The WTF? Thread

[Hot Pepsi]

That’s not college sports work in the US.

Rich schools with lots of rich kids are outperforming USC in lots of sports. Money is not what is keeping USC from succeeding in football or basketball in recent years.

I’m simply saying that people who are paid outrageous salaries to manage a department ought to be responsible for the performance of that department. Not knowing what their staff are doing may mean they aren’t criminally liable, but it also means they weren’t really doing their job. Or at least, it means that their job needs to be done very differently in the future.

Lots and lots of black people don’t get a fair chance to succeed as coaches and administrators. It’s an underreported problem.

But Lynn Swann isn’t one of those people. He’s been handed all kinds of opportunities in life based on his success as a player 40 years ago and because he doesn’t make old rich white people uncomfortable. Not that it’s the job of every black man to always rattle cages and speak truth to power, but that is most certainly part of his appeal to the booster demographic. It would be very naive to think otherwise.

Like his predecessors, he was handed this job most likely because the university just wanted an ambassador to the donors and not somebody who would dare challenge the old way of doing things. But now there’s a new president and a lot of alums and faculty calling for massive reform. There’s nothing in his CV that suggests he’s the guy to make that happen. Maybe he is, but there’s no reason to expect that.

This scandal isn’t just about USC, but it’s more about USC than any other school and USC sports have had a number of other problems indicating that a change is coming.

[ursus arctos]

Sorry, but what isn't college sports work in the US?

Heinel was a senior administrator in the athletic department, and while I would agree that not every athletic department has someone in a similar role (serving as a liaison with admissions, not soliciting bribes) many schools do.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This whole US college sports thing is super weird. You guys all get that right? I mean a couple of months ago I was talking to my neighbour, who is doing post doctoral research in medical devices here, before going back to Ann Arbor, and the only thing that I knew about Ann Arbor was that UM has the stadium one above the Nou Camp in the list of biggest stadiums. (Apparently it's also a cutting edge world class research university too, but I only knew about the huge stadium)

Is this because people (and teams) move around so much that college teams are the only fixed stars in the sporting firmament?

[ursus arctos]

Absolutely.

It is completely bizarre, unique and not to be emulated (IMHO).

It isn't franchise moves as much as it is the fact that massive swathes of the country don't have major league teams (see, e.g., Alabama or Nebraska) and that that generations of US students have been indoctrinated to believe that it is an essential (arguably, the essential) element of the "college experience". See also universities' (including public universities) absolute reliance on massive amounts of fund raising, and the proven fact that fundraising for non-sports aspects of the university increases when its high profile teams do well.

[Hot Pepsi]

Typo.

”That’s not how college sports work,” by which I mean that charging high fees and being a popular school for the rich is not an impediment to athletic success. Quite the opposite, really - Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame, UVA, etc. And it wasn’t a problem for USC until recently. USC’s problems in sports aren’t because they can’t find enough good athletes who can afford to go there.


I imagine most big D1 schools have somebody tasked with making sure all incoming athletes meet all the NCAA clearinghouse rules, but actually evaluating each students academic potential should be left to admissions which, I assume, have enough checks and balances to prevent bribery (otherwise they’d all be getting bribes left, right, and center).

Incidentally, the only USC grad I ever knew is a great guy and very capable scholar. He was blessed to be one of those people who don’t care about sports.

[ursus arctos]

Ah, thanks

There are a significant number of "big time" schools that essentially have no admissions criteria for "revenue sport" athletes beyond the NCAA minimum for eligibility.

I don't believe that someone at every "elite" admissions department in the country is on the take, but I also don't think that Singervwas the only one running this kind of scam.

[ursus arctos]

[URL]https://twitter.com/billywitz/status/1110375127882129408?s=21[/URL]

[San Bernardhinault]

As a foreigner in this country, I can only concur that college sports are weird. I mean, US sports seem weird to start with, but the college version is much weirder. Even weirder still, though, is the amount of funding and time given to non high-profile sports by the college system. The fact that someone can get admitted to a high-end university because of their lacrosse or waterpolo or rowing skills - things which seem to offer no benefits at all to the college - is completely baffling. I find college basketball or football utterly unwatchable and unengaging, but at least I can see a commercial reason for the colleges to push it. The next tier of stuff is what I can't get my head around at all.

[ursus arctos]

Many of those teams have been key elements in business networks that have generated tens/hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to the schools in question over time.

[Hot Pepsi]

Most of those non-revenue sports have patrons that provide a lot of their funding and political support on the board. And you might be surprised how many people do care about those sports. Even if it’s not enough to fully fund the sport, it’s enough for the administration to feel like it’s helping the reputation of the school and is adding something worthwhile to the overall student body experience. And of course, there are Title IX considerations, as there should be.

At places like Penn State, where there’s enough money from football and donors to cover all the sports, that’s ok. But at most places - like where I went to college - mandatory fees from all the students, athletes or not, cover a lot of the expenses*. Which is a scam, really. Why should I have to subsidize the fucking golf team, which never won anything or contributed anything to the greater good?

