and whose best buddy was Nevin Shapiro. She was like the Good Morning America mom times a hundred. They kept wheeling Shalala out to apply the back of her hand to her naughty charges, and this routine actually worked for a while.

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A local commentator asks incredulously where the University of Minnesota found the likes of Teague (the answer is that they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a search firm). “Were the other finalists Bill Cosby and Donald Sterling?”

Donald Sterling, Zygi (“bad faith and evil motive”) Wilf, these are the guys who give professional basketball and football such a great name… And, as the commentator suggests, there’s not a lot of discernible difference between professional and big-time university football. Even in the matter of violence, there’s the NFL…

In the N.F.L., … fits of violence hardly blacklist players chasing roster spots. The day after punching [Geno] Smith, [Ikemefuna] Enemkpali latched on with the Buffalo Bills, whose new coach, Rex Ryan, has created a haven for wayward players…

(What a sweet, Victorian, girly way of putting it! A haven for wayward players! Like Ikemefuna’s teammate, the aforementioned Richie Incognito! The way Jane Addams created a haven for wayward girls! SWEET.)

… and there’s college ball, where getting kicked out for violence means the same thing it meant for Ikemefuna – you just find another team.

All of which is why, as UD has often recommended, universities with big-time football need football coaches, not academics, as presidents. (See Jim Tressel.) In a pinch, a politician will do. You could also go with a figurehead, a Queen Elizabeth to Nick Saban’s prime minister. But you’ll keep getting stories like the one coming out of the University of Minnesota as long as you take some guy – some random polite reflective well-meaning university denizen – and hand him the management of what is essentially a professional football team.

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The petri dish for university football culture is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their new field design is all about Vegas. A sample headline:

UNLV REBELS WILL BE PLAYING FOOTBALL ON ONE BIG CRAPS TABLE IN 2015

“The team’s field and uniforms now reek of the Strip — it’s glitz, gold, gambling and most importantly, its promise of future fortunes.”

This is a team with one of the worst records in university football. An appalling record. Very few people show up to their games. Season tickets sold last year: 3,890. In response, the university decided to build a $900 million, 55,000 seat stadium with an Adzillatron spanning the length of the field. Although they’ve cut back on that original plan, they’ll surely come up with something like it. And they’ve got yet another miracle coach who’s going to shock everybody with the greatest comeback story this side of Elvis.

If this gross miscarriage of justice doesn’t require the concerted attention of our elected representatives, I don’t know what does. UD would like to know what the commenter quoted in my headline thinks is an important use of our government’s time. Here you’ve got one of our nation’s great men, a great coach, dragged through the mud by some rogue organization…

Representative Katko is worried that Syracuse University’s fate raises “serious concerns that the NCAA standards are not applied in a uniform fashion nationwide.” Since virtually all big-time sports programs do what SU does, UD agrees with the congressman; but he needs to think about the logistical problems involved in suspending or shutting down all of America’s competitive basketball and football programs. To say nothing of what this will do to national morale.

Either have a great basketball program or have a lousy one with great students. Give me the great program every time. [I] don’t care if our starting point guard got a D in anthropology. I don’t care if our center cheats on an English lit test. That’s on them. These guys are here because it’s a step on the way to pro ball. If they want to apply themselves in the classroom and get something more out of the college experience, that’s great but I don’t care about that either. These guys aren’t here to learn how to fix the world’s problems. They’re here to entertain the fans and bring money into the school via tv and ticket revenue, as well as raise the school’s profile to a segment of perspective attendees.

A lot of people will disagree with me and that’s fine but I feel like I’m being realistic and honest and they are not. Look into ANY D1 school with a fine tooth comb for 10 years and you’re going to find dirt. Only difference between SU and those other schools is that for some reason our school and our coach were the subject of long-term NCAA harassment and they were not.

From the comment thread on this article (UD thanks Alan for the link to the article).

Syracuse can still stubbornly cast its basketball coach, Jim Boeheim, as a martyr because college revenue sports embody the Lance Armstrong principle: Cheating is a universal expectation, so the crimes of individual cheaters don’t have as much impact. Armstrong, once the winningest cyclists of all time, broke the rules in a sport where the rules barely mattered. (In fact, from 1996 to 2010, every single Tour de France champion except Carlos Sastre had either tested positive for cheating, confessed to cheating or been suspended for cheating.)

