There’s a reason they call it Find Another University.
Really. Sincerely. If you’re looking to attend a university, find another university.
[Johnny] Manziel … won the Heisman in 2012… Other recent Heisman winners with questionable off-field problems include Auburn’s Cam Newton, who was in the middle of an NCAA eligibility investigation when he won the 2010 trophy.
In 2013, Florida State’s Jameis Winston was being investigated for a rape accusation in the middle of his Heisman run. There are more than 900 Heisman voters, and Winston was left off 115 ballots entirely. He still won the award with the fifth-largest margin ever, and he was never convicted in the investigation.
Other Heisman winners include O.J. Simpson, who was charged in an infamous murder case and later convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping in a separate 2007 case. Then there’s LSU’s Billy Canon, the 1959 Heisman winner who later in life spent more than two years in federal prison as a result of a massive counterfeiting scheme.
But the only player ever to have to vacate a trophy was USC running back Reggie Bush, who was found guilty in an NCAA investigation of taking improper benefits from an agent while at USC.
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[Last February, University of Oklahoma Heisman candidate Baker Mayfield was arrested for public intoxication.] In a dash cam video that went viral, Mayfield was seen shouting and cursing at police officers. When confronted, he attempted to run, only to be tackled into a wall. The video also showed him on the brink of crying in the back of a police car.
… Mayfield grabbed his crotch and shouted expletives in OU’s game against Kansas. Combined with the arrest and Mayfield’s flag-plant at Ohio State that caused a stir, Mayfield was forced to deliver his third public apology in less than a year.
How d’ya think we got so rich, whippersnapper?
… to help them understand what “extra credit” means, and how it differs from “extortion.”
Through the long life of this blog, UD has read one account after another of some professor somewhere offering extra credit if the kids will help her husband distribute campaign literature (he’s running for school board!), or if they will show proof that they gave blood (blood donation is a virtue, and I want to encourage it!), or will show proof that they voted (it’s your civic duty!), etc., etc. But just like professors who force students to buy the very expensive textbook they themselves wrote, professors who exploit students politically or materially ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG. (Lesson One: Forget ‘Beyond Good and Evil.’ Let’s Start With the Basics of Wrong and Right.) The very fundamental idea that a classroom of students does not constitute one great big desperate business/political rally opportunity seems beyond the grasp of many professors, if the daily paper is anything to go by.
So for instance this Kutztown University professor thought it would be a great idea to offer to up the grade of any student who attended an anti-GOP tax rally on campus. I mean, you want a lot of people there in order to make a statement, and there are all these people sitting right in front of you, ready to be organized in exchange for an A for Political Effort on My Behalf.
She’s had to revoke the deal.
UD will add that she doubts any of the professors who do these things understand that they’ve done anything wrong. Remember that Doonesbury title, “But the Pension Fund Was Just Sitting There”? It’s like that. But My Students Were Just Sitting There.
The effort to throw out the Balthus
Is warming the ghost of Sir Malthus:
“Our art’s overbreeding.
Too much painting needs feeding.
You empty the too-crowded salle thus.”
There’s a reason [Texas] A&M hasn’t won. I think the reason is because they haven’t had a coach this good. When they had Bear Bryant in the 50s, if they hadn’t been on probation in ’56, they would’ve gone to the national title game then, or they would’ve been in the running for it…
I tell you what, and this is going to make [Southern Methodist University] fans mad, but if you want to keep your coach, if you really like Chad Morris then you’ve gotta get off the Boulevard and go to games… [H]ow are you going to bring recruits in there and the place is not even half full?…
I took my kids to the tailgating scene on the [SMU] Boulevard. It was amazing. We had been to Arkansas two weeks earlier and I would tell you that that was a better scene than what I saw in Fayetteville.
… It’s just as good as the one at Ole Miss that everyone talks about.
… It’s scenic with the trees forming that canopy. It’s great. The band comes marching down. And I’m looking around, there’s all these people, young guys and young girls, with dogs on leashes at these tailgating parties. I’m like who’s bringing their dogs to a tailgating party, and what are they going to do with them when they got to the game? Then I got my answer. Nobody goes into the game. They have got to find a way to get people from that tailgating scene into the stadium. How you get those people to take that five minute walk? I don’t know. But if they could, they could create a really nice atmosphere. The stadium’s nice. The tailgating scene is nice. You could sway some recruits. That grass berm behind the end zone. That’s all really nice, but they’ve gotta get people into the stadium.
… Listen, you people have gotta go and you’ve gotta fill up this place. That is a shame. It’s a disgrace.
… The disgrace is that you don’t walk five minutes off this boulevard to get in that game. If you’re not going to do that for your team, well shame on you.
Zion! Zion! Look away!
Do not let your eyes betray!
Would God that this Shekel
Bore on it a schmeckle
Than a Jew a shiksa led astray.
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And if you have any doubts that Israelis live in close-to-theocratic conditions, with fatwas routinely issued by idiots who have state backing, review the history of Beit Shemesh’s WOMEN OUT! signs. A long, long saga of the pointlessness of Israel’s Supreme Court, it presents itself today as having been resolved
—
“The order to remove the signs with a police escort and a constant police presence will send a strong message that the rights of the women of Beit Shemesh are important,” said [one attorney]. “The ruling is a victory for the rule of law over the rule of lawlessness, a victory for the rights of women for respect and equality. We will continue to monitor and combat all instances of exclusion of women in Israel.”
— except that the police won’t show up, or after a little time they’ll give up, or their presence will generate riots after which the government will let them put up the signs again. Read a similar saga involving Women of the Wall.
None of it means UD gives up. She’s a fervent WOW supporter. But that Israel is currently basically a theocracy is hard to deny.
… Timothy McVeigh, and Nicolae Ceausescu.
Conn, who started his law practice in a trailer in 1993, had portrayed himself as “Mr. Social Security.” He fueled that persona with outlandish TV commercials and small-scale replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial at his office in eastern Kentucky.
Yes, his name’s even Conn.
… so UD assumes that James Levine will remain alongside him, securely honored at her revocation-phobic alma mater, Northwestern University.
NU will apparently take your honor back if it hasn’t formally forked it over yet, as with conspiracy theorist Jeremiah Wright; but once it’s in your hot little hands, you get to keep it.
Levine, whose 1984 recording with UD-favorite Kathleen Battle singing UD-favorite Henry Purcell (Levine’s on piano), is, well, a UD-favorite, has been accused of sexual abuse.
… if you’d like to hear UD talk about what it’s like to live in Munro Leaf’s house. (This assumes any of my comments survive editing.)
… and talked to my old friend Marian Green about Munro Leaf. (An NPR reporter visits me tomorrow to talk about Leaf as a resident of Garrett Park, and about what it’s like to live in his house.) Also got hold of this wonderful photograph of him enthralling children in some foreign country with stories of his famous bull.
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Best of all was this article
about a Garrett Park Elementary School cookbook in which all recipes are in the metric system because “the Maryland State Board of Education has called for all Maryland schools to be totally metric by 1980.”
Munro Leaf of Garrett Park, the well-known children’s author, not only read and approved the manuscript but chose the title [Metric Tastes Good, A Different Kind of Cookbook From the Garrett Park Elementary School PTA] and drew the cover illustration.