… The university also said its operations in the last fiscal year were dragged down by “nonrecurring” — meaning unusual — expenses.

Those included deferred compensation of $4.5 million owed to former Athletic Director Tom Jurich and a $5.5 million buyout of the contract of former basketball coach Rick Pitino, both of whom were fired after the program was swept up by a nationwide fraud and corruption sting into NCAA programs.

It’s always a pleasure to bankrupt ourselves and raise tuition by the highest percentage allowable in order to pay out huge bucks to assholes.

Oh, and on Pitino: Did you really think that $5.5 thing would cut it? He’s suing UL for FORTY MILLION.

Speaking of assholes, hold onto your hat as we sue our chiseling last president to see if we can’t get some money back from him! Meanwhile, though, legal expenses for that will add to our losses…

SONG OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
BASKETBALL RECRUIT

‘Come,’ they told me
Pa rum pum pum pum:
‘Your dorm has whores for free.’
Pa rum pum pum pum.
‘You’ll play at KFC.
Yes! KFC YUM!
It’s facing bankruptcy.‘
Pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum

After bribery
Pa rum pum pum pum
We lived in luxury
Pa rum pum pum pum
They brought their gifts to me
Pa rum pum pum pum
Rick’s boys took care of me
And we all kept mum
We all played dumb
Rum pum pum pum

Feds came to talk to me
Pa rum pum pum pum
‘Bout our conspiracy
Pa rum pum pum pum
UL told Rick to flee
Pa rum pum pum pum
He sued, and they sued he
And everyone’s scum
Shitting their bum
Rum pum pum pum

Yes, I played for you
Pa rum pum pum pum
Feel a bit dumb

[University of Louisville Athletic Director Tom] Jurich’s pay was essentially ill-gotten gains taken directly from players such as first-round NBA Draft pick Donovan Mitchell, whose television appeal and jersey sales produce the revenue. Yet Mitchell must be content with whatever crumbs the school illicitly tosses him? Throw open the market. Let’s see who clamors for Jurich’s jersey. Or whether the public would rather see him in prison clothes.

Okay, so it’s unnamed so far, so… uh… so… (thinking quick here!)… So here’s the description of U6:

University 6 is described as a public research university in Kentucky with an enrollment of 22,640. The University of Louisville is Kentucky’s only school that matches that description.

Here’s our play, guys. Listen up.

You’re getting hundreds of millions from Adidas in a sponsorship deal… In fact, you are

the highest-earning school in Adidas’ college portfolio.

Adidas sure don’t give a shit about that whole whormitory thing! Anyway.

Now, assuming the deal still goes through even though the FBI just arrested their head of global sports marketing, you take that money and with it you establish an entirely new public research university in Kentucky whose enrollment happens to be 22,640. This is an online university, of course… It’s all on paper… You recruit students (the names of students; no actual classes will ever be offered) the way many other online universities do… Hanging out at homeless shelters and offering bribes…

So anyway – this way you protect the U of L…

LOUISVILLE U

folks you’ve heard of scandalous schools
history is full of scandalous schools
but you ain’t heard nothing til
you’ve heard about louisville

it’s a place that’s crawling with thieves
has a board that trustees try to leave
till you’ve seen dorm rooms rockin’ with whores
you ain’t even darkened their doors

they call the campus louisville u
what a fucked up campus can do!
it’s the lowest graduatingest, med school on probationest
school the world ever knew

the ed school dean’s in the pen
med’care fraud hits again
pitino petrino mcgee
sexy sexy whooooeeeeee!

they keep their audits on the down low
about their bank accounts nobody knows
secret foundations funnel the cash
the u of lou has made itself absolute hash

lots of low-lifes among their teams’ lads
and even the president’s paid to be bad
so here’s my warning to you
keep away from louisville u

But she figured that whenever it did take off, the leading edge of the scandal was likely to be the University of Louisville. (Put Louisville in my search engine.) The only real competition for Louisville would be the University of Miami, but, post-Nevin Shapiro, UM is lying low.

What other American university features a trustee who tried to resign but was forced to stay on the board by the governor of the state?

[Steve] Wilson, who is co-founder and CEO of 21c Museum Hotels LLC, said he has been unhappy with the effectiveness of the U of L board and had offered his resignation to Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, who declined to accept it.

Bet Steve wishes he’d risked… what? what can a governor do to you? … and gotten out while the getting was good…

Go ahead and read this first article of many. The details are titillating, the taxpayer money impressive, and I promise the accounts will get even better after they interview the players. The school people call the U of Smell is at it again.

