Local elections piss me off something fierce. It's like somebody pushed nepotism into a blender with gross incompetence and the forced the resulting drink down the throat of boredom.
1: Hm. It probably helps that I think my city is very well governed.
Given the structural and economic constraints, I don't think it is possible for my city to be well governed. At least, that's what I tell myself when I want to feel better about local democracy.
3: Our biggest local issues are (1) what to do with the reservoir that will need more water in the next 30 years and (2) whether the city is making the OWS protesters happy enough.
Can't you just make the reservoir deeper?
5: Indeed. There's a pro-dredging side and a pro-dam side. Dam seems to have won.
7: This is a city that lets it mellow when it's yellow, I assure you.
I get to vote for City Council tomorrow. I've pretty much decided to vote for the candidate with the awesomest name.
Also, I'm probably not voting for the guy that's anti-commuter rail, even though he sort of has a point, and Blume and I have agreed to go ahead and not vote for the guy whose flyer had an egregiously misused word.
10: Boston has Daylight Savings Day. They just fell back a day.
10: it's just for me, yeah. They worry that if I vote on tuesday people will get jealous of the solid gold voting booth and the palanquin that gives me a ride to the polling station.
13: We would have also accepted "I'm in Puerto Rico right now."
But would I accept being in Puerto Rico right now?
Yes, I probably would. It seems like it's nice there.
Nova Scotia is also an hour ahead, I think.
I believe Venezuela is a half-hour off some of the time. It's odd.
It's strange to notice that unfogged now has a clock that basically corresponds with some standard time zone.
Oh, hey, now it's in Mountain Time again.
The blog lives in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Which explains why the blog is always distracted when The Red Green Show is on.
In other news, Cloaca would be another terrible name for a child.
Cloaca, Jamaica ooo I wanna take ya
If the blog is on Pacific Time in the summer and Mountain Time in the winter it's clearly in Arizona.
Well technically, it everyone else that does something. And am trying to
A veces me pregunto: ¿Sería posible tener un thread exclusivamente en español? Me imagino que sí.
I briefly tried to look at what's going on with the local election here, but it turns out the parties have little to do with parties on the provincial and federal level. The one I looked up had an "about" page that consisted only of names, with no general statement of what the party stands for. No five dollars were forthcoming, so I decided to do something else.
I would like to see a thread that was just Stanley talking to himself in Spanish.
31: Claro, si hablas con tu mismo. Cuando no podemos hablar, debemos callar, como dijo Wittgenstein.
What about a thread in Spanish using a non-Roman character set?
What about at thread containing only images of handwritten comments put on paper?
I have no idea what I was either trying to do or type there.
Indiana has some of the most interesting and complex time zone politics.
36.2: If they were in cursive, they might be unreadable.
I would like to see a thread that was just Stanley talking to himself in Spanish.
I think in Spanish a lot. It's weird.
What about a thread in Spanish using a non-Roman character set?
!ٳكسيلينتي
˙louɐdsǝ ɹıqıɹɔsǝ o ɹǝǝl opǝnd ou
'debemos callarnos' or 'debemos quedarnos callados' - although the real underlying thruth is: 'De lo que no se puede callar, se (tiene que) habla(r)."
OT: What the fuck, Penn State? Men with any shame at all would be found dead in their offices this morning.
I was trying to figure out if there's any election for me to vote in. Most of the town stuff was done at town meeting, I think. We already had a special election to pass a property tax override to pay for some stuff.
I can't figure out if there are any state-wide referenda. I thought that the "Right to Repair Bill" (which would give independent mechanics access to diagnostic tools currently only available to dealers) was a ballot question, but it does not appear to be.
45: I heard about that on NPR. Fucked up.
47: Seriously. How can those men face themselves?
I voted on Friday, Sifu, but I left you some of the caviar.
I wanted to protest in front of the supporters of the candidate whose motto is, "You push me, I'll pull you." Either he thinks electing him will get us nowhere or he denies the laws of physics.
If I may make a suggestion about school board, don't vote for Fant/ini or Taub/er. Go with Nol/an and McGov/ern.
45-48: Buck is in mourning. I think the JoPa shrine may be disassembled today. Sweatshirts and hats discarded; Saturday rituals abandoned.
He's not even terribly interested in football generally, it was all Penn State. If he's not rooting for Penn State anymore, I don't know what replaces it.
Mailed mine in last week. City council, and the referendum on corporate personhood. It'll be interesting to see how the latter does.
How can those men face themselves?
It's no doubt difficult, but they'll make it through with the counsel of a wise priest. It's a shame Bernard Law isn't available.
[T]hey'll make it through with the counsel of a wise priest.
One recalls the Big J saying something about children and the relative importance of the wishes, plans and ambitions of adults. Maybe they could meditate on that chapter for a while.
45, etc.: I want the kids and their parents to bankrupt the entire fucking state. (Sorry Witt, Moby, Stormcrow, etc!)
I'd actually like a federal law requiring educational institutions that receive federal money to adopt a standard set of policies for passing reports of on-campus crimes on to the civil authorities. This is particularly horrible because it's children, but if you told me that it was a story about a serial campus rapist who had been reported to the university administration twice but nothing effective was done about it, I'd be completely unsurprised.
Of course, maybe there is some federal law or regulation like that, and I just don't know about it.
56: I am sympathetic, but I find myself more disgusted by the contemptible failure of so many people to feel, or to respond to, any dutiful moral emotion whatsoever, in the face of what seem to have been shockingly reprehensible conduct.
Re: Penn State, this is why we need good foster parents, since at least one and I'd suspect more of the boys he molested were entrusted to him by the state.
Well, if you have a system set up to allow buckpassing, people will pass bucks. A lot of people reported this guy to someone who they thought would take responsibility for it -- the grad student reported the 2002 rape; JoPa passed the report onward to Curley; the janitor who saw the 2000 rape reported it to his supervisor; the mother of the kid who was molested in 1998 reported it to the campus police. People tried, not hard enough, but they tried.
This is a grotesque (and banned) analogy, but doesn't this remind anyone of a financial fraud story? Lower level employees were all aware of what was going on, didn't think it was a secret, reported it to upper management, and then somehow the reports dead end or get misunderstood and upper management claims to have been totally unaware of the problems?
If he's not rooting for Penn State anymore, I don't know what replaces it.
He could root for Pitt, which is similar except for the greater amount of losing.
55: They'll probably just raise the tuition on the undergrads.
Speaking of, Graham Spanier was chancellor of my undergrad institution when I graduated.
61: If someone who was known (through various eyewitnesses) to have raped (orally and anally) children in public (well, semi-public: the showers aren't exactly private) continued to walk around and hang out for years, you'd think the underlings would sort of appreciate that the problem had not in fact been solved and was not in fact being taken care of. There was the proof, right in front of them.
Not just proof that the problem wasn't solved. Proof that the main cause of the problem was powerfully connected and you weren't.
Do we know yet how the whole thing finally got pushed toward investigation and prosecution?
66: I think a high school found out and called the cops.
I love lections in my small town, where there really aren't any issues, although a fair amount of spending is involved and I'm sure everyone is corrupt. There are two open town council seats every year. Almost every time, both parties demonstrate their commitments to diversity by nominating one Italian-American and one non-Italian-American. They also always nominate one white collar type, and one blue collar who has some political experience inside a union. This year an accountant and a teamster are running against a lawyer and an electrical worker/shop steward. I'm not clear which are the Republicans and which are the Democrats. Only in New Jersey!
64: Well, the janitor may literally not have seen Sandusky again or known that he was still around campus.
The graduate assistant, you're right. He knew what had happened, and given that he was working in the football program he must have known that nothing happened to Sandusky. And the same for JoPa, with the minimal out that he didn't see anything himself, so that it's conceivable that he believed the charges had been investigated and found to be untrue. (But that is a bullshit excuse -- he was morally responsible for following up.)
I just wanna know if anyone during the process said, "Yeah, but he wins games."
70: He'd retired by the time anybody knew any of this. Or at least by the time anything the grand jury investigated was happening.
Not to imply that currently winning games would have been a valid excuse.
69: I think it's basically impossible for the janitor not to have known he was still around (really, two janitors, the one who saw and the one he spoke to immediately afterward) unless the janitor retired or transferred to another part of campus. Sandusky was a rock star, so not only would his comings and going be known and spoken of because he was a BFD, but because it's unimaginable that this shit wasn't gossiped about.
73 was me.
And to 55, I can't say I blame you.
The thing that always gets me about these horrific situations that people act surprised about the cover-up. To me the astonishing thing is that the cover-up ever gets blown. People in power get used to having their cover-ups work, precisely because most of the time, they do.
because it's unimaginable that this shit wasn't gossiped about.
You know, it's horrible, but I think it's perfectly possible that it wasn't gossiped about at all. I wouldn't be surprised if people with knowledge (two janitors, graduate assistant, JoPa, Curley) didn't keep a tight lid on it because the story was too awful to repeat if you weren't going to do something effective.
76: Sigh. Maybe you are right. Maybe it was all too awful to result in the more normal sort of "funny uncle" snickering.
Although this is hard to explain.
73: It's something, but it doesn't look like it requires immediate reporting of any crime reported to the campus administration to the local police.
Can somebody explain to me why Paterno, other than the obvious (he owns the school), hasn't been fired or placed on administrative leave? Is the idea that he told his boss, the AD, what he knew and so his responsibility ended there?
79: Paterno told that admin guy and the admin guy is technically head of the campus po-po. Maybe he is covered legitimately?
80: And then thought it was swell for him to run PSU branded football sleepaway camps for 9yos in 2009? No.
79, 80: Yeah, Paterno's not morally in the clear, but administratively, he was told about a crime committed by someone he used to supervise, but who he no longer had any employment relationship with, and he passed on the report to the proper authorities. I can't see what Penn State, the entity that he properly informed of the crime, has standing to punish him for.
Now, he's disgusting for not having followed up or supported the graduate assistant in going directly to the real police. And I assume he's retiring without the expected fanfare at the end of this season. But Penn State couldn't really plausibly discipline him.
Paterno may be safe because he is Paterno, but he may have just been smart enough not to perjure himself before a grand jury. That is a very good way to get charged even when others are more closely connected to the crime.
It's weird to me that, even after all of the extraordinary amount of media attention and legislation around child sex abuse, people in responsible positions would somehow think to themselves that they would be okay not to report even the most minor incidents. "Fondling"? "Horseplay in the shower"? WTF? Everybody knows that's illegal. Didn't they ever watch the Gordon Jump episode of Diff'rent Strokes?!
81: I don't get the impression that JoPa was in any literal way in charge of the relationship between Penn State and the camps. Again, he's disgusting, but I can't see how the university could treat that as his responsibility, given that he did report the crime.
Paterno has been teflon for a long time with a number of other player incidents etc. No way he is not out after this one. (Plus he's old and not winning as much as he used to ...)
This particular story is more reprehensible than most but big time NCAA football is morally corrupt top to bottom.
82: You need to read Campos on this, I think.
87: I did, and I thought this bit:
There can be little doubt that Paterno has known since at least 1998 that Sandusky had a "problem" with "inappropriate behavior" toward children, i.e., he was a child molester. That's when the campus police did a six-week investigation after a mother reported to them that her 11-year-old son had showered with Sandusky.... ...To put it mildly, it's extremely unlikely that in a little town like State College, PA, word of this investigation didn't get back to Paterno.
was wrong. Wouldn't you expect an investigation into possible child sexual abuse that didn't find anything criminal to be treated as extremely confidential by everyone involved? It doesn't seem weird at all to me that Paterno wouldn't have known about it.
88: You don't think the unexpected "retirement" had something to do with it? And Paterno wouldn't wonder why this guy was retiring at 55?
In 1998, in a small town, where Paterno had a great deal of power? Maybe not "extremely unlikely" he didn't know, but certainly unlikely.
It's possible, of course, that he did know about the 1998 investigation. But treating it as a certainty seems off.
But in any case, I was talking about what Penn State could plausibly do to Paterno. And if anything's clear, it's that the Penn State administration knew at least as much as Paterno, and maybe more: he didn't conceal anything from the school. At which point, if the school disciplined him, they'd be disciplining him either for not going around them to the real police, or for not bullying his administrative superiors into taking action.
Morally, he absolutely should have done one or the other of those things. But I can't see how Penn State is in a position to punish him for not doing them.
And 89 makes it even less plausible.
Finally, leaving untouched Sandusky's access to campus facilities (and possibly the summer-camp thing, but I don't know who was responsible for that) seems to be the answer to 82.1.
91: Yes. I expect Spanier is in much more trouble than Paterno and that this is not without reason.
I did not realize that Sandusky literally founded the whole Second Mile charity back in 1977.
Here's the AP narrative, including this on Sandusky's departure:
Sandusky coached the defense in Penn State's 1982 and 1986 national title seasons, and was at one point considered a likely successor to Paterno. The grand jury report released Saturday said one victim, identified as "Victim 4," recalled a meeting with an emotional Sandusky after Paterno had told Sandusky about May 1999 that his assistant would not be the next coach at Penn State.
According to Scott Paterno, his father made the decision because he felt Sandusky was spending too much time at The Second Mile, a foundation Sandusky established to help at-risk kids, where authorities say he encountered the boys. Sandusky then made the decision to take early retirement, Scott Paterno said.
"Spending too much time at The Second Mile."
I was thinking that -- his professorship doesn't look so prestigious this week.
93, 96: Yes, it's a big black mark for the whole fricking school and it's culture.
||
We got a note from the doctor that says "Hokey-Pokey is fine. Stop sending him home." I'm so relieved. Literally, "Stop sending him home." is a quote from the note.
|>
99: "This baby has magnificent bowel movements. Bowel movements that make America proud. Don't you dare interfere."
99. Good news. Will they in fact stop it?
96: I feel sort of sick for him, since he seems like the sort of fellow who is likely considering resigning the chair right now. Quick, Heinz family!
We got a note from the doctor that says "Hokey-Pokey is fine. Stop sending him home." I'm so relieved. Literally, "Stop sending him home." is a quote from the note.
Yay!!
104: This is probably unnecessary worrying, I'm sure he has no difficulty remaining appropriate, but it's got to be such a hard position for a habitual smartass to be in. Anything I can imagine Berube saying about the situation seems overwhelmingly likely to be funny in a way that just doesn't work given the circumstances.
103:I think so, because this gives them legal cover that they can stick in a filing cabinet as to why they're no longer following their official policy of sending kids home.
And of course, Joe Paterno is Catholic.
I remember the good old days when stereotypes of Catholics involved veneration of the Blessed Virgin and having lots of kids.
