Leaving The Nest

[San Bernardhinault]

But is it really more weird and alien than the highest paid (by far) public employee in about 40 states being a gridiron coach?

Obviously not, but my opinions on the weirdness of US college sport and the commercialisation of it as sport, and the use of it to incentivise people to attend colleges, have often been made on these boards and haven't always met with universal acceptance.

[Hot Pepsi]

They aren’t really public employees. They work for TV advertisers.

Which is even weirder, really.

[Hot Pepsi]

Obviously not, but my opinions on the weirdness of US college sport and the commercialisation of it as sport, and the use of it to incentivise people to attend colleges, have often been made on these boards and haven't always met with universal acceptance.

US colleges and universities are run like consumer brands in a competitive marketplace. Understanding that explains most of the weirdness.

The greek life thing is interesting. Originally - and to some extent now - their main purpose was just to provide semi-supervised housing and dining because there were no dorms at all.

But they also provided a way for young people to make lifelong social and business connections.

That was especially valuable at state universities and smaller, not so rich, colleges, because they needed to stand-up against the old-boys networks, finals clubs, eating clubs, etc, of the richer/better colleges and the eastern prep schools.

I’m sure there’s some kind of dynamic like that in other countries too, it just takes different forms.

Outside of the south, the importance of the greek organizations is generally overestimated. At Penn State, for example, there are over 100 organizations. Some have big houses. They throw big parties. They get into big trouble. But only about 15% of students belong.

[ursus arctos]

They are still paid by public institutions and their contracts, etc are subject to public open records requests.

Which is how guys making millions get fired for cause for hiring hookers on their state-provided phone.

[Jobi1]

I basically left when I went to university at 18. I spent summers back at the folks because of the way the student house rentals worked but didn't think of myself as living at home. Then I returned for maybe a year as an unemployed wastrel after finishing university, but as soon as I had enough cash I hightailed out of there again aged 22. After that I was only ever back for a few days at any one time, I guess.

I'd imagine this was, and still is, fairly standard in Britain for middle class kids who go to university.

Pretty similar for me. Went off to uni at 18 but spent summers back at home, then stuck around a couple of years after while I was giving music a go. Gave that up and moved out of home (and town) at 25. I did then have a brief period when I first moved back to the UK aged 33 when I was of no fixed abode and doing bits of work here and there, and mostly using the mothership as a base (she's a good egg), but within about 18 months had met the now husband and high-tailed it out of there again.

I do have a couple of friends aged just each side of 40 who are both still living at home, which does seem quite unusual. Just waiting for the right.... house, I guess.

[Hot Pepsi]

They are still paid by public institutions and their contracts, etc are subject to public open records requests.

Which is how guys making millions get fired for cause for hiring hookers on their state-provided phone.

Right. Which one was that? I forget.

It depends on the state, of course, but they aren’t really being paid by the public in the same way the governor or the state police are, which is what a lot of people assume. Same with the highly paid doctors in medical systems attached to state universities. They are state employees, but their funding is not from the state taxpayers.

As it is, a lot of big public universities are barely public any more. Whenever the legislature tries to squeeze them, they just behave more like a private university. Their percentage of state funding is often not very big.

That is also weird, compared to other countries.

[Hot Pepsi]

Pretty similar for me. Went off to uni at 18 but spent summers back at home, then stuck around a couple of years after while I was giving music a go. Gave that up and moved out of home (and town) at 25. I did then have a brief period when I first moved back to the UK aged 33 when I was of no fixed abode and doing bits of work here and there, and mostly using the mothership as a base (she's a good egg), but within about 18 months had met the now husband and high-tailed it out of there again.

I do have a couple of friends aged just each side of 40 who are both still living at home, which does seem quite unusual. Just waiting for the right.... house, I guess.

I wouldn’t mind living near the rest of my family if there were a lot of space. Like the Corleone compound in The Godfather.

[Jobi1]

I wouldn’t mind living near the rest of my family if there were a lot of space. Like the Corleone compound in The Godfather.

Just when I thought I was out....

[ursus arctos]

Hugh Freeze

Ole Miss is a special place

In January 2016, the NCAA charged Ole Miss with numerous recruiting violations. An investigation turned up evidence that Ole Miss employees and boosters arranged numerous "impermissible benefits" for players, such as car loans and cash. At least one recruit was suspected of getting help on his college entrance exam. Ole Miss officials began calling reporters, telling them falsely that most of the alleged violations had taken place under Freeze's predecessor Houston Nutt.

