End College Sports Now

In today's WSJ find we the news that Chadima may have serially abused his or attempted to abuse his authority over subordinates for his personal sexual gratification. This isn't really news because Chadima has a long-standing practice of engaging in inappropriate behavior with the students and others under his supervision. At least one lawmaker, and a Republican at that, called for a thorough investigation of the UW's Athletic Department. To which I say yes and that right quickly. Ideally the investigation will not only focus on those who looked the other way at Chadima's abusive behavior but it will seek to find all the corrupt practices routinely associated with a top college athletic program.

And, ideally, the semi-professional coach and athletic director enrichment program will be changed or dissolved.

End College Sports Now

When the John Chadima booze-to-minors and sexual-assault-while-losing-the-Rose-Bowl scandal broke out there really wasn't much to say. Once again a Football program had harbored a sexual predator and when the miscreant was caught covered for him. However, now that local sports writer Andy Baggot and Alvarez parrot Tom Mulhern have argued that the Athletic Department's abhorrent and illegal behavior was honorable and courageous, it is more than a reasonable person can stand.

The facts of the matter are that Chadima has for years held booze-drenched parties for underage students without any punishment. It is also that the case that providing underage men and women with alcohol is a crime. It is also the case that Chadima sexually assaulted a student. Sexual assault is a crime. Yet when officials in the Athletic Department heard credible accusations of Chadima's engaging in sexual assault and  providing alcohol to minors they did not phone the police. Indeed, even after Chadima had at least tacitly admitted guilt by resigning the UW as a whole refused to publicize his criminal and cretinous behavior.

The AD protected a man who, more likely than not given that defeated in one sexual assault he immediately attempted another, has engaged in multiple sexual assaults on students under his care and supervision. The Chadima situation is identical to the Paternal situation. The individuals to whom the student reported the sexual assault ought to have immediately called the police and let Chadima deal with the full ramifications of his actions. Protecting a criminal is, last I checked, a crime.

How any responsible adult looking at this disaster coming as it does on the heels of similar disaster and not insist that everyone involved resign is beyond me. The time has come to end college athletics as currently constituted or admit the enterprise's whole purpose is the financial enrichment of handful of coaches and ADs as a means of providing Saturday afternoon content for multi-billion dollar corporations.

End College Athletics Now

The Historiann finds out that her university, Colorado, is giving its new football coach 1.5 million per year because that's the market and is outraged. She's right. Higher Education is supposed to be about education and yet some how or another the professional administrators and those who are assimilated to their bizarro world view "successful" athletics, climbing walls, CETLs, and other "learner" success crap means excellence in education.

We are going the wrong way. It's time to end technocratisme and end the notion that teachers and other educators don't know how to educate.

The Paterno Problem

Way back in 2005 Vicky Triponey, compliance officer for the university, wrote to the PSU president that Paterno was secretive and insisted on disciplining his "student-athletes" as he saw fit not as required by PSU's rules and regulations. She also pointed out that

Coach Paterno would rather we NOT inform the public when a football player is found responsible for committing a serious violation of the law and/or our student code . . . despite any moral or legal obligation to do so.

And of course nothing was done.[1] How bad do you think things are on one of the bigger income generating teams? At some point, the steady drip of yearly corruption, and I don't mean the nonsense like Ohio State's tattoo scandal, is going to sink the whole mess. My suggestion for the various college administrations is to privatize their athletic departments; sell the whole mess to the NFL and the NBA as  pre-made audience filled minor league sport leagues for multiple billions of dollars and then use the money to rebuild higher education.

[1]To be fair the article linked quotes others from Triponey's time at PSU, she quit in  2007, saying na uh, we did so oversee Paterno's football factory and everybody was hyper ethical and really good. Given what we now know, I'll leave it to you to decided if anything was, in fact, done to rein in Paterno's protection of criminals.