106: I know in the past he's written very sincerely about the munificence of Paterno in funding various academic chairs and what a boon that is to the university. But yeah.
Wondering what's under the next rock -- I wonder if McQueary was pressured to drop it after reporting it to Paterno. I'm never surprised by people in charge covering things up, but a firsthand witness to a rape who initially reported it internally and then didn't go to the police? That seems odd enough to me that I wonder if anything's going to come out about pressure on him either through Paterno or otherwise.
110: I guess the speculation right now is that his soon-after hiring to assistant coach was payback. But that's only speculation.
If that breaks for real, then I think Paterno has to retire in disgrace.
but a firsthand witness to a rape who initially reported it internally and then didn't go to the police...
... is an accomplice in law, surely?
96: Wouldn't it be fairly easy for Bérubé to resign his chair, but keep his professorship, with very little loss of prestige, or maybe even some gain?
113: No matter what he is out in disgrace. Don't be overly lawyerly on this--he might be in the clear legally, but he is out, the president is out and whoever takes over will sweep out and start over. Disgraced at all levels.
In part because he has annoyed a lot of people (alumni etc.) in the past decade by the way he has insisted on hanging on. He recently passed Robinson as all-time winningest I believe, so he'll take that and leave or be booted. In the small chance he does not the damage to the institution is much greater.
Nope. Unless you have a special obligation to report, you can watch one person stab another to death and go on about your business with no liability.
115: I was wondering this. I don't in fact know whether it is an endowed professorship or an endowed chair. Also, someone would have to be willing to take his salary from a different budget line.
116: Oh, he's disgraced no matter what. I've been picking on the line as to whether PSU has anything legitimate to take action against him for, and my sense is that if he passed on a report of a crime to the administration and did nothing else, PSU has nothing they can do to him. If he participated in a conspiracy to cover up that crime, PSU should force him out on their schedule, not his, and start chiseling his name off the library.
115: If they want to keep him, they'll find the money and if they don't, someone else will take him. He's the last person I'd worry about in this situation.
OTOH, I bet all the faculty in chairs funded by Paterno are under pressure not to resign by people with a misguided notion of damage control. They could get compliance by insisting that the University has no alternate positions or funding for them.
122: Right. This is exactly what I was thinking.
Here's the grand jury report. It makes harrowing reading.
It doesn't contradict Paterno, or Second Mile's own rather dubious sounding self-justification, but Curley and Schultz, as you might expect, come off looking awful.
Nobody is resigning a chair over this. Universities take all kinds of more tainted money than this.
125: I guess I wasn't thinking the money so much as the name. Having always to be identified as the Pedo-Enabling Professor of Quelquechose.
Dept. of Never Mind: Headline from a Central Pa newspaper in August of this year: Commentary: Could Joe Paterno and a new NCAA commission be the answer to college football's dirty image? .
Asking Paterno to chair a committee to clean up college football seems like the perfect solution to a couple of different problems.
126: I go to class in a building named after somebody who infected Central American peasants with syphilis. And not accidentally either.
all the faculty in chairs funded by Paterno
Doesn't this include one friend of the blog, or at least friend of various sister blogs?
I go to class in a building named after somebody who infected Central American peasants with syphilis. And not accidentally either.
When my father lived in that particular town, I enjoyed several brunches at a hotel named for the fellow who distributed smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans.
Ah yes, I see. Scrolling up, this:
This particular story is more reprehensible than most but big time NCAA football is morally corrupt top to bottom.
is really absolutely correct. "Extraordinarily dangerous slave labor for the enjoyment of fat rich white men" is an exaggeration, but not wholly unfair.
The most elegant Paterno Chair.
And surely this from Campos is right:
It provided the perfect opportunity for the powers that be at PSU to nudge Paterno out the door, but he wouldn't go, even with the firestorm that's now finally broken hanging over his head. He's a crazy old man who isn't going to quit until either someone fires him or he dies with his boots on. He's been living a lie for years now, and in the end it's led to him trying to weasel-word his way out of his complete failure to do what he could to make sure that Jerry Sandusky didn't continue to rape little boys. Joe Paterno was once an admirable figure to the extent football coaches can be admired, but when faced with a genuine moral crisis nine years ago he failed utterly. He's become a fraud and a disgrace, and should be treated as such.
132: Those Hiltons will do anything.
136: Especially Paris, or so the Internet would have you believe.
What is the gigantic scandal that will get the NCAA involved in effectively shutting down your football program?
Having a star player, who put his body in danger for free every Sunday, receive "gifts" (i.e, advances on a pro career) from an agent in the range of a few hundred thousand dollars and a limousine ride to the Heisman ceremony. In other words, allowing a player to get some reasonable compensation for his efforts.
What is the gigantic scandal that the NCAA will almost certainly ignore?
Recklessly turning a blind eye to the rape of young children for more than a decade.
Rules are rules, Halford, and I'm not sure the NCAA bylaws explicitly outlaw child rape.
This story, if it isn't just somebody covering their own ass, looks very bad for Penn State's former AD.
Also the player shouldn't be putting his body in danger on Sunday; he should be recovering from Saturday's game.
142: Law is for big-picture types, not the detail oriented.
141: That does look awful. Dropping an accusation is one, very bad thing. But assuring other people you've looked into it and it isn't true has got to be worse.
If I had to bother with details, I couldn't keep up this volume of high-quality commenting. Oh wait.
141 is consistent with Curley's grand jury testimony. Curley seems to be offering the same defense as Paterno - saying he didn't get an explicit description of what went on. He therefore also doesn't claim to have given the rape story to Second Mile.
The grad assistant, however, professes to have given Curley the whole story. (However, the grad student does appear to be letting Paterno off the hook.)
141: That still looks sketchy to me. The statement says that Second Mile was told that:
an internal investigation had found no corroboration for an allegation of inappropriate contact by Mr. Sandusky with a youth in a locker room.
"We didn't think it was a big deal, so we didn't look into it," is what I understand Curley's story to be. Second Mile is saying that Curley told them "We looked into it, but didn't find reason to believe it was true, so you don't need to worry." That looks to me like a real inconsistency.
146: The link in 141 has Curley saying he investigated which would seem to suggest he did actively sought information.
Paterno can't be happy about the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" part of that page.
152. I don't suppose he's ecstatic about an astroturf review under his name appearing there either.
And another under the name of Tim Curley.
152: As titles go, By the Book is no Touched, but it too is lacking in appropriateness for the present moment.
I am not sure if it was said upthread, but I understand that the grad assistant is a former quarterback for Paterno and is now a coach on his staff.
Yeah, there's apparently been speculation that the coaching position was a payoff for keeping his mouth shut.
I should say that I'm not aware of any basis for the speculation.
I agree with everyone who feels badly about Berube.
This is horrible for everyone involved.
Joe Paterno reported it up the chain and that is ok?!?!? As if he is turning in expenses for reimbursement?!?
"Yea, um, my star Defensive Coordinator might be molesting young boys. I do not want to know anything about it!" No follow up? Nothing more serious?
How many times has he claimed credit for molding boys into fine young men?
Unacceptable.
Not defending Paterno, just keeping the timeline straight; Sandusky was three or four years retired by the time the rape was reported to Paterno.
160: The likelihood he didn't know about the 98 investigation is near zero.
How many times has he claimed credit for molding boys into fine young men?
Unacceptable.
To be fair, the number of boys Sandusky molested is probably less than 1% of the number of boys he molded into fine young men.
161: As I said above, I'm not convinced that that's necessarily true. But in any case, even if Paterno knew all about it, what happened in 1998 was an investigation that went to a district attorney and died there; they didn't find enough to prosecute. At the time when Paterno absolutely knew that a crime had been committed, Sandusky didn't work for him.
He's still disgusting for not having done something about it, but he's disgusting because he had an incredible amount of personal power in PSU, he knew Sandusky was molesting at least one kid, and he didn't make sure that PSU followed up on the report after he reported it. He wasn't, on the other hand, based on what's come out, knowingly employing Sandusky while he continued to rape kids -- by the time Paterno definitely knew, Sandusky wasn't employed by PSU.
What Paterno failed to do is awful enough -- I just get fussy about keeping exactly what was going on straight.
I would be very surprised if he didn't talk to a lawyer to find out a safe course of action, law-wise.
I wonder: Paterno worked with this guy for several decades in a job that involved young men just out of high school (and probably in high school, too). Did he really not have an inkling that there was something a little bit off about his assistant?
I realize that's unfair, but I do unfairly wonder ...
I read that attraction to prepubescent kids is different than attraction to older kids, so maybe not.
164: Oh, I'd guess not. What Paterno did after reporting the 2002 event (that is, nothing) sounds to me like a man sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "Not my problem, I don't have to think about it, la la la la la I'm not listening." Not something that goes with seeking legal advice.
165: Who can tell? But this guy was raping ten-year-olds; it seems possible to me that giant hairy college football players weren't his thing at all, and so he wasn't acting weird around them.
Paterno really is contemptible on the facts reported, even if he never knew a thing other than what McQueary told him.
It seems likely that Sandusky "retired" in 1998 as a result of the investigation. I would be very surprised if Joe Pa didnt know what was going on, and also surprised if he didn't create some layers of plausible deniability. The comparison to corporate scandals is apt.
167.1: I guess I figured he'd ask if he could do nothing without incurring legal culpability.
Oh my stars and garters: Sandusky gave a fucking commencement speech for PSU in 2007 (College of Health and Human Development).
Another thing I wonder: How would I react if someone I knew and trusted for decades turned out to be a pedophile?
My guess is that I'd feel a sense of personal betrayal - and that, in addition to wanting to keep the son of a bitch from raping children, I'd get satisfaction out of turning him in for payback reasons.
On the other hand, if you're a creature of an organization, as Paterno is, you probably think in terms of defending the organization - and not the children - from this criminal. Paterno is the archbishop of Penn State.
re: 171.1
Happened recently at my place of work. Although in a less dramatic fashion, in that it wasn't a close friend or colleague I trusted. Someone I've worked with off and on for at least 7 or 8 years just got jailed for something like this. I don't know the exact details, it hasn't made the press, but his sentence was long enough that his crimes must have been fairly horrific. The news sparked some fairly grim conversations at work, as everyone who'd known him agreed that if you had to pick a single person out of the hundreds in our wider department to have been most likely to have committed some sexual crime, he'd have been the guy. No-one I knew could handle working with him, as he was just deeply odd in a very unsettling way.
Very different I suppose, from the individual who gets away with crimes because they seem so plausible, and charming, but he still must have been getting away with it for a while, given how long his sentence was.
This thing is sad and bad on multiple fronts. This is from the Post-Gazette article when he retired*:
Sandusky will spend time, too, with his family, although everyone is grown now. He and his wife, Dottie, adopted six children and essentially turned their State College home into the place to hang out for their children and their friends. His children always say that at heart, their dad is a playground monitor.[emphasis in original]His retirement was announced early in the summer of 1999 and took effect after that season.
Yep. This is clearly going to expand now that it is in the papers.
Also, somebody is polling about this.
124: Here's the grand jury report.
If Victim 4 (circa 1998, but not the one investigated at the time but a teen of 14 years old or so at the time) in that report is at all credible, it puts Paterno in even more questionable light. Victim 4 claims to have accompanied Sandusky to bowl games and golf outings, and stayed with the team at a local resort before home games and ate at the coaches' table there. So even if Paterno did not know of the specific 1998 investigation, a lot of that was certainly known information to him when:
I was informed in 2002 by an assistant coach that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of our locker room facility. It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report. Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.Not to even mention the extremely questionable judgment he displayed in 1998. And if you want to see the enabling climate in action, ponder this headline in a local paper: "Penn State coach Paterno praised for acting appropriately in reporting Jerry Sandusky sex abuse suspicions*." I'll shut up now.
*And I do realize since Paterno apparently will be testifying for the prosecution it is in the interests of "justice" for his credibility to not be impeached.
"Penn State coach Paterno praised for acting appropriately in reporting Jerry Sandusky sex abuse suspicions*."
Uh, wow. That's impressive, in a way.
No-one I knew could handle working with him, as he was just deeply odd in a very unsettling way.
I was at home catching up with an old friend a couple years ago, and she said that this kid from middle school was now in jail for pedophilia. I couldn't quite remember him, so I went and looked him up in my yearbook.
I'd blackened out his picture. That was extremely out of character for me, because generally I was a preservationist kid. He and I knew each other and he had a habit of asking out equally socially unpopular girls, and I'd turned him down, and the whole interaction was really quite polite and reasonable, and I went home and blackened out his photo. And never really reflected about what exactly had squicked me out.
If you saw him buggering a little kid in the showers, heebie, just blacking out his yearbook picture, albeit a serious punishment in itself, probably doesn't get you off the hook ethically. Though I'm sure LB will take your case pro bono, should it come to that.
You're saying I should have gone with devil horns and forked tongue on his picture?
And never really reflected about what exactly had squicked me out.
If you were in middle school and he asked you out, he's obviously a pedophile.
Not necessarily; I was super hot at 11.
Another thing I wonder: How would I react if someone I knew and trusted for decades turned out to be a pedophile?
The minister of my church for 5-6 years when I was a pre-teen and early teenager was convicted on several counts of child molestation about ten years after he had left my church. The night before he was supposed to go to jail he and his wife committed suicide together, leaving a note that said they couldn't imagine living apart from each other. It was really weird. The dude taught my confirmation classes! But while the news of the molestation came as an utter surprise, there more I thought about it, the more it made sense. There were things about him that were just off.
This is good, and surprisingly hard-hitting for the Times.
The standard should be simple for a coach, a CEO, or a President. They are highly paid. They are responsible whether they knew or didn't know. Bc they are kings of gaining informations. Information about their competitors. Information about advances in their field. Etc.
If they didn't know, it was bc they designed it so that they wouldn't know. Or they are completely incompetent.
Dishonorable discharge from their positions in the most shameful and punitive way possible. If you want to be paid big money, they would have big responsibility.
The NYT, citing informed sources at the university, says Paterno is about to be sacked in some form or fashion.
Wasn't he sacked by his own players earlier this year?
Doesnt McQueary have to be fired too?
He was 28 years old. He saw a 57 year old man sodomizing a 10 year old boy, and he didnt try to stop him.
He walked away. He waited until the next day to report it to his coach.
I wouldnt want him associated with my organization.
I would assume that if Paterno's out, McQueary is too. I'm genuinely surprised that Paterno's out (rather than retiring formally 'of his own accord'); like I said in 91, it seems frankly bizarre for PSU to make a statement that a university employee reporting a crime to the highest level of the PSU administration and then not taking any further action committed wrongdoing, presumably because he should have known PSU would cover it up. I agree that it was horrible wrongdoing, but PSU seems like the one entity that's not in a position to call it that.