Unless you understand the tao you can’t understand. And you can’t understand the tao.

[Costas] said that the bottom line for [university] higher-ups is that the consumers of football and basketball games generally prioritize athletic performance over academic success.

“If they found out that half the team was composed of illiterates, but the team went to the Rose Bowl or to the Final Four — they had that choice — or they had the choice of a competitive, entertaining team, but everyone was a legitimate student, most of the alums and most of the people in the stands would choose ‘A,'” Costas said.

 

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… Boeheim is still number one among the Syracuse faithful … [and] any mere university administrator [had better not] even think about removing Boeheim as head coach.

As with most major college coaches, Boeheim is virtually untouchable and clearly a more important figure on campus than the university president. Indeed, there are many presidential careers that have crashed and burned seeking to control powerful coaches and booster organizations.

… The scandals at Syracuse and North Carolina, the shadows over Duke, the many scandals of the past and future will not vanish. The only thing that ultimately will vanish is the integrity of American higher education.

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[The Syracuse scandal is about the ways in which] perfectly nice universities with wonderful faculty and illustrious alumni turn themselves into trash bins.

…Boeheim says he’s “not going anywhere.” The question is why that’s his decision, and not school President Kent Syverud’s. The simple answer is that no one has the authority to criticize Boeheim, much less fire him.

Presumably Syverud, who has been on the job for only a year, is not an unethical man, nor [University of Tennessee Chancellor Jimmy] Cheek an amoral one. Both have respected records. Syverud is a legal scholar, and Cheek an award-winner for teaching excellence in agriculture who has worked hard to lift Tennessee into rankings of the top 50 research universities. (Full disclosure: I have met Cheek and like him and have occasionally donated money to Tennessee women’s athletics.) But no lone tweedy president or chancellor has the clout to stand up to coaches and athletic directors backed by power bases of rich fanatical donors.

[W]hat (the NCAA) did to Jim Boeheim, I think has really been sad, and I think you’re going to see an appeal process by him. What about the millions he’s raised for cancer? I don’t want to hear it. I happen to be a big fan of Jim Boeheim as a human being and as a person.

Seven times in 27 hours!  An English comp instructor’s dream!

… judge that Syracuse University has misbehaved.

I guess they would know.

Read the hilarious everything plus the kitchen sink list of violations that these two wise men of the university athletics scene perceived within the Syracuse program here.

It would take an Ionescu – or a Molière ? – to capture the absurd convolutions in this NCAA decision, with Hypocrite #1 sternly determining the proper punishment for Hypocrite #2…

But let’s not go there.  Let’s instead enjoy some highlights:

Syracuse had a written [drugs] policy; however, the head basketball coach and athletics director admitted they did not follow the policy. The athletics director said the department followed an “unwritten policy” because the written policy was confusing. As a result, basketball students who tested positive on more than one occasion were not withheld from practice and games, as the written policy directed.

One, two.  When you can’t count, things get confusing!

These guys could count high – like, up to a million in salary and shit… But the lower end of the scale… (UPDATE:  Sorry: Two million.)

Syracuse discovered and self-reported 10 violations in this case, which primarily involved men’s basketball but also football. The self-reported violations, dating back to 2001, include academic misconduct, extra benefits, the failure to follow its drug testing policy and impermissible booster activity. The other violations found included impermissible academic assistance and services, the head basketball coach’s failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance and monitor his staff, and the school’s lack of control over its athletics program.

Well, that says it all, doesn’t it?

And it says it all for most other big-time athletics programs.

Sometimes shit happens and the school ethicist has to resign.  But most of the time most of the programs look exactly like Syracuse.

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Syracuse/Basketball:  The legend continues.

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Okay.  One more thing.  UD wonders how Syracuse faculty – even students? – feel about the man who earns by far the highest salary on campus also running – for years and years – a program so filthy that even the NCAA had to notice.  UD suspects no one cares.

