… Berkeley, but the University of Memphis?

The Faculty Senate passed a motion last week urging University of Memphis President Shirley Raines to stop subsidizing the athletic department $2.2 million from education and general funds.

After almost an hour of debate, 25 members voted for the motion, five voted against and six abstained.

Besides the athletic department subsidy, which increased from $1.5 million last year, education and general funds pay for scholarships, equipment upgrades, employee raises and other amenities to benefit students and faculty at The University…

To quote Michelle Obama: Damn.

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Oh. Not that these votes mean anything. Look at the latest on Berkeley athletics.

The single big ick is John Calipari, but UD ain’t gonna sully her pages with his latest thing.

What interests her is that a sports columnist writing about Calipari commits two little icks in a row.

Let’s take a look.

Now that Calipari has raised his hind leg and defacated all over the basketball program by causing Memphis to now have the unique distinction of having its Final Four appearance tossed in the trash — all before scampering off to Kentucky — what do Memphis fans and university backers think of him now?

Hm. Now that I look at it again, there are any number of icks in this sentence. But … When’s the last time your dog raised his hind leg to shit? Plus … If you can’t spell defecate, you should write shit, because that’s easier to spell.

But if you go here, you’ll find the best summary yet of this season in university sports.

Biggest scum schools this year:

University of Alabama
University of Kentucky
University of Memphis
University of Southern California

Even UD wouldn’t go this far in describing big time university sports. I mean, there’s … Why can’t I think of anything? Maybe Murray Sperber’s right!

A Memphis paper interviews him about the recent unpleasantness there involving a basketball player at the University of Memphis who seems not to have taken his SAT. I mean, he didn’t forget to take it. Someone else took it for him.

He was a one-and-done student. This is a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of thing where an athlete, because of irrational rules, spends a year at a university before entering professional life. The university’s thrilled, of course — unlike the professional world, it doesn’t have to pay the player four hundred million dollars a year. It has to pay the player nothing. And the player gives it its most amazingest winningest season ever!!! Until the NCAA takes all the wins away because someone else took the student’s SAT so he could be admitted to the university.

“The NCAA really insists on this ‘student-athlete’ thing,” said Sperber, the author of “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education.” “And I assume the NCAA put pressure on (NBA commissioner) David Stern to institute the one-year policy. The NCAA ought to rethink the whole thing, but there’s so much pressure within the NCAA and from big-time coaches to keep it in place. A one-and-done player did get Calipari to a Final Four. But you have to wonder: Did it really help the University of Memphis at the end of the day?”

The negative impact of the past week on the school’s reputation cannot be measured, Sperber said. In recent days, the phrases “University of Memphis” and “major violations” got constant play throughout the media. Sperber said he feels certain there are Memphis fans who insist the ordeal is a small price to pay for a trip to the national title game, but the effect can be corrosive and lasting.

“I’m sure the Chronicle of Higher Education will report on this, and people in academic circles will say, ‘Oh, there’s Memphis again,'” Sperber said. “It just seems like a travesty forcing these players to go to college. And poor Memphis, it’s like a roller coaster. They got to the very top of the thing with the Final Four, and now that coaster is heading down and they may not even get to keep the banners. I guess the whole thing could have been avoided.”

… and of course its money, nobody does it like the University of Kentucky.

Having just given John Calipari over thirty million dollars to coach one of its teams for a few years, Kentucky must now deal with his predecessor’s lawsuit against it for six million.

Kentucky’s adminstration smokes too much bluegrass. UD has nothing against a toke or three, but when you’re running a university, you need to be able to think clearly. UK is into that thing where you don’t care about anything anymore.

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Update on Kentucky’s thirty million dollar man here.

UD fears this news will only drive UK’s administrators into deeper drug dependency.

Meanwhile, she wrote a little ditty!

Calipari
isn’t vari
wari.

When there’s quarri
he ain’t sorri.
Chase them in his
Maserari.