But yeah, anything Paterno did wrong, McQueary did as bad or worse, because he was a direct witness to the crime.
I realize that I am just ranting, but how many times have you heard people refer to quarterbacks "leading their team into battle"?
Seven years after he graduated and finished being the leader of a Division 1 football powerhouse, he walked away from a real life battle between a 10 year old boy and a 57 year old man.
What kind of program allows that guy to be on their staff?
(Walked away and waited to the next day to report it seems wrong, but people freak out and freeze under stress. What I'm judging McQueary for is the same thing as I'm judging Paterno for: knowing about the crime, seeing that PSU hadn't gone to real law enforcement with the report, and not reporting it directly.)
And I'm making excuses for McQueary on the day of the rape, because his behavior in not intervening seems so bizarre to me that I can only think that he must have had some sort of emotional shock reaction that kept him from acting. If he stood there and decided not to do anything about it, everything you're saying about him is right.
Sure, lots of kickers blow field goals due to stress. It happens. They get canned for it.
His freak out and walk away was wrong. Period. Many other people might have reacted the same way. It doesnt really matter though.
It was wrong to walk away while a 10 year old was being raped. (I know that we arent REALLy arguing. Im just venting.)
it seems frankly bizarre for PSU to make a statement that a university employee reporting a crime to the highest level of the PSU administration and then not taking any further action committed wrongdoing, presumably because he should have known PSU would cover it up
I think, first, that PSU is admitting very much what you've said above: that Paterno knew there would be a cover-up. I think, second, that they're admitting this because Paterno wanted such a cover-up. I think, third, that they want Paterno out and have for some time, so it isn't especially surprising that they're seizing on this episode as a chance to do him. I think, finally, that your formulation ignores will's point: football coaches like Paterno aren't regular employees. They're CEOs of the football program and sometimes, depending on their status, co-equals with the AD or even the university president. That's certainly the case with Paterno, who, when told a few years back by the university president that the time had come to retire, rather famously told the university president to fuck off. Given that kind of power, Paterno is every bit as responsible for this episode as anyone to whom he might have reported it. No, he's more responsible, because he had more power than any of them, and also because he hired and protected Sandusky.
I know this makes me a bad liberal, but watching ESPN last night I found myself thinking that somebody should beat Joe Paterno within an inch of his miserable, self-satisfied, "I'm a molder of boys into men" life. What a terrible, terrible man. And what a terrible, terrible state of affairs when we allow men like this to have so much unchecked power within universities. The whole thing is sickening.
195: Yeah, you're right about the relative power levels. I guess I was thinking that PSU would be too ashamed to admit that the football coach de facto outranks the college president, and so the buck should stop with the coach at least as much as with the president. But I suppose it's obvious enough to anyone who knows Penn State that they're not even ashamed.
Buck is so sad about this. He was really fond of JoPa and the whole Penn State program. Proud of them for being somewhat less ghastly academically and socially than comparable teams (I don't know if they are for real -- I don't follow them other than by contagion.) This has really wrecked him.
Jo Pa seems to be a self-centered ahole.
He has "coached" the last 20 or so games from the press box???! Seriously? He wants credit for those games?
He wants wins credited to his name. Some pesky thing like Sandusky would have tarnished his fake reputation.
I might have mentioned it earlier, but UVa offered Sandusky our head coaching job some years ago.
Whew!
I knew a guy from college who was arrested a few years ago for molesting his children. At the time I though "you know, he always struck me as a weird guy," but I think I was bullshitting myself.
On the other hand, I had a teacher in middle school who in retrospect had to have been a pedophile. He was a science teacher, so he had a lab. He would let boys (and they were always boys) into the lab before school while he was setting up. He would invite his favorites to come over to his house, where he had a pool. The rule for the pool was no clothing allowed. Maybe that's where it ended, but still.
I didn't think it was weird at the time (or at least any weirder than anything else adults did), and I completely forgot about it until 20 years later. At that point, I contacted the school. I wasn't even sure what I would do, but it turned out that the teacher in question had died years before.
Jerry Sandusky killed him. Too much competition.
I guess it goes without saying* that if Paterno's departure is required, Spanier has to go too.
I think we can let Berube keep his job, though.
*But I'll say it anyway.
Buck is so sad about this. He was really fond of JoPa and the whole Penn State program. Proud of them for being somewhat less ghastly academically and socially than comparable teams (I don't know if they are for real -- I don't follow them other than by contagion.) This has really wrecked him.
FWIW, I think PSU really was/is better academically and socially than most similar programs; certainly when I was there I never heard the kinds of stories about the football team that I've heard from people who went to other big-time schools. And I can't think of another school where the football coach would donate as much to the school library as Paterno did. But I can't say I'm surprised to hear this sort of thing come out.
(And I suspect my stepfather is in the same situation as Buck. He cheers for PSU on the basis of my having gone there, and we were talking just a couple of weeks ago about how Paterno runs a clean program.)
I think, considering the structural constraints, that Paterno did the job as well at it could be done. And that's the problem.
204 is about right.
I'm not a big college football guy, but I believe it's widely known that Tom Osborn routinely tried to cover up rapes and beatings by his players. And he went to Congress with like 95% of the vote.
But at least his players didn't do something horrible like selling memorabilia for money.
Some bigshot blogger who doesn't comment here is calling for shutting down bigtime college football generally. Probably not a bad idea -- equalize school resources between the football team and the fencing team, and just stop the focus on the teams as important. I'd like my pony to be appaloosa.
208: As long as they leave basketball alone (something something cold dead hands something), I'd be okay with that.
Widespread public support for funding higher education from state tax revenues can only go up.
I really think it's the not paying players that's the big problem. Not only does this lead to completely inevitable corruption at all levels of the system, it completely obscures the nature of what is going on to the Universities and creates the culture of the all powerful coach. But if a few big time universities want to run professional sports programs for the thrill of their alumni, more power to them. Presumably a few big programs would keep it up (USC and Notre Dame and OSU in football, Duke and UCLA and UNC in basketball) and the player salaries would keep other schools out of the game.
I'm only okay with funding fencing teams that fight with capes and shout "sa-ha!" and knock over candelabras.
But I'd be very happy to replace football and basketball teams with that sort of fencing team.
On the pay issue, and many others, see this Atlantic article.
Paying the players makes a mockery of the idea of student-athletes.
FCS isn't really big time, I suppose, so you people are not really going after No. 1 ranked North Dakota State, right?
Not that no. 2 team neither.
and basketball teams
Don't make me pull this car over, Jackmormon.
Paying the players makes a mockery of the idea of student-athletes.
What does paying the TAs make a mockery of?
216: that's the idea. The concept of the student athlete is a boondoggle anyway. (As discussed in that article!) Better just to be honest about it.
216: Sure, but the NCAA already makes a mockery of the idea of student-athletes in the big deal sports, just with a bonus layer of hypocrisy.
But when will they fairly compensate student-mathletes?
223: Isn't the glory enough for them?
Why not just tighten academic standards? Any sports program with a graduation rate more then 10% (or some reasonable number) below the college's average graduation rate is banned from league play until it improves. Etc.
Because, urple who continues not to sign his name, that just leads to corruption in the academic side of things. Or rather already has led.
Still allows for cheating on what constitutes work sufficient to graduate. (Also, your name's missing. If you're a regular, fix it, if not, pick a name.)
completely inevitable corruption at all levels of the system
The corruption results from the money involved.
The corruption results from the concealment of the money involved
Sorry about the name. Paying the players just seems like a lazy solution. Let's just destroy college athletics instead of attempting to fix it. Instead we'll just have college-affiliated professional leagues. Most coaches won't even allow the players to go to class, of course, since they won't have time for that--they'll be paid professional athletes! And are we going to keep our elgibility and red-shirting rules, or throw all those out the windows as well?
211, 214: Kurt Vonnegut got there in 1952 in Player Piano. The schools he discusses does date things a bit (the coach musing the following is from Cornell).
Every coach in the Ivy League was out to knock him down to a PE-003 again, and two losses would do it. Yale and Penn were loaded. Yale had floated a bond to to buy the whole Texas A&M backfield, and Penn had bought Breslaw from Wisconsin for $43,000.
231: The redshirting rules (aside from major injury) are bs anyways. The sooner the better on that front. The eligibility rules, like all the others are (always) already being suborned. Like you're willfully missing the point--the entire edifice of big-money college athletics is rife with disease.
Paying the players just seems like a lazy solution. Let's just destroy college athletics instead of attempting to fix it.
The players are providing labor that produces millions of dollars of value without receiving any kind of meaningful compensation. Paying the players is the necessary fix to college athletics.
I would bet $25 that Urple doesnt actually hold these views. The "makes a mockery of the student athlete" line is the tell. OTOH that's a hard bet to police.
meaningful compensation? Free college with all the perks. Tutoring, etc. Per diems for food.
For the overwhelming majority of revenue sports, the full scholarship athletes are well-compensated.
It is the ones who are partial scholarships who are screwed bc they cant work other jobs.
I don't see how being a paid professional athlete is worse than being an unpaid as-good-as-professional athlete who can't get workman's comp or anything like that.
236 -- but they are dramatically undercompensated (in many cases) due to NCAA cartel rules that prohibit paying them more. While the schools themselves take in millions from their (especially in the case of football) highly dangerous work.
208: Boston University gave up its football team, because it didn't have enough money to fund football and put enough money into women's sports to satisfy Title IX requirements.
All of the boosterism has transferred to men's hockey.
Halford, we may be talking past one another. Rules against college players getting endorsement deals are silly. As are rules against college players sniffing in the direction of professional agents, etc. But rules against colleges paying their own students to play sports are not crazy. Rules requiring students players to actually be students are not crazy (and should be stronger and better enforced).
238: Exactly. Not only is the implied compensation even at the headline cost of what the athletes receive far below what you would expect the going rate to be given the economic scale of the business they're involved in, but who says they do or should value the free college at anything like what it costs? If someone offered to replace $40,000 of Will's cash compensation next year with the ability to attend a year of college for free, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't take it.
But rules against colleges paying their own students to play sports are not crazy. Rules requiring students players to actually be students are not crazy (and should be stronger and better enforced).
Are so.
What is the point of college athletics??
Rules against colleges paying their own students to do Task X are crazy, for all legal values of Task X, whether filing books in the library, TA'ing a class, or throwing an oblate spheroid down the field.
243: In the case of basketball and football, primarily entertainment and money-making.
My undergrad alma mater is stupidly planning to move into Div I, but at least they don't have a football team.
Well, a point of college athletics is to allow college students a healthy outlet for competitiveness and athleticism, by supporting their desire to play sports recreationally in a way that institutionally understands and allows for the primary importance of their academic work. And for a lot of sports, I think that works fine.
For the big deal sports, it's completely broken, and I can't imagine a tighter clampdown fixing it, so giving up and paying them seems to be the best possible option.
but they are dramatically undercompensated (in many cases) due to NCAA cartel rules that prohibit paying them more. While the schools themselves take in millions from their (especially in the case of football) highly dangerous work.
How much do minor league baseball players make?
Is what they receive better compensation than college athletes?
I dont have time to think this through too much, but you have a ready made audience at a college plus lots of other people willing to take a particular football player's place.
I dont feel sorry for the average football player. Moreover, they have a huge leg-up on post-college employment due to the promotion of them by the college.
I am not very fond of the bigmoney situation in college revenue sports, but I am not feeling very sorry for the college football players. Those are often the best years of their lives. I would hardly call them raimen noodle eating years.
How much do minor league baseball players make?
In the case of stars drafted into the major league systems, millions.
In many other cases, not that much. But something. And minor league baseball, unlike college football and college basketball, is not a big business at all. The two aren't comparable.
In any event, all we are talking about is removing the NCAA cartel rules that prohibit colleges from paying athletes (and, actually, go well beyond that -- there are severe caps on the amounts that can be provided for things like food or textbooks).
I have a great idea for students who like athletics.
Big-time college football players have a sweet gig, yeah. All they have to do is devote themselves full time to punishing, full-time physical labor for several years (without getting seriously injured) in order to get the chance to enter the lottery to possibly make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for an average of 2.3 years or whatever. And, hey, if that doesn't work out, they can always go back to the incredibly poor circumstances from whence they came having received an education with some swell memories.
severe caps??? Are you serious?
I can only speak about the athletic dining hall at UVA. We ate like kings and queens. And the football players and basketball players often had special dinners that far exceeded what we had.
Lobster, steak, carved roastbeef, fish, awesome breads, etc. Freaking amazing eating. When I went to Tennessee for a recruiting trip, their facilities and treatment of athletes was far, far better than UVa.
Plus, when they had a game, the football players and basketball players got something like $50 or 75 for food for the day. (This was in 85-89.)
Plus, women. Dont forget the women. Not a bad gig if you can get it.
"from whence they often came", that is.
251:
Football players dont work any harder than any other sport there. Their time committment isnt any greater than crew, swimming, or any of the other sports.
It is a contact sport so there can be injuries, but the rate of injury is probably only a little bit higher than a bunch of other sports.
Poor, poor football players.
251 -- don't forget the wonderful chance to have your scholarship evaporate entirely if you get injured. Sucks to be you, back to whence you came!
" 'from whence they often came', that is", that is.
255:
Ok, so I agree about that sucking.
I also agree that the rules about transfering to another school without penalty are total bs.
I have a great idea for students who like athletics.
I've stayed out of this conversation because, honestly, I don't follow college sports. The best impression of the shadiness of recruiting that I have is probably from The Last Shot and that description is now almost 20 years old.
However, two notes. First the documentary Training Rules which I mentioned earlier did give me a different sense of the value of college athletics (and, as a side note, Joe Paterno does not look good in that either). Watching a story about women's athletics, removed from much of the money and the cultural baggage around men's sports, it was easier to remember that some people really enjoy and benefit from organized sports.
(Also noted, Quantum Hoops is an enjoyable documentary about the Cal Tech basketball team -- one of the worst in NCAA history)
Given that I think it's better, in the abstract, to have organized sports exist within a university than to require the people who want that experience to have to find sports leagues outside of the structure and find their own way to balance those demands with that of their education. I wouldn't say, for example, that boxers lives are improved by the fact that most universities don't have a boxing program.
I realize that the reality is pretty different from that abstract view, but it is worth remembering that the vast majority of college athletes are not playing in a major program.
Also, this was an interesting response to the Taylor Branch article linked above. I don't know the facts well enough to know if that response is correct in its claim that, "[w]hile the NCAA is patently unjust in many of its most characteristic actions, it inflicts little or no actual human suffering." but I don't think he's just being a knee-jerk defender of college sports.
