Going to class is a charade between Saturday games. Most football players never expect to actually learn anything except their weekly playbook while in college.

Let's start asking colleges to set a minimum ACT test cutoff score to play sports and see the angry reactions. I suggest a score of 19 (reading, writing and math on a 10th grade level).

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Interesting comment on the CNN website by Stephen Prothero in how this supposedly "Christian" nation handles news like the Herman Cain or Joe Proterno issues:

"One purpose of the world's great religions is to widen our circle of empathy beyond ourselves and our families to others in our community, and in the wider world. Christianity, for example, has long taught that we should empathize with “the least of these,” and particularly with the poor and oppressed (see Luke 4:18).

The morality plays we are now witnessing—the sexual harassment allegations swirling around Republican presdiential candidate Herman Cain and the sexual assault charges swirling around the Penn State football program headed by former coach Joe Paterno — provide an opportunity to assess just where our collective empathy lies.

When we look as a nation at the Herman Cain campaign, do our hearts go out to the wealthy businessman and White House contender or do they go out to the women who are accusing him of sexual improprieties? In pondering this case, and trying to determine where we stand, how do we approach the evidence? To whom do we give the benefit of the doubt? To the “least of these”? Or to the most powerful?"


http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/12/m…

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HOG CALLS:

Sometimes ‘lockdown’ leads to lockup


By Nate Allen

Saturday, November 12, 2011




FAYETTEVILLE — Today most every public university president, chancellor and athletic director should ask themselves this question:

Why must our athletic department operate so secretly?

It’s not only a pertinent question, but in the wake of Penn State, a chilling one. And unavoidable.

Now surely to God, the grand jury allegations that Penn State retired defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually molested male children at Penn State’s facilities is the rarest of aberrations throughout our country’s college athletic departments.

But the climate of athletic departments secrecy is not.

That secrecy helped keep undisclosed - until Sandusky’s arrest Sunday on 40 charges - that a graduate assistant coach in 2002 provided an eyewitness account alleging he had seen Sandusky sodomizing a boy in a shower at Penn State.

As coaches’ salaries and power increasingly escalate, so does the remoteness of athletic departments to the universities of which they are supposed to be a part and not apart.

The University of Arkansas’ Broyles Center was once as open as since retired Athletic Director Frank Broyles’ always open door, but now it is routinely described in comparative “lockdown” by alumni and others who were once accustomed to visiting it.

Just imagine when the UA’s football operations center is completed. The football fortress might be more forbidding than Fort Knox.

Apparently, Joe Paterno and Penn State were ahead of their time.

The iconic head football coach, who was fired Wednesday night along with Penn State President Graham Spanier, had Penn State football in lockdown mode as far back as the 1970s, according to a column by Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Because the NCAA never had cause to come to Happy Valley to ask questions about rules violations, like it has nearly everywhere else, and because Paterno led his teams to more victories than anyone else, “Joe Pa” was canonized.

Now JoePa falls hard.

Turns out he was told in 2002 of Sandusky’s alleged conduct, which was beyond reprehensible. After relaying that to Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley, who is now on leave and facing perjury charges, Paterno did nothing further. Neither did Curley.

Meanwhile, an alleged child molester continued to roam Penn State with unfettered emeritus access.

And Penn State’s subservience to Paterno State continued.

Before Penn State canceled Paterno’s regular weekly news conference Tuesday morning, its media relations department informed media that only questions related to today’s Penn State-Nebraska game would be addressed.

Former Arkansas Chancellor John White probably would have approved.

As chancellor, White advised Razorbacks coaches: “When you’re asked a question by media, I always give an answer, but try to answer the question you wish they had asked. I just give them the answer to the question I wish they had asked until they sort of go away.”

White never received so much as a public reprimand regarding why disingenuousness should be a public university’s standard operating procedure.

It seems we have become so conditioned to obfuscating and prevaricating from our public officials that we resign ourselves that it’s standard public policy.

It is not only an immoral policy but an incompetent policy.

Just ask Penn State officials how well secrecy and disingenuousness worked for them.

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Nate, Nate--do you really believe that Coach B was open? He just did the same thing Dr. White did only with his Georgia smile (and he picked your pocket while he was doing it).



"The University of Arkansas’ Broyles Center was once as open as since retired Athletic Director Frank Broyles’ always open door, but now it is routinely described in comparative “lockdown” by alumni and others who were once accustomed to visiting it."