******************

Louisville’s coach, Rick Pitino, has had his own … uh… Here’s UD, back in 2009, posting on Pitino’s… er…

In 2002, as a member of the UK Athletics Administration’s board of directors, [Robert Gene] Lawson cast the sole dissenting vote against hiring Mitch Barnhart as athletics director. Lawson said he didn’t object to Barnhart, but the $375,000-a-year salary UK promised him was “ridiculous” compared to the more modest sums paid to other UK faculty and staff. (Barnhart remains in the job and now makes $600,000 a year.)

Over the past 50 years, the UK Athletics Department evolved into its own universe with its own rules, Lawson said.

“They have become an independent entity, separate from the rest of the university, which is a problem,” he said. “Their budget is their budget. The athletics department regards the money that comes in for athletics as their money, not the university’s money.

“And I guess I have felt, watching it through the years, that they sort of lost what I would consider to be a reasonable connection of these students to the university as compared to athletics,” he said. “Let me just give you an example. When I first came here, the basketball season was 20 games. It’s now 40. I have my doubts about how they can be a legitimate college student when they’ve got that problem.”

UD has loved following the University of Kentucky on this blog. It doesn’t get any crazier than UK. And it’s getting crazier. It’s the sort of thing that keeps me in business.

Be as Philip cutting through The Forest of Thorns and heal the pains of thought!

Our native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with a pale cast of professors. Your state’s universities lead the nation in ruddy red-blooded, black coal’d, athleticism. As it is said:

Among the top seeds in the March Madness NCAA men’s basketball tournament is the University of Louisville. The public university is known nationally for almost nothing except its ability to translate its success on the basketball court into money.

As it is said:

Ladies and gentlemen, sports fans of all demographic ages, Nike jersey and sneaker sizes, your University of Kentucky Wildcats!

Finally, a team without false collegiate pretense, a team that plays on courts stripped of scholastic varnish. Finally, a team fronted by a major university that knows we know that this team now annually has the same relationship to college as pigeons do to stone soldiers standing in town squares.

No team, as politicians vowing partial truths say, is “more transparent.” No team has made it so clear that its full scholarship recruits aren’t “student-athletes,” but assembled to spend seven months using Kentucky as a luxurious basketball facility.

Kentucky, your universities are luxurious basketball facilities. They are almost nothing but sports-revenue generators. You waste barely a spikelet of bluegrass, barely a burp of bourbon, on the weariness, the fever, and the fret, of consciousness. You are the nation’s true Sleeping Beauty.

**********************
UD thanks John.

[University of Kentucky deputy athletics director DeWayne Peevy said that basketball coach John] Calipari’s $1,550-per-night suite at the Atlantis [in the Bahamas], which totaled $12,400 for the eight-night stay, was booked partly so team meetings could be held there. Peevy said that if Calipari had a regular room, UK would have had to rent out an additional meeting space at added cost.

… 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.

UD has kind of run out of things to say about the University of Kentucky. Its academic ranking has tanked like crazy over the last few years; its run of drunk corrupt practically insane coaches is matched only by its run of criminally violent practically insane players… The school’s best friend is Big Coal; it hates the state’s greatest living writer but it sure do love its bourbon and Adzillatron…

It’s always illuminating to read the local press there. Reporters reflect the local mood, the local ethos. Let’s SOS through a recent representative piece.

The writer headlines the article UK arrest should concern Stoops, and concern is the operative term… Nothing to get alarmed about! Just concerned.

We begin not with the arrest. For that, we’ll have to wait for the third paragraph.

The beginning of the article is about what matters – UK football’s “swift” and “stunning” current winning streak. Lots of excited language about that starts the piece.

Ahem. Now:

Off the field, however, there have been some potholes…

A few bumps in the road is all… Sure, a player was just arrested for rape, but our visibly shaken coacha inconsolata said all that needed to be said about that:

Later in the day, [Coach] Stoops, who was visibly shaken, twice said that he “feels for all parties.”

Then there was the case of the misunderstood players:

[L]ast week, Wildcats freshmen Stanley Williams, Drew Barker, Dorian Baker and Tymere Dubose were charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, after an on-campus incident involving air-soft pellet guns.

It sounds as if the players were just shooting at each other in a playful game, but there was nothing playful about the ensuing campus-wide lockdown.

Playful lads! Boys will be boys. And coach is such a good coach! Why,

Entering this season, he had dismissed five players for violations of team rules.

I mean – haha – you might ask who the fuck recruited this lot. But let’s not go there! Let’s instead be really impressed that our coach “has built up some equity as an enforcer.” Because if there’s one thing an amateur university athletics coach is, it’s an enforcer.

The writer goes on to list several more forms of criminal mischief among yet other players, and then cautions:

Taken as a whole, these incidents show that maybe the Wildcats need some more oversight.