Of course, many of those athletes keep their scholarships and get tremendous medical care, including personalized highend rehab.
the rate of injury is probably only a little bit higher than a bunch of other sports
Considerably higher and I'd suspect of higher severity.
256: thanks.
254: so what was your backup plan in case you couldn't be a pro swimmer, given that the big money swimming donors wanted you to swim regardless of your academic performance, and you -- due to your background -- were woefully ill-prepared for college level coursework?
Is there a Div I college football player who doesnt think he is living the dream?
(Omit the injured ones for now.)
262: is there a 20-year-old heroin addict in a band that just got signed to a major label that doesn't think he's living the dream?
(Omit the dead ones for now.)
Um, the article linked in 258 last is one of the weakest counter-responses (if that's its intent, it's hard to tell) I've ever read to anything. "Hey the NCAA isn't that bad because . . . um, there are worse things" is, shall we say, not a compelling argument.
so what was your backup plan in case you couldn't be a pro swimmer, given that the big money swimming donors wanted you to swim regardless of your academic performance, and you -- due to your background -- were woefully ill-prepared for college level coursework?
Spend my days commenting on blogs.
Regarding being ill-prepared for college: That is a problem. No doubt. However, with the assistance that they get, many of athletes can handle college and benefit from it. Not all should go to UVa or Harvard or Duke. Those players can go to North Carolina and prob get As.
262: will, maybe you should read the article I linked above?
Also, even if we do omit the injured ones, there's a difference between how the Div I player feels while things are going well and how he feels, say, a couple years later, having failed to get into the NFL, and also having failed to receive a college education. (In at least one case, referred to in that article, having failed even to learn to read.)
Those players can go to North Carolina and prob get As.
… in specially designed coursework.
On reflection I can't tell if 265 is supposed to be a dig at UNC or what.
"Hey the NCAA isn't that bad because . . . um, there are worse things" is, shall we say, not a compelling argument.
I took it as making the argument the will is making -- that the player may be exploited but they may simultaneously feel themselves better off for having the opportunity.
(Though I agree that the opening four paragraphs feel like they're making too much of a minor point.)
Also, the player who is so ill-equiped to handle college is going to handle his money so well, right? Giving the 18 year old an extra 5,000 a month is really going to make a difference in his adult life, right? Assuming the same person who is so ill-prepared in your example.
He will invest wisely. Live within his means. Like most 18-22 year olds with women and men swarming for his attention.
However, with the assistance that they get, many of athletes can handle college and benefit from it. Not all should go to UVa or Harvard or Duke. Those players can go to North Carolina and prob get As.
No, they can't! They don't! In the reality in which we live, they are not prepared for college, the assistance consists entirely of either developing a special easy-to-pass curriculum and hiring tutors to do their work for them, and they leave college not educated and generally not having a degree. This is well established fact.
(NOTE: the preceding paragraph applies to the college athletes who go to college purely to play sports)
I'm having a hard time believing that will means any of this.
270:
I agree that the education component is often a shame. It shouldnt be and doesnt have to be.
In light of 271 I'm überflabbergasted.
The simple fact of having a college degree is often a requirement to even get a job. (I dont agree that should be the system, but it is.)
the player may be exploited but they may simultaneously feel themselves better off for having the opportunity.
This is just such a dumb, dumb argument. OK, fine, maybe college football players feel great! How about also removing the cartel rules that prohibit colleges from paying them and also letting them get some money for their effort. I'll bet then they would feel really great, and we could stop relentlessly exploiting them.
And yet, the mere possession of a college degree is never sufficient to get a job.
Also, spending five years at a college is never sufficient to get a degree. Especially if nobody you ever encounter has a reason to care whether you get a degree or not, except possibly your family.
Also, even if we do omit the injured ones, there's a difference between how the Div I player feels while things are going well and how he feels, say, a couple years later, having failed to get into the NFL, and also having failed to receive a college education. (In at least one case, referred to in that article, having failed even to learn to read.)
He couldn't even read?! Damn. Obviously, I guess, we need to start paying not only elite college athletes, but elite high school ones as well. That would fix the problem, right?
(Seriously, how would having earned a couple thousand dollars in college change anything at all about the situation you're describing?)
276: Rob, the players are already adequately compensated: they eat like kings and get all the women. What more do you want?!
After will retired his amateur status, he was in the Ice Capades for years.
Obviously, I guess, we need to start paying not only elite college athletes, but elite high school ones as well. That would fix the problem, right?
The argument has been made that serious corruption starts much earlier than college.
|| Everyone needs to stop masturbating to Heavy D. "The Boys" are presumably ok, but I really couldn't recommend it. |>
a college degree is significantly valuable. Alumni willing to hire former players is extremely valuable. "Sifu. Former U of _ player" is null valuable.
Cheating the academic standards is a different topic. The players derserve an educational experience. Maybe it isn't physics. Maybe it is educatuon or sales or marketing.
OK, fine, maybe college football players feel great! How about also removing the cartel rules that prohibit colleges from paying them and also letting them get some money for their effort.
Look, I don't want to spend too much time trying to interpret the article that I linked in 258 because, as I said, I'm just not that familiar with the underlying facts about college athletics. However, it's clear that he favors paying college athletes (as he notes in his linked proposal), and that he also thinks there are serious problems to be fixed in college athletics.
Where he would differ from VW, I believe, is in thinking that the problems don't justify dismantling the entire system.
282: I know, which is why we should start paying the kids, right? Enough with the exploitation.
The players are both exploited and exploiters. In the long run, they are screwed over and tossed aside by the system. In the short run, they are able to get away with a lot, including sexual assault.
The fact that they are unpaid is only one aspect of the culture of corruption that is college sports. There are no solutions which do not begin with abolishing the NCAA and keeping anyone involved in it from being involved in any successor organization.
It's certainly not news that people who don't see any value in college sports, continue to not see any value in it. A set which does not include very many, if any, of the players. These guys know what their odds are of getting an NFL spot, especially if they're playing for the number one ranked Bison of NDSU. (I'll hold off on the Death to Bison until they meet our guys in the playoffs.)
The colleges may not be as diligent as they ought to be in making sure athletes fulfill academic requirements. We all knew athletes, of one sport or another, who in fact did get good educations.
284: yeah, education, great.
(I'm already iffy, on different grounds, about sales and marketing, but whatever.)
I mean the way you're describing it it really sounds as if you think it's ok to shortchange players because they have a good time and alumni will hire them even if they don't know anything. But colleges aren't for giving people a good time or offering them mediocre educations in exchange for performance on the field.
Alumni willing to hire former players is extremely valuable. "Sifu. Former U of _ player" is null valuable.
But … ?
The colleges may not be as diligent as they ought to be in making sure athletes fulfill academic requirements.
Maybe!
it really sounds as if you think it's ok to shortchange players because they have a good time and alumni will hire them even if they don't know anything
I realize you're talking to will and not to me, and that will and I are saying different things, but I think this might helpfully clarify my position: no, it's not okay to shortchange players--they should be getting a quality education. But the solution to that is to tighten and enforce the rules ensuring that they get a quality education. The solution is not to starting paying them to play sports. I honestly don't understand why it's not obvious that's a step further in the wrong direction. The overwhelming majority of them will not go on to professional sports careers.
It's certainly not news that people who don't see any value in college sports, continue to not see any value in it. A set which does not include very many, if any, of the players.
Who are you talking about, specifically? Removing cartel rules does not mean abolishing college sports or college football. It means abolishing the rules that prevent players from being compensated, which are really quite extreme -- among them, a rule specifically prohibiting athletic scholarships for more than a year.
At the low end, removing the cartel rules would not, in any way, not prohibit purely amateur college teams in DIII or whatever from existing. If the University of Montana wants to put on a pure team of amateurs for 20,000 people, it could.
Nor would removing the cartel rules lead to the abolition of college sports at the high end. I am sure that USC and OSU and Duke and UNC would still put out college teams, in fact likely better ones than they do now. It would simply remove the rank corruption from the process, and benefit the athletes -- the people who are actually doing the work and taking the risk and producing the lion's share of revenue from college athletics.
But colleges aren't for giving people a good time or offering them mediocre educations . . . .
I'm not making any jokes about NDSU here.
They abolished the rule about multiyear scholarships this week.
I have this really naive idea that the purpose of a college is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge. I know the number of people who are actually interested in this function is minuscule compared to the number of people interested in other things that colleges wind up doing, like sports, cronyism, and in general policing the boundaries between socioeconomic classes. But I would be overjoyed to work for a much smaller institution that focused on the actual purpose of the institution.
Honestly, Robert, what percentage of a good college football team do you think would command salaries, and of what magnitude? You'd have a few stars who could earn real money, but those are mostly the same people who already today go on to become professional stars and earn real money. The vast majority of the players are good, but not big-money good, and an athletic scholarship is probably more or less fair compensation, really. And I have a very hard time believing "market" wages for most players would ever rise much above that--there's a boatload of people who would be very happy to take a position on the team for free, as will has explained. So except for superstars (who, again, are already generally very well compensated), we're probably talking about very small dollars.
I'm also mystified as to how paying players is supposed to help reduce corruption. What's the logic? How does the payment work? Does everyone get paid the same amount? Or do better players get paid more? Doesn't Title IX guarantee that the amount of money paid to women athletes has to be the same as the amount paid to men athletes?
I spent a while recently looking around the website of the University of Cyprus because I was trying to figure out if they had any mandate for accommodations that would allow me to teach there*. Anyway the page I found about special help for special students identifies four kinds of Special Criteria:
-Students with serious social and financial problems;
-Top athletes;
-Students age 30 and over;
-Students from certain religion groups.
I'm totally amused by the categorization of "top athlete" as some kind of delicate minority to be carefully helped through the treacherous process of getting a university degree.
*They don't.
Data on which sports make how much money at Penn State. Summary
297 -- I just completely disagree. Coach salaries are over $1 million in many institutions, and if you allowed a compensation system, you'd have kids being paid something that looks like a decent wage, as opposed to winning the lottery. In any event, if people wouldn't be paid anything, why not eliminate the cartel rules and find out? I'm pretty sure that USC would be happy to pay every member of its team $50,000 a year, if it could, and its stars a few hundred thousand a year, and that it could do so and still be enormously profitable.
291: Players who are wildly academically unprepared for college are not going to get a college education, whatever the rules are; you can't get those students an education by tightening up the rules. If they're not getting paid, and they're not getting a college education, they're getting nothing but some lobster, women (I know it wasn't meant that way, but in the context of the thread that comment turned my stomach), a significant chance of injury, and a lottery ticket to the big leagues. That counts to me as getting screwed; they're doing valuable labor for nothing but room and board, even if it's nice room and board.
There have been rules requiring that 'student-athletes' meet academic standards for as long as the NCAA has existed, and they've been a joke for that long. I don't believe that any change in enforcement is going to keep academically unprepared kids out of college sports, and so I think that justice requires that as long as the system that profits from them exists, they get paid what their labor is worth.
301: sure, you're only talking about something on the order of a few million dollars a year in total player compensation.
I'm also mystified as to how paying players is supposed to help reduce corruption. What's the logic? How does the payment work? Does everyone get paid the same amount? Or do better players get paid more?
Players would get paid like any other employee, on the basis of what they could command in the market (I'd allow and hope that they'd unionize, of course). Obviously a strategy for a university that really, really wanted a good football program would be to pay its players a lot of money. A strategy for a program that didn't care about that would be to either turn into an actually amateur program (i.e., one designed for ordinary students) or eliminate football and basketball entirely.
304.1 was supposed to be italicized.
To 303, your point is? That's probably at the low end of compensation, but would still be a lot better than the zero dollars, incomplete degree, and chance to take rocks for jocks that they have now.
But the solution to that is to tighten and enforce the rules ensuring that they get a quality education. The solution is not to starting paying them to play sports.
Well, that would be fine by me, but I think the solution is to radically change the entire structure of college sports. I don't (pace Charley) find no value in college sports. For instance, at my graduate institution there was an intramural soccer league among the grad students. As far as I could tell there was very little corruption in those games and I even went to a few (as a spectator, natch). Mens sana in corpore sano, and all that. I think it would make a lot of sense for colleges to maintain a field or two for the use of those students who want to play ball.
Then the "rules ensuring that [the athletes] get a quality education" would just be whatever the academic standards of the college generally are.
Crazy!
As you can see from the data, Penn State made a $14 million profit last year. There are about 800 varsity athletes at PSU. If you spend your entire profit on athlete salaries and they are evenly distributed, each athlete gets about $18000 a year. Alternatively you could give each of the 85 players on the football team $165000, but that seems like an automatic Title IX lawsuit to me.
Do several people here really believe that providing students with good times and good jobs represents the core mission of a university?
Training in the liberal arts? Research for the betterment of society? The life of the mind? Only if those things don't get in the way of a good tailgate party!
Universities are plenty corrupt, sure, but almost certainly never more so than when chasing revenue from athletic rather than intellectual glory.
By the way, I was a Division I athlete. I lettered in a varsity sport at a Big 10 school and was invited to several pre-Olympic camps* in that sport before I hurt myself badly enough that I couldn't continue to train. That said, I was not on scholarship, because there were/are no scholarships offered for the sport I played. And no, I don't think my experience was necessarily corrupt or corrupting. But that's because there was no money in it, because nobody, including my coach, believed that my sport was more important than my studies. So yes, alums did come to the events and maybe even gave money to the university because of the success of the team, but it wasn't revenue generating in any meaningful way. It was, instead, self-sufficient: every boat on its own bottom.
* I hasten to add that this didn't mean I was any good. It meant that I was a medium-sized fish in a very small pond.
Pwned by 296, which is really what I mean, I guess.
You should have stuck with field hockey, VW. Made a career of it.
Alternatively you could give each of the 85 players on the football team $165000, but that seems like an automatic Title IX lawsuit to me.
I'm actually not sure about that. Because if you're paying them as employees, you're no longer required to pretend that giving them the opportunity to amuse themselves and get some healthful exercise is an opportunity the college gives them as part of their education; it's just a job, and you can pay market rates. There's no Title IX requirement that Paterno get the same paycheck as the women's gymnastics coach, after all.
I'm not sure that it would work out that way, but the Title IX lawsuit doesn't seem like a slam dunk.
Total athletic department revenue varied from $120 million to less than $8 million among FBS schools. The median revenue was $42 million.
Same link:
Programs are less self-sufficient: The Football Bowl Subdivision schools saw a substantial drop in self-sufficiency. Revenues generated by the athletic department made up 72 percent of expenses in 2009, compared to 76 percent the year before.