Or worse:  It seems to UD that Americans admire slimy winners – Ira Rennert, Donald Trump…

But it’s not just Americans.  It seems to be universal.  Russians absolutely adore Vladimir Putin.

Syracuse to Jim Boeheim:  Kick me again, Master!   (“Syracuse loves basketball more than life itself, and Boeheim probably more than basketball…”)

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And there’s more!  UD‘s pal Dave sends her this absolutely wonderful description of the way online courses work in the athletics program.  As you know, UD has long called online courses the salvation of university athletics programs, especially now with the Independent Study scam on everyone’s radar… And you wanna know why?  Read and learn.  Learn how Coach Boeheim earns two million dollars every year.

[A]thletics staffers were actively posing as basketball players, logging into their university accounts, and reading and sending emails to professors as if they were the players.

No student!  No muss, no fuss!

A Deadspin writer summarizes:

Rather than requiring the players hand his assignment to a tutor, getting it back completed, and turning it into his professor, Orange players could stay out of things altogether and let the tutors just pretend to be them at every step.

And it never occurred to any of those professors all those years… I wonder why not.

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More boys in the band.

West Virginia was placed on two years’ probation for 360 infractions in 14 sports in its speakeasy. For all this, though, exactly one person was punished — an assistant women’s gymnastics coach. Gymnastics! Assistant! Crack down on a women’s sport! Hey, now that’ll get all those assistants in football and basketball to straighten up and fly right.

Not only that, but the director in charge of the Mountaineer speakeasy, Oliver Luck, was himself not implicated. No. Instead, he moved on — are you ready for this? — to the NCAA, where he is now executive vice president of regulatory affairs.

LOL.

We want our rights! And we don’t care how! We want our revolution… NOW.

Income inequality hits the American university! Sports slaves at Syracuse and Boise State are moving their slow thighs, and what rough beast slouches toward Alabam’ to be born?

Why do they have the friends at the top? Why do they have the jobs at the top?

Boise State’s president rages against the NCAA big boys muscling out mid-major programs like Boise State by making it more and more expensive for schools to compete. In a spectacular instance of the pot calling the kettle black, President Bob Kustra attacks “programs that look less and less like they bear any relationship to the university’s mission and role.”

Ah, mon Kustra! Here’s your school! Here’s your school! Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère! “It seems they are never satisfied with their bloated athletic budgets,” hisses Kustra, whose own budget bulges like an Idaho spud on steroids. Then he gets real high and mighty.

It is sometimes hard to believe that our finest universities and their presidents are behind this effort to fuel what the former NCAA President Myles Brand termed the “arms race” in Division 1 athletic budgets. You would think that the primacy of the academic mission and the long-held principles of amateur athletics would trump the drive toward commercialism and professionalism in the athletic department. You would think that university presidents would be up in arms at the way the NFL and the NBA use the universities’ athletic departments as training camps and minor league clubs for professional sports.

It is beyond me why university presidents are so quick to fall in line with powerful conference commissioners who seem to be calling the shots with these NCAA reforms. But I have no doubt why the power conferences are working to separate themselves from some Division 1 universities who still see the value of equity and fairness in athletic funding. Lately, those pesky mid-major programs such as Boise State and many others have showed up the big boys for what they are – wasteful models of athletic spending that cannot be justified.

Little late now to be moving them slow thighs, ain’t it, Kustra? You didn’t give a shit about evil commercialism until the big boys began making your school pay through the nose to stay in the big leagues. Now you sound like ol’ UD herself with all that excellent rhetoric about universities having something to do with academics.

Face it. You’re poor. And the poor stay poor. Accept your caste.

It’s a little late for Syracuse, too. Faculty there has finally decided to squawk about that school’s wasteful degrading ridiculous sports program. A local reporter talks to an economist who specializes in sports.

“Pay is up for coaches, pay is up for administrators,” [Andy] Schwarz said. “Athletic departments are hiring people, building new facilities. It doesn’t look like any losing business that I know of. But if you can say you’re losing money, there are a lot fewer questions. You don’t have people asking what you can do for them. The only people annoyed at you if you’re losing money is a few faculty members, and you can sort of manage that.”