But basically this is the situation:

[T]he Wildcats are finally winning, finally thriving, finally happy…

He might as well be talking about Happy Valley, Pennsylvania! Happy, happy, thriving, winning – this is the reality at UK. Potholes we may have to negotiate here and there, but when all is said and done, these are our best days.

And don’t talk to me about students not going to the games…

… Give it some money… And watch its president ignore the overwhelming sentiment of its student body and give that money to athletics.

Eastern Kentucky University is in this neighborhood (the article I’m linking to is absolutely terrific, by the way). Its schools need to spend scarce funds on training and education, but the president of EKU wants to spend them on football. EKU students know the president is full of shit.

While the fee has yet to be approved by the Regents the student body continues to debate the hike, most recently represented by a survey. In this survey distributed by the Student Government Association, students overwhelmingly did not support fees for athletics. In fact, more students participated in said survey than voted in the most recent SGA election, showing just how much students care about this issue.

But no! says the president (who, with the board of trustees, will ram this down the students’ throats anyway). Our students can easily spend an extra four hundred dollars tuition on football! I mean look at Western Kentucky! They charge more than that!

Ah, Western Kentucky. One of our favorite subjects here at University Diaries. Feast your eyes.

Yeah – we want what Western Kentucky’s got! If our students are so stupid as to think we should spend that money on their education, they’ll just have to suck it up. After all, says the prez, consider the arguments for soaking our poor students for football:

“I don’t think we can afford to stand still — that’s my concern,” Benson said. “This may be our window of opportunity, and if it closes on us we may have forgone an opportunity that may not come around again.”

Touchdown!

Barry Petschesky at Deadspin reminds us that you can identify everyone at your university who wears glasses and take them out to the public square and shoot them through the head, but that won’t necessarily help your football stats or put more butts in the seats on game day.

His caution is prompted by the panic and confusion at the University of Kentucky, a school that has sacrificed everything for football, but isn’t able to fill its stadium. Seeking a cause, one fan tells a local radio host that the problem is that the school’s too intellectual. There are professors and students there. Professors are hostile to football. A lot of the students are from foreign countries, and they don’t even understand football, much less watch it.

Cosmopolitans and intellectuals will have to go if UK wants to bring its football program back.

*******************

UD says this guy is jumping the gun. The picture is not as urgent as he would have you believe. UK has succeeded in making its academic ranking plunge, and there’s every reason to assume this trend will continue.

And do you really have to purge the university of its students and professors? UK hasn’t even begun looking into, for instance, the system of threats, retaliations, and incentives many other university ticket offices have adopted in order to get people to attend their football games. Let’s exhaust moderate measures before we go nuclear.

**********
UD thanks Derek.

I’m sure next season will be much, much better.

And if it’s not, fire the latest coach and coordinators and hire another new batch.

Keep doing this long enough, and you’re gonna start to win!

The school’s governing body for athletics, the University Athletics Committee, voted in favor of a $12.5 million budget increase from the $91.9 million in 2012-13, a number the department actually exceeded by $4.2 million due largely to capital projects such as new track, softball and soccer complexes. Most notable in the new budget: projected football expenses are up 32.6 percent, from about $9.5 million last year to $12.6 million for ’13-14.

Roughly $2.4 million of that $3.1 million increase is to cover the higher salaries of the new football staff. Just counting head coach Mark Stoops and his two coordinators, that trio makes a combined $874,000 a year more than predecessor Joker Phillips and his coordinators. At Tuesday’s meeting, athletic director Mitch Barnhart said those numbers reflect the school’s strong commitment to a football program that last year suffered through a 2-10 season before firing Phillips.

And wow. As always, a big-time athletics program benefits the university academically. UK’s US News and World Report ranking has gone from 112 in 2007 to 125 today. With those numbers, no wonder UK is devoting hugely increased resources to sports.

Big-time athletics always lifts the tone on campus. Northern Kentucky University students are currently focused on just what Athletic Director Scott Eaton did to make him hightail it out of town. The school will only say he’s been fired for ethics violations — and, I mean, fired immediately, with letters and lawyers and all…

So, as the student editorial I quote in my title suggests, it might be nice to know what’s going on, what manner of man the school hired and paid big bucks to not long ago. It goes without saying that a big part of Eaton’s job has involved lecturing students on morality… Leadership, teamwork, integrity, you know the drill.

So what’s up?

UD has covered stories of coach and AD miscreants for years, and she will share with you her guess on this one.

UD‘s gonna go with sex. She’s willing to throw some alcohol abuse into the mix, but she’s basically going to call this one as messing with the undergrads. The school claims it’s not financial; it also claims NKU won’t get in trouble with NCAA sanctions as a result of whatever Eaton did. That would seem to leave hanky-panky.