Football Championship Subdivision programs fare worse: No athletic programs in this division, formerly known as Division I-AA, reported surpluses in 2009. Only 2 percent of football programs, 6 percent of men's basketball programs, and 2 percent of women's basketball programs reported surpluses.
310: they wouldn't let me play. Gender discrimination! Or maybe it was because I had my legs replaced with springs.
314: But you looked good in the skirt!
That atlantic article is really insane. Just got to the part where they blackballed that poor instructor woman from teaching anywhere in the country.
307 is a severely misleading interpretation of that data. In reality, the football program at PSU brought in about $49 million and cost about $9 million. Every other sport combined brought in about $16 million and cost about $56 million (this is before counting the sponsorship revenue, which netted about an additional $14 million, and almost certainly derives entirely from football).
In other words, you have one highly profitable, money making enterprise (football) and a lot of other sports that, like most things a University does, are not immediately financially renumerative but are basically designed for the enrichment of the student body. The players on the football team did work that brought in about $40 million in profit to the University (each year) and earned literally nothing for their efforts. Paying them something -- or, what the market would bear, in this case likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars -- seems critically important.
I agree that, depending on how you constructed the professionalization, you could run into Title IX problems. But in a situation like Penn State, you have effectively two athletic programs -- one which is a gigantic financial powerhouse independent of the University, and another which looks more like any other college program.
As has long been acknowledged, Joe Paterno is an exemplary big-time college sports leader. Joe Paterno is a standout in his milieu when it comes to ensuring that young people are not exploited.
So you'd rather use the $30-50 million profit generated by football to pay individual players not to get an education, than to use it to subsidize the rest of the athletic activities for the entire remainder of the university, most of whom are much more likely to actually be legitimate student-athletes?
And if the $30-50 million profit were taken off the table, you'd prefer that either we cut the rest of the sports entirely, or institute a tuition hike of ~$1000 per student to cover it?
312, 313 -- again, it's highly misleading to look at total athletic department revenue.* Men's football and basketball, at least at the major schools, are really different animals.
There's a different question, which is whether or not it's a good money making idea for a University that is not already a powerhouse to invest in a competitive men's football team. It's almost certainly not, even under the current cost structure. But I fail to see why that should be an argument against paying players -- paying players would make the cost of investing in men's football and basketball more clear, and dissuade universities that don't want to bear the full cost of exploiting their players from doing so.
*I believe that the experts think that most of this data is doctored, anyway, but that's another story.
I need to nip 319's assumptions in the bud here.Only about 10 or 20 colleges generate enough revenue from football or basketball to pay for the rest of athletics. At places like Central Florida and Rutgers the football team is a money pit. There IS no choice between using football revenue to subsidize the rest of the athletic activities, or using football revenue to pay players. Neither of those things is possible.
Probably not many players at those places are getting paid under the table now anyway (players currently get paid funds donated by rich sports-mad alumni), and I don't think it would change much if getting paid was permitted.
319 -- If the University is going to run a money-making operation, it should pay the employees who are making it the money. Just as it would if it ran a laundromat on the side that made $50 million a year. I frankly don't give a shit about enforcing cartel rules that allow universities to suck up profits (or, more precisely, spend it on coaches and fancy swimming pools and the like) while avoiding paying the people who are making the University money, at considerable risk to themselves.
317: And that still understates the value that topnotch football athletes bring to the university, because bigtime football attracts alumni donations and prospective students, too.
More data:
Sixty-eight FBS schools (out of 120) reported turning a profit on football, with a median value of $8.8 million. The 52 FBS schools that lost money on football reported median losses of $2.7 million.
The breakdown for basketball programs at those 120 schools was nearly identical, though the median values for profitable programs ($2.9 million) and money-losing ones ($873,000) were smaller.
Paying the players market rates will result in a 20 team superconference in college football. Only the top 20 teams could afford to recruit students.
Paying the players market rates will result in a 20 team superconference in college football. Only the top 20 teams could afford to recruit students.
And the other schools will just have to go back to actually amateur athletics. Is there a problem there?
Paying the players market rates will result in a 20 team superconference in college football. Only the top 20 teams could afford to recruit students.
OK. Who gives a fuck? Everyone else can go back to having actually and genuinely amateur teams.
321 is also correct.
I am not advocating shortchanging athletes. They should get a quality education. Colleges should be expected to assist them productively, not cheat them.
There is a population that isn't prepared for college,but it isn't fair to the vast majority to assume that they cannot read and write. People with learning disabilities are entitled to modifications: extra time, accommodations,etc.
It is also ridiculous to assume that the vast majority of college football players cannot receive the three main purposes of college: actual gaining of knowledge and making themselves more marketable for college and having fun. Are people seriously suggesting that these athletes are uneducatable?
They receive tremendous value. Is it enough? I think so. But I understand that others might suggest better financial reward. Their gain is tremendous already though.
I am not advocating shortchanging athletes. They should get a quality education. Colleges should be expected to assist them productively, not cheat them.
There is a population that isn't prepared for college,but it isn't fair to the vast majority to assume that they cannot read and write. People with learning disabilities are entitled to modifications: extra time, accommodations,etc.
It is also ridiculous to assume that the vast majority of college football players cannot receive the three main purposes of college: actual gaining of knowledge and making themselves more marketable for college and having fun. Are people seriously suggesting that these athletes are uneducatable?
They receive tremendous value. Is it enough? I think so. But I understand that others might suggest better financial reward. Their gain is tremendous already though.
Nobody is proposing that colleges be forced to compensate athletes.
OK, I see the point. I suppose there's nothing fundamentally wrong with a 20 team superconference featuring "The Longhorns, sponsored by the University of Texas". It doesn't have much to do with college, per se, but I suppose that's exactly the point. Then the University of Phoenix could buy a team too, after all, they've already got a stadium.
Isn't part of the problem that the same kids who are not prepared to receive value from the academic opportunities offered to them are often the ones who are providing the greatest value to the schools?
I don't know if you had a scholarship for swimming, but if you did, it was valuable to you, because you were academically prepared to take advantage of it. And the school probably didn't net out a profit on even the best swimmers -- not enough people want to watch swimming to make the skills of the tenth best swimmer in the world worth all that much on the market. So there was no reason for the school to scrape the bottom of the academic barrel for higher quality swimmers; they weren't going to make any money off them either way. So for no-name-sport athletes with scholarships, they're getting a serious benefit.
For football and men's basketball, they're much likelier to recruit unprepared highschoolers, which means that to the extent that they are academically unprepared, they're getting less of a benefit: an opportunity to take calculus for free isn't worth anything to someone who hasn't been taught arithmetic. And the school is getting a much larger benefit out of them. That seems terribly unjust to me.
If we do this, do we get to dispense with the charade about classes and test scores and ages? Could Zombie Doug Flutie play for the University of Phoenix Cardinals?
And total agreement with 321, 322, 325 and 326.
332: Sure. Heck, they could hire washed-up pros who knew they only had a year or so left in them and really wanted another shot at college.
332 -- Sure. Free your mind.
But remember, no one is saying you couldn't keep the more amateurish teams, too, so Carp's University of Eastern Montana Flatspaces or whatever could still play, they'd just be playing a more purely amateur sport.
And are non-universities allowed to buy in? After all, what's the point of only universities participating? Anyone who wants to spend $40 million should be allowed to participate.
336 -- Yes. Free your mind, and your ass will follow.
Although I suspect that much of the college football "tradition" would translate seamlessly to a world in which you'd pay players, so that USC and Notre Dame and what have you would have a big initial advantage over an upstart Russian billionaire who wanted to play a team in the college league.
331:
The benefits of a college education are not limited to the academically strong.
The number of athletes who are totally unprepared for college is small. As is the number who will be professional athletes.
Everyone else can go back to having actually and genuinely amateur teams.
Even while I'm wholly on the side of 325 and 326, there's a part of me that thinks that this is not how it would actually work out. If you look at the history of soccer (where the ideal of amateurism was more deeply ingrained than it's ever been in North American sports -- the ideal original soccer player never even practiced!), what you see is that basically as soon as you have two teams competing people are trying to pay players, either in the open or on the sly.
The number of athletes reccruited Division I male football and basketball players who are totally unprepared for college is small.
Still true?
I think the idea is that the teams would be amateur because it wouldn't be worth paying them. The rich programs would buy all the top talent, and the remaining programs would run teams for fun out of the second-tier players. They could pay their players if they wanted to, but anyone worth paying much would split for the big time. (And maybe use their earnings to pay for college?)
I think the idea is that the teams would be amateur because it wouldn't be worth paying them.
Right. What I'm saying is that there's no level of competition so low that people won't try to get an advantage by paying players. I don't think the players would be making *much*, but I strongly suspect that there would still be under-the-table payments.
Further to 342: I mean, I'm sure you can think of corporate softball/basketball/soccer teams that bring in ringers. And that's for something that's meant to be purely recreational.
342 might well be right, but doesn't seem like a big deal whatsoever.
Sure. And what I meant is that they'd be small over-the-table payments. A good ballplayer in a non-powerhouse school where they were still gung ho about the sport might make the same he'd make reshelving library books. Nothing wrong with that.
344: Petty corruption is way better than corruption on the NCAA's scale, but it's still corruption.
Well, it seems less likely to be corruption. If a school in the Montana DIII league wants to pay players, but just not that much, that's not corruption, just a low salary.
Which is why non-corruption works even better. If a kid has a skill the college wants to pay him for, let them do it.
340: my comment was meant to be about div 1 football and basketball players. Maybe someone has some actual information on this topic, but, based on what I saw and what I am guessing, I suspect that 90 percent of div 1 players can benefit from college if given the proper assistance and if the colleges are actually held to the standard of educating them.
A slightly different question is whether they belong at duke instead of Maryland.
I'm not making any jokes about NDSU here.
Hey we will totally give you a mediocre education. Fun I am not so sure about.
I hope I am not terribly elitist for thinking that the population of a college should basically consist of those who do not require special assistance for regarding the content of the courses offered, even if, were such assistance offered, the people who required it would benefit from being at the (tendentiousness alert) para-college.*
*Or anyway, if people who need that assistance will attend, it should be for (tendentiousness alert) actually good reasons that have something to do with the ``mission'' of a university, something to do with educating people, rather than because the school wants someone good on their football team.
351: Well, yes. For one thing, considering that there is a limited supply of space in good colleges, putting an unprepared athlete in that space rather than a better prepared other student seems somewhat unjust to the marginal other student. And it's only necessary because the school is arbitrarily restricted from paying the athlete in anything but tuition.
even if, were such assistance offered, the people who required it would benefit from being at the (tendentiousness alert) para-college.*
In the community colleges, we take anyone who walks in the door, but we are not a para-college.
350 and there's a pretty girl hiding behind every tree too, right?
and there's a pretty girl hiding behind every tree too, right?
For all you know under the 5 layers of clothes there certainly could be.
In the community colleges, we take anyone who walks in the door, but we are not a para-college.
Yes, on reflection, I shouldn't have said that at all.
If you could carve out the pre-professional parts of the University (business admin, etc.) and make them non-degree certificates, then you could make college sports a pre-professional certificate program with no other academic requirements (though, obviously, students who qualify for college independently can avail themselves of those academic resources while there).
Depending on the relevant market forces, your participation in a sports program could be anything from compensation-free to a 6-figure gig.
Count me in the group who does not believe that college should be reserved for the students with the highest SATs.
Moreover, colleges are required to make accommodations for students with learning disabilities. So they get extra time on tests if that is their particular need. (ie processing speed issues).
Count me in the group who does not believe that college should be reserved for the students with the highest SATs.
Hey, me too.
Moreover, colleges are required to make accommodations for students with learning disabilities
I don't think that being unprepared for a college curriculum implies having a learning disability, actually.
One might plausibly also think that those who are in need of extra assistance as a result of underpreparation are those who can least afford to take time out of their schedules for practices, games, travel, etc.
Count me in the group who does not believe that college should be reserved for the students with the highest SATs.
Sure. But in a selective school, you've got to be able to choose which applicants are going to be permitted to take advantage of the academic facilities offered by some means, and I can't see an argument that who's more athletically skilled should be a significant part of that selection process.
I doubt that there are many football players at NDSU who are genuinely unprepared for NDSU. I wouldn't expect any greater percentage at a place like Cornell, actually, just to pick on one of those effete eastern snob schools.
(FCS is Division I, snobs.).
Are the top 20 programs, maybe top 50, in need of a close look and a good thrashing? Yes they are. But I'm not seeing why the corruption in that elite set is really cause to ditch a century of fairly harmless tradition at scores and scores of colleges. Turns out that a ton of people -- players, students, alums -- like having this be a part of the college (and high school) experience in America.
It all seems very nice. And if my Aunt had balls...
Carp, who is suggesting that college football be eliminated at places like NDSU? I'm not.
We're only suggesting eliminating the rules about compensating players. You can keep all the tradition you want.
I don't really agree with 261. If you want to bring in athletes, fine. But you should also be able to pay them.
Compensating players cannot be done without destroying the not-very-corrupt programs. If not having workers comp is a problem, then require colleges to provide disability insurance. If students can't maintain a good enough GPA to stay in NDSU, or Cornell, out they should go. Your objection though, is that like the students in the marching band, the drama department, the art department, student athletes are providing entertainment and not getting paid. All are aware of this situation, and perfectly free to do something else.
But I'm not seeing why the corruption in that elite set is really cause to ditch a century of fairly harmless tradition at scores and scores of colleges. Turns out that a ton of people -- players, students, alums -- like having this be a part of the college (and high school) experience in America.
What Halford said in 364. There's nothing wrong with football for fun, but the NCAA rules do seem to me to enable the problems at the top 20 programs. Is there a reason that you think that abandoning the NCAA cartel and rules against compensating players would kill football at the lower levels?
You just want to someone else who needs lawyers to write contracts for them.
Compensating players cannot be done without destroying the not-very-corrupt programs
No one who comes to NDSU would want to play football if they knew that at other schools people get payid to do so? Really?
Your objection though, is that like the students in the marching band, the drama department, the art department, student athletes are providing entertainment and not getting paid.
Students who play instruments, make art, and act in theater are perfectly free to be paid for any of those things if someone will pay them. There's no cartel requiring them to either accept no payment or completely disassociate themselves from the college programs.
Show me on the doll why lifting the NCAA ban on compensating players would lead to the elimination of football at DIII schools.
I don't think paying players ends any corruption at all. I don't think the failure to pay them is the cause, in any sense, of corruption. I think paying them makes it worse in the corrupt programs, and spreads the corruption.