What's Wrong With College Sports

The University of Miami football team was involved in a scandal because of its association with a Ponzi
schemer who also provided prostitutes and related etc for football players. In a move designed, one assumes, more meaningful punishment, they have voluntarily forgone post-season play. Oh, yeah:

The Hurricanes have tepid support for their football team even in the best of times, so the decision will probably end up saving Miami a significant amount of money in travel costs and unsold tickets.

That's some kind of punishment: if you all will just leave us alone we agree to not cost the university millions of dollars.

College sports breed, were told, character. It is becoming increasingly clear that it isn't a character you'd want.

What's Wrong With Football: St. Joe Pa

Famously Bobby Jones brushed off a compliment on his following the rules of golf with the comment that you might as well thank someone for not robbing a bank. As near as I can figure those pushing Joe Pa for saint of nice guy and patron of his university are, in fact, thanking him for not robbing a bank. The logic of having football programs with universities attached is that it's a situation that benefits the university in its core mission: educating students. Consequently, it ought to be the case that PSU's football prowess led to increases in its endowment, better libraries, and improved its rank, to the extent that means anything.  This claim of do-gooderism isn't, or shouldn't be, a canonization of Joe Pa but rather an indictment of his colleagues, who don't engage in the same sustained commitment to improving the universities core mission, which is educating students. Other than doing what he is supposed to do, it is unclear to me what all the noise is about.

Given that doing his job is sufficient to catapult Joe Pa in the stratosphere of great moral leaders among college football coaches (I cannot think of single profession in which doing what is expected of you leads to canonization) the rest of them must be pretty bad at fulfilling the minimum standards of either creating profit or ensuring that the basics of the contract, ensuring that that profit goes to the university's core mission. A fact that is underscored by the steady drumbeat of scandals emitted by the various big and small athletic programs.

Consider this collegiate athlete's experience in the women's basketball program at a Div II school. Her coach was so verbally abusive that she and

numerous scholarship players, including former Monroe standout Marissa Young and former Milton standout Kassi Blumer, either transferring or quitting the team after the season, [the coach] resigned in August 2008.

Indeed, so scarred was she that

[h]elping Gerber put her experience at St. Joseph's behind her proved to be an ongoing process for Whitewater coach Greg Henschel.

"When I initially met with her, it was clear she was just not going to, in my opinion, trust a college coach because of her experience," Henschel said.

"I just felt like I was walking the finest line I had ever walked with a recruit. … I felt on some levels we were still even recruiting her a little bit once she was here."

 So a no name college which -- almost assuredly makes no money -- hires a coach who is so driven to succeed that she ruins several students lives for a, at least, a short period of time.

What, I wonder, does the pressure to succeed do to the rest of this stalwart shapers of young men and women.

How to Lose an Argument

Megan McArdle has a longish post up on the Paterno affair in which, as usual, she insists that it's complicated and besides Nazis. One obvious response is if I did what Joe Pa and co did then I would be a moral failure. A second response is that when anybody argues something along the lines of

We are evolved to live in small groups, with very deep loyalty to the other members.

They lose the argument. Why? Because just so stories about evo psych that support your position are the Freidman cab drivers of ignorance. Fear of men with sticks is a much better explanation of failure to act as we know is right; love of men with carrots works as well. Relying on the hand waving of pseudo-science is a sign of intellectual dishonesty.

What's Wrong With College Football: Liars

Some guy named Robert Lapchick runs a program dedicated to keeping collegiate athletics honest and unbiased. Using NCAA info his program releases a study of graduation rates for whites and blacks at major football programs with universities attached. As he points out, the definition of timely  graduation is flawed; however, both Miami and Auburn report a 100% graduation rate for white football players. That is, to be blunt, impossible. Or the graduation requirements for white football players rely heavily on whiteness and football playerness.

What's Wrong With College Football

In 2009 the median income in Wisconsin was 49,994 and it is, presumably, a bit lower now. On Thursday we learned that among the coaches at the UW-Madison football team

[t]wo of the biggest raises from last season, according to new salary information obtained by the State Journal, went to strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert, who got a bump of $75,800 to $200,000, and tight ends coach Joe Rudolph, who got a $65,000 raise to $210,000.