At Syracuse four of the five highest-paid university employees are members of the athletic department, including athletic director Daryl Gross and women’s lacrosse coach Gary Gait. Gross, basketball coach Jim Boeheim and former football coach Doug Marrone all made at least $150,000 more in 2013 than they did in 2012, according to tax documents released by the school last week.

But the program’s losing money, see, so lay off, Little People of the Faculty.

Faculty of Syracuse University! You’re poor. And the poor stay poor. Accept your caste.

At one time, trading a scholarship for athletic performances made sense. There wasn’t much money available in college sports even in the revenue producing sports of football and basketball. But as TV money seeped into the industry, coaches were paid more and more money and colleges felt they needed to spend more money to get the best available coaches to recruit and instruct. State legislatures approved astronomical raises for coaches and in many states where public colleges are part of the college sports industry, the football or basketball coaches are the highest paid public employees… Millionaire coaches like Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim bristle at the idea of paying college players even though the industry is flush with money from television and marketing partners…

College sports are not-profits. The industry has a blanket antitrust exemption that allows schools who play in college football bowl games to skip paying taxes from bowl game earnings. Yet NCAA members are getting billions from TV, and hundreds of millions alone from the Final Four weekend. At the same time, players are no longer content with missing out on their earnings. Dr. Harvey Schiller may have predicted the future for the industry, becoming a professional entity because there is too much money at risk for it not to happen.

The professionalization of our academic McDonalds (billions and billions sold) continues, with increasingly insistent arguments being made against the maintenance of non-profit status for athletics money, and for endowment money. Because it’s the same thing, isn’t it? Athletics and endowment?

If Harvard University generates a thirty-five billion dollar endowment (a number of other Ivies are not far behind), all of it in very significant ways protected from taxation… And if because of this astronomical profit people like Harvard investment managers get multiple millions in salary each year from the institution, and people like coaches get multiple millions in salary each year from the institution, but very little of the billions left over are spent for academic purposes (Harvard notoriously hoards its endowment; revenue sports players aren’t paid), why should we be surprised that communities surrounding McDonald’s schools are constantly challenging their tax exempt status in court? That Felix Salmon’s much quoted statement has it that Harvard is “a hedge fund with an educational institution attached“?

All of this is a small element of the immense income inequality debate in America today. CEOs like Gilead’s John Martin taking home almost $100 million each year are the real attention-getters in this debate. Yet America’s John Martin problem is a straightforward one: It is about capital markets and unlimited greed. Easy to grasp that.

And of course most of the people in this country have no trouble – applaud, in fact – one man or woman pulling in any amount imaginable for themselves. Ten years from now, Martin’s yearly compensation with be five hundred million. Bravo! Job well done. No upper limits, and people who question upper limits are jealous losers who have to be restrained by the state or the next thing you know it’s Kristallnacht.

Fine, okay, but does the same psychology pertain to high-minded non-profit universities becoming greedy billionaires? Even in America, there’s some vestigial sense that universities are different from John Martin. That sense could grow, could come to understand itself more clearly. And if that happens, there’s trouble ahead for the most profitable McDonald’s franchise-holders in the land.

American university sports events get more and more violent, so much so that it wasn’t much of a story when, last year at this time, Syracuse University was host to multiple fights and one stabbing at their “Orange Madness” opening basketball event of the season. Police swarmed the building and everyone was ushered out before the event was scheduled to end because security couldn’t control all the fights.

Big deal. The life of the mind.

But yeah sure, as the chancellor said up there in my headline, we promise to do better next year.

So here we are and “how could this happen?” asks the local paper. How could it happen that Syracuse University, in designing this “family friendly” event to prevent last year’s violence, hired Ace Hood? Ace Hood…

After a night rocking to songs about fucking bitch pussies and shooting the fuck out of everyone with your arsenal, Syracuse will be ready for the football and basketball season!

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UPDATE: Now that we’ve gotten a glimpse into the culture of the Syracuse athletics department and many of its fans (why not hire Ace Hood?), it’s time to cancel his act because a few malcontents object to his brilliant subversive lyrics.

Wonder how much his cancellation fee is. Yet another excellent use of university funds.

Everyone’s wondering who his replacement will be.

How about something for the girls? Rihanna!