365: Oh, there's nothing wrong with extra-curriculars being an element in admissions. I just don't think it makes sense to think of a world where athletes get admissions preference as more just because the only alternative is admission in strict SAT rank order.
What I'm saying is that there's no level of competition so low that people won't try to get an advantage by paying players.
Oh, sure there is. If too many qualified athletes are competing for a few slots, that would drive down prices.
I don't think the failure to pay them is the cause, in any sense, of corruption.
Concede the literal sense of corruption consisting of breaking the rules against compensation by making under the table payments to players? If those payments can be made openly, then everyone's on a level playing field.
376: That is one large glaring element of corruption at the top schools in the big sports, but hardly the only literal corruption going on in college sports.
What are you guys, lawyers or something?
But seriously, because I don't get it at all. What damage does ending the NCAA cartel controlling payment and eligibility for the top college athletes do to the rest of the programs? You get down far enough that your players don't have a shot at the pros, mostly, which isn't very far down, what changes?
The guys who were getting paid were causing the big problems at Penn State not all of the students.
Pay-for-play changes the dynamic to such an extent that it is hard to predict what it looks like*. Does it lower the probability of a King Football/Jerry Sandusky situation? Not sure.
*There may be something to learn from the Olympics transition to pay. You eliminate the Jim Thorpe type of hypocrisy, but it still has all of the other elements.
My hope is that the football money doesn't look so big to Penn State once the labor isn't free, so they might get a little saner about the program.
It took Pitt 20 years to get used to sucking at football and I'd bet that wouldn't have worked if the Steelers weren't around.
Management cartels to exploit workers by capping their compensation at way below market wage are wrong. This has nothing to do with amateurism or sports or colleges. It has to do with exploiting workers being wrong.
What if all the coaching staff has to coach in exchange for a dorm room and free cafeteria grub?
386: A very great number of them do. Or at least for tuition and a GA's stipend.
Obviously, the whole thing is in 'give me a pony' territory, we're bullshitting here. But doesn't it make sense that the profitability of big-program football depends partially on the free labor of the star players, and if that wasn't free, it wouldn't be so important to the school? Joe Pa isn't God Incarnate at PSU out of personal magnetism, it's because he brings in cash.
Starting from a different point, I think a good start would to be have pro league systems for basketball and football in the US that are akin to the way soccer/football leagues work elsewhere in the world: A series of tiered leagues with promotion/demotion--a lot more paid slots at low to intermediate levels (unlike the nearly 0 to very high pay discontinuity today) and probably divorces it totally from colleges unless someone wants to field a team.
Yup. Also, for sports fans, it'd mean more affordable games to watch. Live pro sports are crazy expensive these days.
388: As would a "professional" team, but I do think it might temper the dynamic that leads to godhood--and hard to say how alumni/students/community react to the concept. I do think the myth of the student-athlete is a central element in the way it currently works.
388: I have no idea but clearly part of it is kind of a 'cultural capital'-ish thing. The star player is drawing money at least partially because he is playing for Penn State and there is a built in audience for Penn State.
The thing is that colleges have alumni, while regular sports teams don't. College football is the closest thing we have to international sports in the US. There's a definite niche for regional sports that have an identity beyond just a professional team. Unless we start fielding international teams by regions, there's just a big gap that college sports fills. (Now, I think we should do that. In the Olympics and the world cup Texas, California, and the New York metro region should all be fielding separate teams a la Scotland.)
Live pro sports are crazy expensive these days.
Heck, even the undead ones can easily cost you an arm and a leg.
394: There was a weird Norman Spinrad short story from the late sixties/early seventies about a near-future football league; rules rewritten for no padding and no limits on on-field violence, and teams set up to appeal to socioeconomic groups. Rednecks, black nationalists, hippies, bikers. And the fans would riot in the stands at every game.
Not that it's squarely relevant, you just brought it to mind.
I don't really care about whether or not a place like Penn State tones down it's football program. If they want to use young men to put on a giant spectacle, and then sell it to TV and audiences and license merchandise, that's fine by me. I don't have an aesthetic or moral objection to big time college sports. But if they're going to run a large scale for-profit entertainment division the colleges should at least have the option of paying the people involved at something like a reasonable wage for their services.
I also agree that it's likely that professionalization wouldn't change every single other aspect of "corruption" (if by this we mean things like coaches and campus police protecting out of control players). But so what? At a minimum, professionalization would make clear that what is going on is an entertainment spectacle and make the costs of what is going on more clear to the universities.
396: My prediction is that some sports will move through that kind of ultra-violent/Rollerball phase but in the long arc of sports history all contact sports* will come to be viewed as barbaric as jousting. If you want to see the future of big-time sports check out Starcraft/South Korea.
*See concussions, current reaction to.
I don't really care about whether or not a place like Penn State tones down it's football program. If they want to use young men to put on a giant spectacle, and then sell it to TV and audiences and license merchandise, that's fine by me. I don't have an aesthetic or moral objection to big time college sports. But if they're going to run a large scale for-profit entertainment division the colleges should at least have the option of paying the people involved at something like a reasonable wage for their services.
I'm actually relieved to read this. I've spent part of the afternoon trying and failing to make sense of how paying athletes limits corruption or returns universities to their core mission, and it's good to know that that's not really your goal. You just want to make sure that you (or members of your guild) get a cut.
399: It also allows people who perform valuable services for a college to get paid, which is, I think, a matter of justice. I'm not sure how you get past that bit. Management cartels holding down the price of labor are bad, right?
Then the windfall profits available to the top schools from exploiting their unpaid labor makes disproportionate focus on the source of those profits attractive. When Penn State has a choice between buying its talent at market prices, or accepting that it's not going to win a lot of games, don't you think football is likely to become less of a big deal?
When Penn State has a choice between buying its talent at market prices, or accepting that it's not going to win a lot of games, don't you think football is likely to become less of a big deal?
No, I don't. Why would this be?
Yup. I pretty much agree with Halford, and I'd be more likely (not likely at all, but more likely) to end up representing a state school in NCAA trouble than representing a big-time moneymaking college athlete.
400: I'm in favor of justice, yes, broadly speaking. But this particular brand of economic justice doesn't deal with all of the other problems inherent in the system, so I don't see it as a meaningful solution -- other than to the crisis of employment facing entertainment attorneys.
Think of it as the thin end of the wedge.
402: Now, football makes money for them, because the players are free, and the prestige of the school and the small number of good football programs means that they can pick from the best players (not quite the very very best, but almost). When they have to bid cash money for the very very best players, they have to either decide if they want to spend the money that the football program brings in on good players (at which point they still have a good team but it's not a cash cow), or not buy good players, in which case it might still bring in alumni donations but its prestige as a football program will drop like a rock.
Either way, seems to me, it gets less important to the school.
401: I was mostly trolling, neb, and I assumed that was obvious. But if not, apologies. For what it's worth, I do recognize that Halford's intent is to protect exploited workers. And as I said in 404, I think that's a worthy goal. I just don't think the proffered solution gets to the heart of the problem.
Yeah, what 400 said.
And, I mean, I don't think paying people a lot of money to participate in a university-affiliated pro league should be a major focus of universities, particularly public ones. But a lot of people seem to really really want this. And if universities going to be in that business, they should pay the people involved, and I strongly suspect that a turn towards professionalization would allow the major football and basketball programs to operate as businesses basically independently from the Universities and you'd get less pressure on campuses that aren't in the elite group to waste a lot of money on big time sports.
But you can be a gigantic dick about it if you'd like.
Well, there's still the same number of graduating high school seniors who are great at playing football and are dying to play in college, even if they don't get paid. I don't see how paying them a little bit is actually going to interfere with profits.
Based on 403, it's clear that people really did think I was serious. I wasn't. My animus toward lawyers doesn't actually run that deep. And my animus toward Halford is nonexistent. Again, sorry for the facetious trolling. I was just kidding around.
In other words, I think a place like Penn State would end up paying a few stars who have a shot at going pro, and no one else.
I don't see how paying them a little bit is actually going to interfere with profits.
AFAIK, there are no profits except for the top 20/30 programs in the country. A school makes money on football maybe if it's got a lot of players good enough to go pro, but not otherwise. For the other schools, it's a money pit, but they act as if it's going to bring in money to pay for itself.
For that top 20/30 programs, they're going to have to pay their players (who are largely good enough to go pro) a lot, rather than a little, and plausibly enough to eat into profits.
In other words, I think a place like Penn State would end up paying a few stars who have a shot at going pro, and no one else.
Like they do now. Except now, a random 5% or so of those people get punished.
411 before seeing 408. I now recant my claim that I was kidding.
Halford's goal isnt to protect workers/college athletes. He wants a piece of the pie. He wants to represent them. I dont blame his greed. But it is transparent. Greedy lawyers!
In all seriousness, I am all for disability insurance for athletes. (Of course, you know that workers' comp insurance isnt for the workers, but as a way to protect companies. It is mostly stacked against workers.)
411: Wow, I missed that completely (and was wondering where you were coming from). Sorry about missing that you were kidding.
TOO MUCH LOVE. FIGHT HALWAFER! FIGHT!
Self-referential comments suck donkey balls!
Think of it as the thin end of the wedge.
But it isn't. It seems to me -- and now I'm not kidding -- like a legalistic remedy for only one part of a much, much bigger problem. And I'm not even a bit convinced that the unintended consequences won't make things worse rather than better.
By the way, I read the Taylor Branch article. It's good, though obviously I'm not convinced by the conclusion.
AFAIK, there are no profits except for the top 20/30 programs in the country. A school makes money on football maybe if it's got a lot of players good enough to go pro, but not otherwise. For the other schools, it's a money pit, but they act as if it's going to bring in money to pay for itself.
I don't think this is true at all. Our football program at Heebie U is stupidly outsized, and we use it for recruiting, retention, and alumni hoopla.
For that top 20/30 programs, they're going to have to pay their players (who are largely good enough to go pro) a lot, rather than a little, and plausibly enough to eat into profits.
Nah, most football players at the the top 20 teams don't go anywhere close to pro. The sheer numbers of college players passing through these schools, where the turnover is 4 years, makes this unrealistic. Only the very top players would get paid. Like Ned said above, it would be the same percent as now.
422 before seeing 421 or 420-1 inclusive.
331
For football and men's basketball, they're much likelier to recruit unprepared highschoolers, which means that to the extent that they are academically unprepared, they're getting less of a benefit: an opportunity to take calculus for free isn't worth anything to someone who hasn't been taught arithmetic. And the school is getting a much larger benefit out of them. That seems terribly unjust to me.
What is with this unprepared bs? Lots of people are too dumb to benefit from a college education making it a quite unjust form of pay. For that matter the minimum SAT requirement (and college athletics as defacto minor leagues for pro basketball and football) unfairly bars some athletically gifted morons from potentially lucrative pro careers.
412: Yeah, maybe. I do think there's a real benefit to the kids who wouldn't get paid too, though, from knowing what their market value is. If no one's willing to pay you to play football, even though they're allowed, wouldn't you be more likely to focus in Accounting 301 rather than counting on your pro career?
424 is a different joke than I really intended it to be.
Shearer is getting fed up with feeb-coddlin'.
425: Can we agree that the injustice is pretty much the same for your moron and my kid of average intelligence who through whatever concatenation of circumstances never learned the basics in elementary/high school? Whyever they're not in a position to catch up academically in college, if they're not in that position, calling free tuition a benefit to them is, as you put it, bs.
OK, clarification from VW taken and no worries. Look, one solution (maybe even the best one) would be to get the universities out of the business of big time sports altogether and allow the pro football and basketball leagues to set up their own minor league programs. But it's difficult to see that happening at all in this world and there are a lot if people whonare alumni or who are now very very invested in a college team.
Allowing universities to operate college-affiliated professional teams (which is what they are basically doing now, except without paying the athletes) is something people seem to want. It seems to ms that the best way to do this is to (a) pay the people involved and (b) separate the running of the pro team from the rest of the workings of the University, to be more honest.
By the way, there are lots of entertainment lawyers who work on college sports, right now. Why? Because there is a lot of money involved. But money that's not going to the athletes.
This exam I'm grading is a complete clusterfuck. I made it too long, this is a particularly weak class, it had an typo that got addressed during class, but I fixed it in a confusing way, ie the graph no longer matches what I'm claiming the equation is.
They're bombing it. I'm not sympathetic because the errors their making are inexcusably awful. But it's also my fault because there wasn't enough time and they probably lost time on the mangled question, too.
I hate grading terrible tests. It takes like 10 times as long as a great test.
OK, clarification from VW taken and no worries.
Goddammit.
The way I read it, LB is kidding in 429. But I do like the word concatenation.
I kidding about both! LB is serious in 429, but concatenation is a really stupid word!
No, it's a good super-Latiny word. So there.
Look, one solution (maybe even the best one) would be to get the universities out of the business of big time sports altogether and allow the pro football and basketball leagues to set up their own minor league programs. But it's difficult to see that happening at all in this world and there are a lot if people whonare alumni or who are now very very invested in a college team.
Yes and yes. But tough shit to sentence two. I'm taking the university administrators -- who are who we think they are, by the way -- at their word: it's time to cut all non-essential programs that aren't part of the university's core mission. Which means that evenue sports have to go. And then, when we're done with the great culling, if people are genuinely committed to Cal football, let them support a team made up of walk-ons. Jeff Tedford can get a job coaching the quarterbacks for the Ravens or whatever. Until the NFL sets up its farm system, that is, with its own fucking money.
To Heebie's point, allowing schools to pay players would ensure that a lot of kids who do not turn pro get paid at least something for their labor. It might not be millions, but I'd suspect that in such a world a Center at Michigan who is very good but has no real shot at the NFL could take in something like $50,000 a year. And there's no problem with the universities compensating athletes with tuition, as well, if they'd like. As I think I said somewhere above, it would be better (and likely more valuable to the player) if the free tuition and college career came after the playing career ended, not simultaneously.
As Shakespeare said, "The only thing worse than the greedhead entertainment lawyers are the pretentious nitwit classicists."
I also think that would be the best solution.
Don't worry, college sports fans! You can still play sports at college. The Ultimate players will lead you.
409
... I don't see how paying them a little bit is actually going to interfere with profits.
Why do you think they would just be paid a little? I would pay would be 50% of revenue or more as in pro sports.
The Ultimate players will lead you.
Gently, and in an affirmingly non-coercive manner.
Why do you think they would just be paid a little?
Because there are so many kids who want to play football relative to the number of slots.
Would you allow a kid who doesn't want to be enrolled to play, if you allowed schools to pay students?
I would; or rather I'd allow a school to allow them to.