 And that

It was previously reported [offensive coordinator Paul Chryst 's] compensation package increased by $100,000 to $405,000. He also has a five-year annuity, which went into effect in 2007 and will pay him $250,000 once he finishes this season.

Offensive line coach Bob Bostad received a $53,050 increase to $250,000, while wide receivers coach DelVaughn Alexander received a $13,800 raise to $135,000.

So these are state workers, who are essentially creators of entertainment. They make too much money.  Wisconsin is among the 22 programs that make a profit; however the vast majority don't. It seems obvious that the recent debacle at Penn State resulted at least in part from the 50 million per year profit the football program brought in. What dark secrets, one wonders, are the UW hiding?

Meanwhile at Marquette a coverup, or an alleged coverup, of a series of sexual assaults, or alleged sexual assaults, led to a federal government investigation.

Sure according to the neoliberal consensus on state workers teachers, as one example, who only help in the creation of educated citizens, make too damn much money and  their salaries have decreased by something like 500 per month. After all  a starting teacher in Wisconsin makes around 25K with an average of 45k per year, that clearly is too much money for such luxuries as kids who can read, write, and possibly think.

This Just In: Ross Douthat is Still Silly

Why, you ask, did a wealthy and pampered man refuse to step in when an act of pure evil occurred in his shop, on his watch, and by an ex-colleague? Because he was a moral monster, you might think. Well, as it turns out, no. At least According to Ross Douthat. It is because Paterno like many

good people, heroic people, are led into temptation by their very goodness — by the illusion, common to those who have done important deeds, that they have higher responsibilities than the ordinary run of humankind. It’s precisely in the service to these supposed higher responsibilities that they often let more basic ones slip away.

That right, it was Joe Pa's essential goodness and heroism that led him to allow a serial child raper to continue child raping for nearly a decade if not longer. He has higher responsibilities than protecting children from a child raper. According to Douthat, a rich man giving some small or large percentage of his wealth to create funds, professorial chairs, and buildings that bear his name is the kind of heroism that quails before the minor matter of stopping child raping. The NYTimes ought properly be ashamed of the voice of the turtle they have unleashed on the land.

 Let alone the question does he think that it is actually the case that ignoring great evil is evidence of being either good or heroic? When he writes these hot messes, do you think he actually thinks?

Who Will Denounce

Penn State students riot, rock throwing, van tipping, etc, because Paterno was fired. Bets on Conservatives denouncing this behavior as violent lawlessness? Imagine, for a moment, if any of the Occupy occupiers had done anything like this, how loud would be the denunciations and demands for denunciations by the forces of order? Today, I predict, the forces of order will blame political correctness for Paterno's sacking and, consequently, they will approve, or at least excuse, the riot.

I also predict that when all is said and done and the bottom of the disgraceful episode is gotten to, Paterno's supporters will recant. In addition, it seems to me that if a major football program with a university attached covered up a serial child rapist that other less horrific events, theft, battery, etc, are swept under the rugs of if not all then nearly all programs. Coaches are paid millions, athletic directors are paid millions, student-athletes are exploited, the NCAA gets rich, and other corrupt practices abound. It is time to end college sports.

UPDATE:
Over to the NRO David French denounces the rioters as louts for all the right reasons.

End College Sports Now III

Jim Litke argues that

Like everything else in this still-evolving mess, Paterno's acknowledgment that he shared plenty of responsibility for it came way too late. Fashioning a graceful exit is Paterno's only chance to prove it and he's earned that right.

How has Paterno earned the right to fashion a graceful exit? By showing that real leaders let child rapists go free? Or because he won a bunch of games that make no difference to anyone? Just win baby isn't a justification for avoiding moral action. Good God, yall, it's like Camus never existed. If he were a decent human being, I think, Paterno would acknowledge his error and retire never to be heard from again. The whole episode is disgraceful and everyone involved should quit.

