'UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS HYPOCRITES'

[This is not a very good title. It comes from today’s Mobile Register, and it’s settin’ way up top a regular column by a regular guy whose writing UD will now examine with a fine tooth comb. Examine with a fine tooth comb is a cliché. Avoid cliches.]

[Why is this a bad title? It’s a YOU SUCK title. It doesn’t carry any information, and as a broad sweeping indictment (Broad sweeping indictment is a cliché. Avoid.) it is untrue.]

'At times like these [Cliché], we need William Shakespeare more than ever [The writer is probably about to quote Shakespeare. This will almost certainly be a cliché.]

Something tells me the renowned playwright [You might say the cliché ‘renowned playwright’ is necessary here because without this identifier your audience wouldn’t know who Shakespeare was. But then you’d be insulting your audience.] might amend one of his most famous (if often misunderstood) lines from Henry VI: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." [Cliché.]

If Shakespeare were writing a sports column today instead of being intently studied across the world [Failed attempts at whimsical humor depress your readers and make them reluctant to continue reading. Dropping the ‘instead of‘ clause would help, but only a little.] , he would likely add to his great line, "and college presidents, as well."

Someone needs to help these poor people in the bowties [Virtually no college presidents wear bow ties, and the one he’s about to attack certainly doesn’t. This is a class cliché -- the author will attempt here and elsewhere to play on the populist prejudices of his readers.] before they seriously injure someone with their clumsiness and utter pomposity. [The writer has failed to heed the renowned poet Yeats’s great line about casting a cold eye. From his angry title on, he has chosen heat over cold. Having done that, he’s making things worse by using intensifiers like “utter.” Cold writing -- especially when you want to arouse the wrath of your reader -- always works better than hot.]



The latest case in point comes from the president of the University of Georgia, Michael Adams. To meet him is to immediately dislike him. He is supercilious and self-righteous, haughty and highbrow. [UD has seen Adams in action and she can confirm all of this. Yet it’s a mistake to include it in this piece. It’s ad hominem -- pointlessly cutting. Tends to make your reader want to rush to his defense. Nothing wrong with being highbrow, by the way. Notice how the writer tacks it on at the end of a list of traits that are in fact offensive. Again the writer plays on his ostensibly lowbrow audience‘s prejudices, thereby implicitly putting down his audience.] And those are some of his better traits.

Adams, who committed one of the single dumbest acts in recent SEC history by running Vince Dooley out of his office as athletics director, said this week he wants the television networks to quit referring to the annual Georgia-Florida football game as "the world's largest outdoor cocktail party." [This paragraph’s fine.]

Sends the wrong message, he declares. [Ditto.]

Adams isn't alone. The good folks at [Cliché.] Florida joined the PC parade [Cliché.]. The actions come after a Florida student apparently was beaten to death during the game weekend. Police said the death had no direct correlation [Tone’s off here. Why not just say “connection”? Direct correlation makes you sound highbrow.] to the game. However, considering it was the second year in a row a student died in Jacksonville, the site of the game, the administrators decided to be proactive to try to deflect attention away from the annual drunkfest [“Annual drunkfest“ is fine. But again there‘s a weird wavering in tone in this paragraph between highbrow jargon like proactive and correlation and nice downhome stuff like drunkfest.].

SEC commissioner Mike Slive, a man who usually governs by common sense and compassion, also has gone along with this gibberish. How disappointing. Perhaps he had no choice.



So tell me this: How is CBS' or ESPN's failure to mention the game's name going to save lives in Jacksonville during the last weekend in October? It has nothing to do with it. The administrators are doing it for the same reason that beer commercials often end with the admonition to "drink responsibly." Know when to say when, huh? And while you're at, would you like another Bud?

Ever seen a beer commercial during a college sporting event? I have. If the president at Georgia or any of these people are so concerned about drinking or the image of college sports, then why do they allow their teams to compete in between beer commercials -- usually portraying scantily clad women mud-wrestling -- while the young and impressionable youth of America are watching? [In this section our writer’s getting to the point, and he’s not doing too badly. Still, the youth are the young, so he should probably have found a different word for one of those two words.]

Simple: They want to have it both ways.

Have any of you ever seen anyone drinking alcohol in one of the almighty private luxury boxes [Populist button flashing.] during an Alabama or Auburn football game? I have. Those are the suites that, by the way, go for enormous sums of money to support the football program, and there's enough drinking going on in those places to permanently destroy a breathalyzer machine. [I like “destroy a breathalyzer machine.” But again, the writer doesn’t need the intensifier “permanently,” and in fact this awkward word takes some of the punch out of an otherwise good phrase. One good way to have written it would be “and there‘s enough drinking going down in them to destroy a breathalyzer.” Everyone knows a breathalyzer is a machine, and it‘s better to end your sentence on your strongest word.] It's a like fraternity rush party at the "AARP House." [I like this too, but I’d remove the quotation marks from AARP House.]

Take away the booze in those places if you want to send a message. Of course, it might be tough to sell them if the fat-cat [Yikes. Not merely a cliché, but a circa 1900 cliché. Again he’s after the populist vote.] alums had to watch the game cold sober [Cliché.].

Does anyone really think there would be college sports without beer commercials or gambling? Take away the beer money. Take away the point spread. Then let's talk turkey. [Gevalt.] These administrators want to have their cake and eat it, too. [GeVALT.] They want to talk out of both sides of their mouths. [GEVALT.]

They don't mind holding fat cats [So nice he uses it twice.] hostage with premium sums of money attached to selling season tickets or priority seating. They don't mind bowing down to networks to start games at 10 a.m. on New Year's Day or allowing some Saturday night games to go on until midnight. It's a nice drive home from Auburn or Tuscaloosa to Mobile or anywhere at that time of night.

These folks are phony and fraudulent but apparently think society is being served when a moniker attached to a football game is removed.

Perhaps we should be more understanding of today's breed of college presidents. [Ten ton sarcasm never works well.] These individuals didn't rise to a position of authority and importance because they were great teachers or researchers or leaders. That is the way things used to be. Instead, to become a college president nowadays, you have to be a politician. You have to be able to talk out of both sides of your mouth. [In case you missed it the first time.]

Instead of straight talk from our college leaders, we get drivel. [Yick.] We get presidents trying to talk down to us instead of directly to us. [Populist vote-getter at it again. By painstakingly identifying Shakespeare for your readers you‘ve talked down to them too.] We get people who all speak from a particular manual. It's a basic course called Hypocrisy 101. [Cliché.] It's being taught on almost every big-time college campus these days by the person sitting in the president's office.'

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