Meanwhile, there are loads of club sports and activities that only get a few dollars from the school and have to pay for most things out of dues and fundraisers.

But cutting money-losing sports is always a PR and political nightmare for any administration while adding them brings excitement and optimism.

[Femme Folle]

SB's attitude would likely get him deported if he lived in SEC country.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

"SEC"?

[ad hoc]

"Southeastern Conference" I guess where a lot of the colleges are particularly obsessed (especially with gridiron and possibly basketball(?))

[Bruno]

The SEC is generally the strongest college football conference (in recent years), so it gets the most national media attention. Of the ten biggest stadiums in the world, four are in the SEC. But then, numbers 2-4 (according to some website) are in the Big 10 (Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State). Number 1 is in North Korea, draw your own conclusions.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Thanks chaps. I did rather wonder why the Securities and Exchange Commission would be a player in the world of college sports.

[ad hoc]

Yes, I had been having similar difficulties wondering why an Assistant Director of Studies would be in line for reparations on the White Supremacist thread

[ursus arctos]

The fact that university athletic conference acronyms have become so widely known in the US is another manifestation of the problem. You lot have the Russell Group, we have the SEC (and the Ivy League, which is an athletic conference of eight "elite" private universities in the Northeast).

There are a couple of dozen conferences, but the most significant (the so-called Power Five) are the SEC (14 public and private schools in the Southeast, Missouri and Texas), the Big Ten (14 primarily public institutions stretching from Nebraska and Minnesota to Maryland and New Jersey), the Big 12 (ten primarily public schools from Iowa and West Virginia to Texas), the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) (fifteen public and private universities along the Eastern Seaboard, as well as Kentucky and Indiana) and the PAC 12 (12 primarily public institutions in the West).

The fact that the names of the conferences no longer very accurately reflect their membership in terms of number of schools or their location reflects the fact that the conference system has been in flux, driven primarily by the massive amount of money available from television broadcasts of gridiron and basketball. The SEC, PAC 12, Big Ten and ACC all have their own cable television networks that primarily show "non revenue" sports (gridiron and basketball are the subject of munificent contracts with national broadcasters) and chat and "analysis" shows, with the SEC's being particularly successful.

[Gangster Octopus]

No play for paupers...

[ursus arctos]

The "poor door" concept the article references first came to prominence in our neighbourhood, and has now been banned in NYC.

[Hot Pepsi]

The first part would, but not the second part. SEC schools generally sponsor a lot fewer sports than B1G or Pac12 or Ivy League schools. They do football, baseball, basketball, track, swimming, fucking golf, maybe tennis and whatever they have to do to comply with title IX. There’s not much interest in spreading money to less popular sports or any sports that weren’t being played by white southerners in the 50s.

[ursus arctos]

This may fit within your categories, but most all of them play baseball, softball and gymnastics.

[Hot Pepsi]

The SEC is generally the strongest college football conference (in recent years), so it gets the most national media attention. Of the ten biggest stadiums in the world, four are in the SEC. But then, numbers 2-4 (according to some website) are in the Big 10 (Michigan, Penn State, and Ohio State). Number 1 is in North Korea, draw your own conclusions.

That can’t be quite right because there are a few NASCAR venues even bigger than that.

As a frequent - but not as frequent as I used to - attendee at one of those college stadiums, I can tell you that it’s not *quite* as insane as it seems. There are only seven home games a year, so the total number of fan-hours, if you will, is not as impressive compared to other sports as you might think and to a very large extent, the size of the crowd *is* the attraction. Most people go for the experience of being part of something so big and the whole tailgate experience rather than the game itself. NASCAR is like that too to a large extent.


Anyway, the trend for all of those stadiums is to reduce the number of seats and increase the price of tickets, especially for the best seats and the “club” seats. So we’ll see these numbers be more like the NFL in a few years.

It’s kinda unfortunate - a lot of my friends who grew up going to games with cheap tickets can not afford to take their kids very often. It may be short-sighted, but it’s more profitable in the short-run for the programs which are all in an arms race to have more money to spend on coaches and facilities.

I’m fine with the whole thing collapsing once the players find a way to unionize. I still go to a few games a year, but I don’t enjoy it as much any more. Mostly it all just feeds my anxiety.

[Hot Pepsi]

This may fit within your categories, but most all of them play baseball, softball and gymnastics.

I mentioned baseball, I think, and softball and women’s gymnastics fit into the “Title IX” category. There are only about 15 D1 men’s gymnastics teams left and about half of them are in the Big 10.

[San Bernardhinault]

the Big Ten (14 primarily public institutions stretching from Nebraska and Minnesota to Maryland and New Jersey), the Big 12 (ten primarily public schools from Iowa and West Virginia to Texas), ... and the PAC 12 (12 primarily public institutions in the West).

The fact that the names of the conferences no longer very accurately reflect their membership in terms of number of schools or their location...

It makes me feel good to know that us on the west coast are sufficiently concerned about education that we at least want our public universities to be able to count into the low teens

[ursus arctos]

Race tracks (whether automobile or animal) aren't considered "stadia" for reasons that I'm not quite sure of.