UPDATE:
JoPa and the President of Penn are gone. None too soon and presumably, for the children raped, far too late.
See also.

UPDATE:
I suspect that these players will regret this:

Still, Paterno’s talk was not all about the turmoil. Morris said Paterno’s main message was “Beat Nebraska,” referring to Penn State’s next opponent. When he left, his players gave him a standing ovation.

It is not just win baby; the claim of college athletics is that it provides athletes with some kind of moral compass and leadership ability. At the very least, the current evidence suggests that Paterno had neither. Inasmuch as his various defenders defend his indefensible behavior by pointing to his nice guyness, the clear implication is that he wasn't athletics don't, and in general the world would be a better place without institutions of higher learning pretending that athletics have a place in institutions of higher learning.

Oh, and as by the way, the various apologists who insists that nobody could know what they would do when confronted with this kind of evil, my response is: If I behaved like Paterno and company and did nothing to end the child rapist's child raping then I would be a moral monster just like them. Cowardice in the face of obvious wrong isn't excusable because anyone might be a coward; the fact that we might any of us be cowards in the face of evil is a condemnation of any of us who fail to act as decent human beings.

End College Sports II

So this guy Mike McQueary, who caught the child rapist red handed and boldly reported the event to JoPa the next day and then ignored the child-rapist bringing other children onto the campus for, what, nine years as he slowly rose up the ranks of the Penn State coaching staff, was a Penn State quarterback. That means, donnit?, that he is the kind of upstanding young thus and such that JoPa's grand experiment turns out in its hundreds. Strong men who aren't afraid to do next to nothing to protect the weak from exploitation by the strong. It seems clear that college sports do not do what they are supposed to do and, what is more, the whole tradition of sport on American campuses served and serves to blunt students' dislike of being bossed about. It's not education that creates worker bees who embrace their chains but rather sports the dissolves the anarchic and revolutionary ideas, ideals, and actions of young men and women.

End College Sports Now

Via we learn of a college football coach who was a serial child rapists and of an athletic director, and president who covered it up. This is beyond disgusting and, it seems to me, evidence of the immoral nature of both college sports and the administrators who use it to foster a "brand." I am done with college sports and, to be honest about it, think that this is further evidence of the fundamental corrupt nature of our professional administrators who are if not sociopaths, moral morons who do not care about anyone or anything beyond their obscene salaries.

Sure you can argue that not all administrators coverup the child rapists in their midst; but, find me a case, outside of Chicago way back when, that recognizes the essential corrupt nature of big-time college sports and does something about like, I don't know, disbanding the athletic department and using the money to hire professors to actually teach.

And, as by the way, IOZ has a post up in which he blames education of turning all of our bright you things into drones. He is, to be blunt, full of thus and so. It's not education that creates worker bees; it is the refusal of students to take education seriously because of a larger cultural rejection of the notion of "egg heads" and learning to think aided and abetted by their own desire to root for the home team and drink like fish. Corey Robin makes the point that

what our most acute observers have long understood about the American scene: however much coercive power the state wields–and it’s considerable—it’s not, in the end, where and how many, perhaps even most, people in the United States have historically experienced the raw end of politically repressive power. Even force and violence: just think of black slaves and their descendants, confronting slaveholders, overseers, slave catchers, Klansmen, chain gangs, and more; or women confronting the violence of their husbands and supervisors; or workers confronting the Pinkertons and other private armies of capital.

His point is that conformity isn't solely or even primarily the result of state action but rather of a private citizens and employers enforcing norms of their own creation. So its the the folks who coverup for the child rapists and the weak sisters at NPR and NYT who fire people for commitment no crime who aid and abet the thuggish Koch Brothers. And its the students who mock the hard working students and dream of the day when they go to college to drink like fish that turn bright kids into zombies.

It is a fiction of the right and the left that there are eager college professor indoctrinating students to be either communists revolutionaries or men in grey suits living in little houses made of ticky tacky. With few exceptions, the enforced conformity comes for your fellows.