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Man, college football is such a secretive, exploitative mess of corruption. The only way there will be substantive reform is if folks stop feeding the monster via massive TV contracts, paying constantly increasing ticket prices, providing alumni donations, etc. Welp, time to watch college football until it's time to go to the Hogs game. No cognitive dissonance here.

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The NYT also had an article today, written by Nina Bernstein, headed "On College Campuses, A Law Enforcement System to Itself." The lead is about a coed's body found in her dorm room at Eastern Michigan University in December, 2006, "naked from the waist down with a pillow over her head." The chief of the university's police said there was no reason to suspect foul play and her parents believed for two months that she died of natural causes! Bernstein cites other such instances.

"On most of these campuses, law enforcement is the responsibility of sworn police officers who report to university authorities, not to the public. With full-fledged arrest powers, such campus police forces have enormous discretion in deciding whether to refer cases directly to district attorneys or to leave them to the quiet handling of in-house disciplinary proceedings."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/on-co…

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Our gladiators will always be gladiators. So long as they get a thumbs up from Caesar and the Senators all is well.

To be otherwise would require a paradigm shift so large our entire culture could
collapse.

Praise be to Hermes.

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The U of A is Penn State and just like all the other billion dollar sports Mafias we call college sports. Hell, we got million dollar high school teams in nearly the poorest state in the Union.

As we will soon see when the 1% send their uniformed tools to kill and burn out the Occupy movement, the 1% in the U of A sports system will always team with their 1% alumni association to destroy anyone who dares to mess with the entrenched football & basketball corporation at the U of A in Fayetteville. Money is mean and those with money become mean and they don't MEAN for you to FK any of it up!

So don your red & white, wear your hog hat, drive your 55 thousand dollars worth of tailgating equipment to your designated parking spot today and enjoy the game. But don't pretend it's just a college football team...it's much much much more than that.

It's an industry every bit as cruel as the Catholic Church, Halliburton, Exxon....or Penn State. When needed, heads roll, when needed. bribes are paid, when needed, the weak are crushed...Look Look over here at Crystal Bridges...you're OK, just shut up and don't rock the boat and don't forget as we are taught to say.....Go Hogs Go™!

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Can we not call it a sex abuse case? It's a CHILD MOLESTATION case. Let's not make it any easier for people to blow past the fact that a 10 year old boy was raped in the showers and other 8-11 year old boys were repeatedly molested.

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Not to put too fine a point on it, Academic2, but let's just call it *exactly* what it is...CHILD RAPE.
And in my opinion, every one of those assholes who enabled and helped cover up for the child rapist should be sitting in a cell with him. How dare they!

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Hey,
I just watched U.S. fighter jets flying over a stadium in Athens, Georgia in perfect formation, 100,000 patriotic fans singing our National Anthem so really,
what's a few boys butts compared to a spectacle of patriotism like that??

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Yes, they always pay lip service to patriotism eLwood, even though their actions are aimed at nothing more than making big bucks, assisted by the NCAA, which is nothing more than a sports conglomerate. They rip off the "student athletes," charge outrageously high prices for their athletic contests, expand their greed into all collateral aspects of college sports, such as licensing their logo, and become nothing more than another professional sports league, albeit one with extremely poorly paid stars.

Moreover, the more professional and proficient institutions become in their sports empires, the more they suffer in their academic offerings. All that money that they make--very little goes toward academic improvements. I worked as a PR man in higher education for 13 years, and I could see all of this coming, even though that was 30 years ago. Frank Broyles? He was not open, except to Orville Henry, who put out his official line.

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The NYT was spot on with both articles. College football has become disgusting, and campus cops should be part of the local police force, with officers rotated annually.

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HHW and t-dog earn brownie points here. A spade is a spade.
The sad part is that the victims of Penn State will mostly suffer in silence--many never named--for their entire lives. There is a shame victims carry that never goes away. Maybe some will get counseling. I never did, but a few years ago I wrote a memoir, and that was cathartic. Since my abuse began during the Great Depression, and the pain and shame linger, that catharsis is small. Ironically, I grew up in a very small town, too small to have a high school football team, and the only thing I understand about football is the corruption.

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Verla, I am so sorry for what you went through as a child. Cast out the pain and shame. You are alive! You are triumphant!

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