To Josh's points upthread, although the pressures and scale, is different this quote I grabbed from an interview with the Virginia Tech* soccer coach a few years back is a perfect embodiment of much of even the next tier of college sports:
"I'll take a mature 23-year-old foreign kid who can help us right away over a young kid who can contribute but might get into trouble," said Weiss, a native of Germany who is in his sixth season at Tech. "I don't want to have to rely on immaturity. On our level, we have to rely on maturity and accountability and reliability. I feel like I've gotten that this season with these foreign kids."The players in question were a couple of 23-24 year old amateur club players from England.
* Va Tech has been a lower to mid-tier team in the ACC which is unquestionably the premier college soccer conference. They had been trying hard to get competitive with the top teams in the confernce.
I would expect that lower-tier sports leagues pay a smaller percentage of revenue out to players. Just because there's a much larger supply. I suppose I should check thus by looking at arena league football.
Did you know that the Nuremberg rallies were largely inspired by pep rallies for Harvard football? TRUE FACT.
Anyhow, turning over all college sports to the ultimate players is a bridge too far for me, we can't let the nerds win. I want Ogre to remain on campus to taunt the nerds from the Alpha Zeta house -- just a well-paid Ogre. But holy shit is the Cal plan to finance its new stadium an abomination.
...I'd suspect that in such a world a Center at Michigan who is very good but has no real shot at the NFL could take in something like $50,000 a year.
Maybe in his last two years but this potential may or may not be obvious before he's had three years in the weight room with professional trainers and actual adulthood. I'm having a great deal of trouble seeing how the market would work. I'd guess that most kids would put in three free years and then, if they weren't already at one, the revenue schools buy anybody who they missed before they start their junior year.
I would; or rather I'd allow a school to allow them to.
I think very quickly the coaches would be applying pressure that their students not be enrolled, then. I think that would be the bigger problem. Probably deferred enrollment, like Halford says, would be the way to go.
But holy shit is the Cal plan to finance its new stadium an abomination.
Overall, I'd say that the privatization of the UC is going to be remembered as a) a huge mistake and b) so rife with corruption as to beggar description.
They'd just have to pay based on perceived talent evaluation.
That said, I stand to make MUCH more money as this place is privatized, so I guess I should keep my mouth shut.
454 emerges directly out of 453, though I hadn't seen the latter when I wrote the former.
443
Because there are so many kids who want to play football relative to the number of slots.
What does that have to do with anything? There are lots more people who would like to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than the number of available spots also. Doesn't mean the lottery winners are poorly paid. And athletic ability is a lot easier to objectively measure than executive ability.
446: Ha. On subsequent search, discovered that that Va Tech soccer coach resigned over NCAA issues involving just that practice.
According to documents obtained by The Roanoke Times under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Virginia Tech has reported 11 violations to the NCAA regarding the recruitment of eight foreign men's soccer players.Although reading the article, the actual "violations" were petty and stupid.
Most CEOs aren't well-paid. Most business owners go out of business. I'm asserting it would be exactly like that - very few positions that are super lucrative, and tons of poorly paid slots.
There are lots more people who would like to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies than the number of available spots also.
They corrupted the whole political system, not just the NCAA.
With some flexibility around the label "CEO".
You're not the CEO of me, heebie.
How many pro football players don't make all that much money? I bet nearly all of them.
To expand on 462, aren't there 3rd and 4th strings and tons of unheard of players who are technically playing pro, but not getting much playing time, or playing for a crappy team?
The NFL Base salary for 2011 was $375,000. So no there aren't any low paid NFL players.
Pro football rosters are relatively limited and there aren't minor leagues. Baseball is the one with a whole bunch of professional players who don't actual earn any money.
But once you figure in the private school for the kids, and the expensive custom playhouse in the backyard, and the summer home in the Hamptons...?
464, 465: There are borderline players who get called up or down for a week or two or who are on the "taxi squad". But even taxi squad (eight players I think) makes ~$5,000/week during the season. The big discontinuity in salaries is one of the things tiered promotion/demotion leagues would fix. The owners hate that idea, however, as do the stats-obsessed fantasy league nutcases from hell.
I mean they don't make NBA money which was starting at $475,000 your first year and jumps to $762,000 your second year playing, minimum.
467 Hockey too.
So, I don't understand why Halford doesn't think the volleyball team should get paid. Minimum wage, at least. And the marching band. Stanford and Michigan, for example, have bands that are an important part of the thing.
(I just saw that the Montana women's soccer team is playing Friday in the first round of the NCAA tournament -- against number 1 seed Stanford. They had a 6-11 season. Not sure how much they ought to be paid for that. Stanford was 19-0. I doubt the game is expected to be close.)
471: Find a volleyball team (or a drama department) that makes box office akin to a top football or basketball program, and doesn't share any of the proceeds with the students involved, and I'll object, and I assume I'll have Halford's support in doing so.
Isn't that what will happen with the tight shorts these days.
463: 'Cause you're FIRED.
Nice hair ass, Donaldina.
And in the context of this discussion can we all agree that the absolute lowest form of Internet discourse involves people *demanding* a College Football Playoff or self-righteously pontificating about how terrible the BCS is, or whatever other fatuous college football entitled fan-ish thing that they talk about. This way lies the true enablement of Jerry Sandusky.
So I was in Los Angeles recently and stopped by Halford's gym. He wasn't there, but when I mentioned him to some of the guys who were there they started chuckling knowingly and told me about the high bioavailability of his mother.
Well at least she gets paid for it.
Actually I rather like football.
Jeff Tedford can get a job coaching the quarterbacks for the Ravens or whatever.
The way things are going, this might be the best he can do in the future, regardless of what happens with the NCAA.
There is a football playoff. Except for the class of schools that don't want to subject themselves to a system where they might (and, each year nearly all undoubtedly will) lose big games.
What 473 said. Seriously, Carp, that is ridiculous. As has been pointed out a thousand times, no one is saying that schools should be forced to pay athletes. Just that they should not be automatically barred from doing so.
I don't really understand 477, but I did have to take a few days off from the gym while I was doing Nosflow's Mom.
Right now, schools are not required to give athletic scholarships. Unless things have changed, the Ivy League doesn't. This hasn't stopped those schools from fielding teams, in Division 1 even. I haven't caught up with this thread, so I don't know if this point has been made.
I don't think paying athletes would cut all corruption from college sports, but there is a lot of corruption that is specifically related to paying athletes, ranging from under the table payments during recruiting to benefits (sometimes indirect, routed through friends and family) given during the athlete's playing years.
Of Cal's football and basketball scandals, I think the football one, which had to do with academic standards, was more serious than the basketball one, which involved the coach paying a player. (If I remember the circumstances of each correctly.)
You're the one who wants to pay them because you think they should be treated like employees. Is that only if the business is highly profitable?
I'm not sure I agree with 476 entirely. The whole system is corrupt, so discussing playoff vs. BCS may be kind of like reshuffling the executive washrooms in the large national banks, but the BCS actually does seem to have succeeded in being its own particular corruption on top of corruption.
That is seriously too dumb to respond to. I favor removing the cartel restrictions on paying players. In an environment where you run football and basketball programs as multi-million dollar businesses, that will lead to many players getting paid. That does not mean you need to pay every person who plays every sport a wage. Do you seriously not understand that difference?
Players would get paid like any other employee, on the basis of what they could command in the market (I'd allow and hope that they'd unionize, of course).
Maybe we should approach this like true education reformers: players who do not generate revenue have their pay docked!
If you want to give people public money for performing a service, it seems to me that either you're going to have to call them employees, or hired entertainers. They're not going to be independent contractors, given the level at which your coaches are supervising their performance of their duties. Once you've decided that people playing football are employees, I don't see how you get to say that, well, only the really good ones are employees, and all the rest are volunteers.
And I don't see how you can not employ the women playing soccer.
It's certainly problematic in a team sport to have a few paid staffers and otherwise mostly volunteers.
I guess we can call them unpaid interns. No one will think themselves exploited if we call them that.
The average NFL tenure is 3 years. Yes, 3 years @ $375,000 is a lot of money, but not for a lifetime, especially if other job prospects are limited.
Wow, I guess that you really honestly don't get the distinction and aren't trolling. So here: Colleges could start to offer funds to pay their players without the amateurism restrictions set by NCAA rules. In major sports at some colleges, they might do so on the basis of salary. For the biggest schools, I'd expect everyone on the football and basketball teams would get something. Of course, that wouldn't make all players in all sports employees, or any single player in any single sport an employee. But somehow this would require the end of all amateur college sports and paying women's soccer players who aren't in a revenue generating sport because. . . .?
I mean, if the NFL pays it's players, that means that every AYSO league in the world has to start paying 7 year olds. There are no possible distinctions you can draw!
It seems that the idea of paying athletes is simply a matter of containment. By allowing the top programs to pay athletes we can confine corruption to just those programs and sports that actually make money and maybe reduce corruption in those that don't.
It's already true that some athletes are getting compensated (scholarships) while others aren't. Allowing payment beyond scholarships, for those who have scholarships, doesn't seem like it would change this fact. Full employee status and unionization might.
Incidentally, there's a fair amount of sports money floating around in the non-revenue sports, but you don't hear about it that much if you don't follow those sports. Some potential top runners in college have "gone pro" in order to receive individual prize money in races, or to accept sponsorships from shoe companies. NCAA rules prevent that too. The number of people affected in these sports isn't very large relative to the revenue producing sports, of course.
Corruption isn't the mostly the fault of the athletes. They are 18 year old kids. When you pay a coach millions a year and don't punish him for cheating, then he has very little incentive not to cheat. The kids pay. He doesn't. He just moves on to a new high paying job. (see USC)
90 percent of these kids are getting market rate pay for their performance. Maybe the percentage is higher than that.
The same percentage actually benefits hugely from their college education. To imply that any large percentage is unable to benefit from a college education is insulting and I don't believe has any basis in fact. I don't not disagree that some large percentage of athletes get into schools where they would not be accepted otherwise based on grades alone. (yes, we had that in swimming also.). But, many of those students become outstanding contributors to campus life And personally gain academically from the experience.
We should hold the adults in the colleges responsible for helping them succeed, not throw up our hands and say "they are too stupid to succeed.". Require standards for high school and college.
Those things said: there shouldn't be rules requiring 18 year olds to spend any years in college before going pro. That is simply wrong. If they can succeed as a pro, so be it.
As to Halford's argument that they aren't getting enough of the pie, Im ok with sweetening the allowable financial stuff some, but I just don't see any realistic way to do it.
Athletes used to be able to get summer jobs and jobs during school. But those rules got abused. Ie paid but didn't have to show up. Now, scholarship athletes can't have jobs, even those who legitimately want to work. So some of those silly rules are a reaction to abuses where the punishment should have been to the school and the coaches, not the student.
And that is really the problem. The punishment for violations have been to the wrong people. Punish the schools, the coaches, and the boosters, not the athletes (at least not so severely.). We punish an 18 year old for making a couple hundred bucks off tickets but the coaches making millions aren't as responsible???
What is the financial value of the kid coming out of high school? Doesnt it change during the season? Shouldn't they be able to switch schools midsession as their value goes up?
Don't you completely eliminate the idea of educating them? Maybe this thread has already discusses such issues, but I think you are attacking the wrong problem. Want to eliminate corruption? Have more death penalties to programs. Bar people from coaching.
484
You're the one who wants to pay them because you think they should be treated like employees. Is that only if the business is highly profitable?
If I were running things I would have a simple rule, 50% of the revenue has to go to the players. If the players don't get paid nobody should get paid.
If you want to defer some of the money or distribute it more evenly (within reason) than a pure free market would I might be agreeable. But no more nonsense about how grateful the players should be for the opportunity to be grossly exploited.
The rule the precludes paying football players is the same as the rule that precludes paying soccer players, and it's based on an understanding about their categorization: they are students participating in an activity offered by the university. The activities aren't conceptualized as profit making operations, but quasi-educational offerings -- which is why we have rules about gender parity and the like. I don't think you can switch over to a players get paid model without completely breaking down these understandings about players and programs.
And I don't have any problem at all with using football receipts to support the women's soccer program, etc.
I agree with 501. I know there are problems, but I don't see how you fix them without making it worse.
499
90 percent of these kids are getting market rate pay for their performance. Maybe the percentage is higher than that.
The same percentage actually benefits hugely from their college education. ...
Do 90% get diplomas? I don't think so. Hard to see how you are benefiting hugely without a diploma since that is the main benefit of a college education.
... Require standards for high school and college.
This is pernicious BS. The main reason kids fail academically is that they are stupid not that they are lazy. High level athletes in particular are not lazy.
AFAIK, there are no profits except for the top 20/30 programs in the country.
This is true in approximately the same sense that almost all pro sports teams are unprofitable. So, basically true in some limited accounting sense and repeated endlessly by people who have an interest in it being true, but otherwise not true at all.
Most glaringly, it completely ignores the goodwill generated for the school, among other things.
Most glaringly, it completely ignores the goodwill generated for the school, among other things.
The goodwill doesn't all go to the schools. In fact, the goodwill that players can achieve is the reason so many kids play sports even when they don't get a scholarship. Even leaving aside the obvious social benefits, being a player, even a minor one, on a popular local team does provide a status-boost that lasts for decades.
The thing some folks want to turn college football into already exists, albeit pretty far under the radar. (I didn't know about it either until my cousin wrote this book.) All it's missing is a century of tradition and good will, and a built-in fan base.
I know a couple of people who have college degrees as a side effect of wanting to play football for four more years.
Ha! For the conspiracy-minded amongst us. (In reading earlier articles, I was wondering why there was nothing from the DA who did the '98 investigation.)
Gricar went missing in April 2005. The murky circumstances surrounding his disappearance -- an abandoned car, a laptop recovered months later in a river without a hard drive, his body was never found. ... investigators revealed that a search of his home computer yielded a history of Internet searches for phrases like "how to wreck a hard drive,"
I don't think you can switch over to a players get paid model without completely breaking down these understandings about players and programs.
In fact, we are in a "players get paid" model, as everyone acknowledges. Why can't stipends for some athletes be a part of that model without bringing down the whole system?
485: but the BCS actually does seem to have succeeded in being its own particular corruption on top of corruption.
Yes, there is that. My beef is with the outraged fan/sportswriter who talk about how they deserve a playoff for a National Championship.
My beef is with the outraged fan/sportswriter who talk about how they deserve a playoff for a National Championship.
Big-time college football would be improved as entertainment if there were a playoff. You got something against entertainment?
I deserve a cheap, conveniently located Chinese restaurant that serves brown rice so I can delude myself that I'm eating the healthy General Tso's chicken.
General Tso's childhood nickname was McNugget. Fact.
I deserve having a set of grandparents move to town and provide free on-going baby-sitting. I also deserve a course release and for someone to unpack the remaining boxes in our house.
494
The average NFL tenure is 3 years. Yes, 3 years @ $375,000 is a lot of money, but not for a lifetime, especially if other job prospects are limited.
It is a lot better than $0 which is what college players get. And 3 years in the NFL gets you a pension.
The average NFL tenure is 3 years. Yes, 3 years @ $375,000 is a lot of money, but not for a lifetime, especially if other job prospects are limited.
Assuming zero interest it's the equivalent of earning $28,125 per year for 40 years. Plus, as James mentioned, the pension.
512. Support Uighur autonomy! Boycott General Tso's chicken!
Don't you have to play 4 years in the league to get a pension? And NFL pensions are famously small. (Though maybe they got better recently due to the concussion controversy.)
511: You got something against entertainment?
Smells like team spirit.
The activities aren't conceptualized as profit making operations, but quasi-educational offerings
This is simply not true of big-time football and basketball programs.
I don't think you can switch over to a players get paid model without completely breaking down these understandings about players and programs.
Given that these understandings don't actually exist with respect to the programs we're talking about, I can't view a threat that they'll break down as much of an objection.
520: If the NCAA acknowledged that college sports are conceptualized as profit-making operations, that would damage the ability of college programs to seek profit.
The very foundation of big-time college sports is based on the lie that there is no profit motive. Systemic corruption is a necessary result of that fundamental lie.
Frank DeFord (who appears to be morphing into Grandpa Munster) on NPR this morning: "The NCAA is to college football in 2011 what the League of Nations was to Europe in 1935."
About three more months to masturbate to JoePa's Penn State coaching tenure.
I don't think I'd admit to masturbating to anything PSU-related right now.
512: a cheap, conveniently located Chinese restaurant that serves brown rice
It's always been my dream to open up a tiny restaurant on campus that would serve really basic but good food for cheap -- like those places in Japan that serve ramen and have like 4 barstools or whatever. You could have ramen, of course, and rice-with-beans or rice-with-vegetables, and some kind of hearty soup or stew, and a couple of kinds of bread. And all the dishes would be like $3 or something.
Also, I want to open an old-fashioned wine dump, but I suspect getting the permits for that would be exceedingly difficult.
I deserve having a set of grandparents move to town and provide free on-going baby-sitting. I also deserve a course release and for someone to unpack the remaining boxes in our house.
Have you asked for the course release? Based on the amount of service you do, and my perception of the quality of your teaching, you might get it. Pretty much everyone (everyone = very responsible, very hard working faculty who do a LOT of service all the time) I know who's ever gone to a dean and asked directly for teaching relief has received it. Weird, I know. And sorry, I can't really help with the other stuff. But if you're actually feeling like you're deep in the weeds because of the move, because of the ongoing daycare issues (which I hope are resolved), and because of your service commitments, I would ask your dean for one-time help. Offering a single course release is an incredibly cheap way for deans to buy a huge amount of good will, which, over time, equals more service. But you were going to do that work anyway, so why not ask for something in return now.
527: There's a good description in You Can't Win by Jack Black. Basically just a really low-end tavern where all they serve is really cheap wine and free stew.
More dispatches from inside the bubble*:
A crowd of hundreds of students who gathered on the front lawn of embattled Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's home swelled to nearly 1,500 and confronted riot-gear-clad police on campus and along Beaver Avenue Tuesday night. The students shouted, "We are Penn State!" and "Joe Paterno!" "Hell no Joe won't go!" and a few calls of "Fire Spanier**!"*Actually Paterno's resignation statement was quite well done. In part,
That's why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.
**This part is spot on. Spanier (President) clearly must go as well.
retirement effective at the end of this season
I'm not very impressed.
That's why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.
If it wasn't cleared with the trustees first, this seems almost intentionally designed to provoke any trustee who wasn't already planning to vote for Paterno's immediate termination into doing so.
Campos over at LGM links this story at ESPN.
The ESPN story draws a straight line from the money in college sports to institutionalized corruption, and Campos rightly draws a line from that corruption to McQueary's cowardice when confronted with child-rape.
In the ESPN story, Bliss makes under-the-table payments to player who is murdered. Bliss then tries to frame the murder victim as a drug dealer to account for the money. Assistant coach Rouse turns in Bliss. Rouse is blackballed, and Mike Krzyzewski - who occupies an almost Paterno-like place of prestige in college sports - feels the need to go on the record to criticize ... Rouse, the assistant coach.
Campos is dead-right to point out how a system led by the likes of Paterno and Krzyzewski creates people like McQueary and Bliss.
You can't commit to authoritarian corruption as an organizing principle, as the NCAA has done, and then expect the individuals in the NCAA to behave with integrity.
526: You're still a buck more expensive than two McDoubles.
532, 533: Well yes, there is that. "I dare you to try to get me out earlier." But I think he has a point; almost certainly to a person, the board has been part and parcel of building the whole climate.
Have you asked for the course release? Based on the amount of service you do, and my perception of the quality of your teaching, you might get it.
Actually, my big service commitment does come with a course release, which is completely awesome and the main reason I agreed to head the program. I've also gotten course releases around maternity leaves. They've been pretty great and flexible around that stuff.
I don't understand what Paterno supposedly did wrong? (Admittedly, I haven't been following very closely.) He received a secondhand report that an assistant may have sexually abused a minor, which he reported properly within the Penn St. system? And then later (after the person was no longer affiliated with Penn St.), he recieved more concrete evidence that the abuse definitely occurred? And the criticism is... what? That he should have gone to the police at that point?
I think that would have been the better course of action, but I confess I don't understand why it's created the level of vitriol it has. Maybe I'm missing part of the story?
Urple, if you're serious, you can start here and work back.
Even if urple isn't serious, he could still start there and work back.
I will say that the blowhards of sports talk radio have, maybe a little surprisingly, been absolutely fantastic on this subject. I just listened to Jim Rome completely eviscerate Paterno and his insane front lawn rally, and it was a thing of beauty.
Urple, "second-hand report" is not normally how people refer to the testimony of an eyewitness. And the report Paterno received wasn't that something "may" have happened. It was that something did happen.
So Paterno then reported this up the line without finding out the details or following up to make sure that corrective action was taken. That's pretty shitty.
And mind you, I'm only going on Paterno's account of his behavior which, let's face it, isn't very likely to be accurate. The idea that McQueary, the college president and the AD could be aware of Sandusky's behavior while Paterno was in the dark seems pretty dubious.
538: That's sort of accurate, which is why I've been saying that I don't think PSU can do much to him. But it really is worse than that.
In 1998, Sandusky, who was a high-level coach under Paterno and who had this charity where he was bringing boys to interact with the Penn State team, was investigated for messing with a kid. The D.A. didn't prosecute it, and Paterno says he didn't know about it, but people think he must have, and Sandusky retired from the team immediately afterward, although he still kept running the charity that gave him access to boys and use of the Penn State football facilities. I think it's not absolutely certain that Paterno knew about this, but it's part of what people are thinking.
In 2002, McQueary, one of Paterno's coaches, saw Sandusky anally raping a ten-year-old in the locker room showers, and went to Paterno with the report. Paterno claims that he understood that Sandusky saw something disturbing and sexual, but not that he was told 'anal rape'. Paterno reported this to Curley, and ultimately to the university president.
Now here's the bad bit. Even by his own account, Paterno knew that one of his own coaches, so presumably a reliable guy, had seen Sandusky doing something sexual to a ten-year-old in a locker room shower in 2002. He sat back and did nothing while Sandusky continued to bring boys to interact with the PSU team, while Sandusky ran sleepaway camps; he didn't go to the police, he didn't go to anyone else at Sandusky's charity, he didn't warn families. All he did was report it to the college and wash his hands of it, while knowing that Sandusky was continuing to use Paterno's football team to facilitate his access to boys.
Paterno's covered legally and I think the university doesn't have a leg to stand on complaining about his conduct, given that it wasn't directly Paterno's job to contact law enforcement and he did get the report to the people who should have. But he still sat back and let this asshole keep raping boys for eight years or so after he'd been told what the guy was doing and could have stopped him.
So Paterno then reported this up the line without finding out the details or following up to make sure that corrective action was taken. That's pretty shitty.
Following which, Sandusky showed up at practices and such with other boys.
And mind you, I'm only going on Paterno's account of his behavior which, let's face it, isn't very likely to be accurate. The idea that McQueary, the college president and the AD could be aware of Sandusky's behavior while Paterno was in the dark seems pretty dubious.
Paterno's own account is damning enough -- he knew McQueary saw something sexual in the shower. But I don't find it absolutely implausible that he might not have understood the details; have you ever tried to communicate anything to an elderly man who's been treated as a god for most of his life? They really don't listen. He might be lying, but I could believe that he listened to McQueary just enough to process boy/shower/Sandusky/disturbing/sexual, and then passed it off and washed his hands of it.
But he still sat back and let this asshole keep raping boys for eight years or so after he'd been told
Yeah, having read a bit of 539, this sounds worse than I'd realized, and definitely blameworthy. But, re the quote above, is there evidence that the abuse continued or that there was more than one victim? The guy ran a camp for kids and brought more kids to PA St. events, which looks bad, I get, but is there evidence of other abuse?
Yes. Forty counts, and at least four victims (kid in 1998, a janitor saw him blowing a kid in 2000 and reported it to his supervisor who sat on it, the kid in 2002, and the kid who led to the investigation that broke it open in 2008). But probably more than that, I didn't read through the whole grand jury report.
"We've learned there may be as many as 17 accusers coming forward against one-time Penn State University defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. State officials publicized two phone numbers for potential victims to call, and within a day it seems investigators have new leads. There are eight victims listed in the grand jury presentment, and 40 charges have been leveled against Sandusky, a long-time assistant to Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno."
To keep from violating one of the Internet's oldest rules, as I did while talking about Penn State with my father last night (cough Nuremberg defense cough), I shall limit myself to stating that (i) reporting events to one's superiors is not enough when those events involve, inter alia, the sexual abuse of minors; and (ii) pretty much everybody in and around Penn State (including, after that contemptible rally last night, the students) has been weighed, measured and found wanting.
Man, do I hate having to explain to a supervisor that we can't do what she wants because it's unethical. It's such an embarrassing conversation to have.
552 reads as far more lurid in this thread than I imagine it's intended to be. But srsly Your Majesty's supervisor doesn't get ethical?
546: but is there evidence of other abuse?
I am as ready to be skeptical of unsubstantiated claims of child molestation as the next guy, but we're not talking about some 5 year old being coerced into accusing everyone in town of being a Satanist. We're talking about a presumably sober, sane adult personally witnessing a grievous act of child abuse. When you have evidence like that, it seems very likely that there is more to be uncovered. More to the point, it seems to me that any honest and competent investigation would have uncovered at least a few of these other claims.
Is there anything to do with rich old men which doesn't ultimately come down to their desire to bugger kids?
553: Oh, nothing at all to do with the subject matter of the thread.
Haven't read the whole thread but there's going to be a shitload of victims on this. For anyone who doesn't want to screw with downloading it, here's an excerpt from the section "victim 6"
Detective Schreffler testified that he and State College Police Department Detective Ralph Ralston, with the consent of the mother of Victim 6, eavesdropped on two conversations the mother of Victim 6 had with Sandusky on May 13, 1998, and May 19, 1998. The mother of Victim 6 confronted Sandusky about showering with her son, the effect it had on her son, whether Sandusky had sexual feelings when he hugged her naked son in the shower and where Victim 6′s buttocks were when Sandusky hugged him. Sandusky said he had showered with other boys and Victim 6′s mother tried to make Sandusky promise never to shower with a boy again but he would not. She asked him if his "private parts" touched Victim 6 when he bear- hugged him. Sandusky replied, don't think At the conclusion of the second conversation, after Sandusky was told he could not see Victim 6 anymore, Sandusky said, understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won't get it from you. I wish I were dead."
And here's the excerpt of what the assistant saw and was subsequently promoted after reporting. page 6 and 7
On March 1, 2002, a Penn State graduate assistant ("graduate assistant") who was then 28 years old, entered the locker room at the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus on a Friday night before the beginning of Spring Break. The graduate assistant, who was familiar with Sandusky, was going to put some newly purchased sneakers in his locker and get some recruiting tapes to watch. It was about 9:30 p.m. As the graduate assistant entered the locker room doors, he was surprised to find the lights and showers on. He then heard slapping sounds. He believed the sounds to be those of sexual activity. As the graduate assistant put the sneakers in his locker, he looked into the shower. He saw a naked boy, Victim 2, whose age he estimated to be ten years old, with his hands up against the wall, being subjected to anal intercourse by a naked Sandusky.
This is how people end up getting lynched.
While we're on remedial Penn State, what the heck is a "graduate assistant coach"? Does that mean they've graduated, or they're pursuing a master's degree (in what, kinesthesiology)?
557. This side of the pond masters degrees in "sports medicine" were incredibly trendy a few years ago. Looked good if you wanted to work in a gym, be a team gofer or train as a physio. I don't know how the recession has affected the demand, but it used to be the first thing anybody fit and not very academic thought of when they graduated.
While we're on remedial Penn State, what the heck is a "graduate assistant coach"? Does that mean they've graduated, or they're pursuing a master's degree (in what, kinesthesiology)?
It's an entry-level college coaching position. It usually doesn't pay a salary, but gives you free tuition/stipend (like a TA). And, yes, you have to enrolled in a graduate program, but it can be in anything. The weird thing is that I believe most people first apply to various graduate assistant coach jobs. Then, when they've decided where they want to go, they find a graduate program at the school that will take them.
This is how people end up getting lynched.
Or given a pistol, a single cartridge and few minutes alone.
Faux-student-coaches to go along with faux-student-athletes, then? Glorious.
This sort of position is the one basketball "job"* that the former assistant coach from Baylor (in the Campos article linked above) has been able to land since effectively being blackballed. That's the assistant who had the temerity to tape record the head coach who was conspiring to accuse one of his players who had been murdered by another player of being a drug dealer to cover up illegal payments to the murdered player. (On the tape, Bliss is heard saying, "Our whole thing right now, we can get out of this. Reasonable doubt is there's nobody right now that can say we paid Pat Dennehy because he's dead. So what we need to do is create reasonable doubt." ) The head coach is back in basketball although not NCAA. Also perfect that Ken Starr is now president of Baylor.
*Rouse has had only one basketball job in the past five years, a graduate assistant position at Division II Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls. In October he made the agonizing decision to quit, unable to survive on the $8,000 annual salary.