The investigation reopened soon after star offensive tackle Laremy Tunsiladmitted taking money from one of Freeze's assistants. In February 2017—three months after suffering its first losing season since the year Freeze arrived—Ole Miss withdrew from bowl consideration for the upcoming season. The move came on the same day that the NCAA sent an updated notice of allegations charging the Rebels with eight additional violations. Most seriously, it accused Freeze of not monitoring his assistants, and also accused Ole Miss of not properly controlling the program. The new allegations brought the total to 21: four under Nutt and 17 under Freeze.

Freeze continued to recruit players during the investigation. Six Ole Miss players, including star quarterback Shea Patterson and future NFL players Van Jefferson and Tre Nixon, later said Freeze and other Ole Miss officials repeatedly lied to them during their recruitment about the severity of the pending charges. After the charges became public, these players sought to transfer to other schools; each requested and received a waiver to the NCAA rule that would have prevented them from playing for a year.

On July 13, 2017, Nutt sued Ole Miss for defamation, contending that Freeze and school officials had "conspired to smear him" with false claims about the charges. On October 16, 2017, Ole Miss settled the lawsuit and issued a public apology to Nutt.

As part of discovery for the lawsuit, Nutt's attorneys filed a freedom-of-information request for calls Freeze made on his university-issued cell phone during January 2016. While reviewing those records, Nutt's attorneys discovered a call to a number associated with a female escort service, and alerted Ole Miss officials about it. Freeze claimed it was a misdialed number. School officials investigated, and discovered what they later described as "a concerning pattern" of similar calls dating back to shortly after he arrived in Oxford: at least a dozen calls over 33 months, often made while Freeze was traveling on business trips using Ole Miss' private plane. On July 20, 2017, chancellor Jeff Vitter and athletic director Ross Bjork gave Freeze an ultimatum: resign or be fired for violating the morals clause of his contract. Freeze opted to resign; offensive coordinator Matt Luke was named interim coach.

In February 2019, the NCAA punished the Ole Miss football team for the recruiting and academic violations committed under both Nutt and Freeze. "The panel found the involved head coach [Freeze] failed to monitor the program, allowing his staff to knowingly commit a series of recruiting violations, submit false information on recruiting paperwork and not report known violations," an NCAA statement said. The punishments included a two-year postseason ban, three years of probation, and a four-year ban on some scholarships. As well, the NCAA forced Ole Miss to vacate 33 wins from 2010 to 2016. As a result, 27 of Freeze's wins were stripped from the books; only the 2015 season was unaffected. His record at Ole Miss is now officially 12–25; it was 39–25 on the field.

[ursus arctos]

I went to uni with a number of people whose families had "compounds" (one of them being the Kennedys), buttnpse were always sumner residences.

[Hot Pepsi]

It’s described more fully in the book. They had three or four houses on a culdesac in Long Beach, Long Island.

But the house they filmed is on Staten Island.

[Hot Pepsi]

Hugh Freeze

Ole Miss is a special place

I knew it was Hugh Freeze, but forgot it was Ole Miss. My first guess would have been South Carolina for some reason.

He went to Liberty, that mighty fortress of Christian virtue, and then to Auburn, whose football program has become a bit of a dumpster fire very rapidly.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Hugh Freeze and Houston Nutt? Dickens would have LoL'd at such preposterous names.

[Hot Pepsi]

Hugh Freeze and Houston Nutt? Dickens would have LoL'd at such preposterous names.

There’s also a Jimbo.

[ursus arctos]

US colleges and universities are run like consumer brands in a competitive marketplace. Understanding that explains most of the weirdness.

The greek life thing is interesting. Originally - and to some extent now - their main purpose was just to provide semi-supervised housing and dining because there were no dorms at all.

But they also provided a way for young people to make lifelong social and business connections.

That was especially valuable at state universities and smaller, not so rich, colleges, because they needed to stand-up against the old-boys networks, finals clubs, eating clubs, etc, of the richer/better colleges and the eastern prep schools.

I’m sure there’s some kind of dynamic like that in other countries too, it just takes different forms.

Outside of the south, the importance of the greek organizations is generally overestimated. At Penn State, for example, there are over 100 organizations. Some have big houses. They throw big parties. They get into big trouble. But only about 15% of students belong.

I'm quite curious about the opinions of those who grew up outside the US as to the bolded portion of that quote, but from my own experience with "elites" in various European countries, what is striking to a USian is that universities are not particularly important to the development of such networks.

My sense of the UK, for instance, is that private schools (and the class connections they embody) are much more important (though student political associations have relevance for those in politics).

German universities have fraternities, but they are still grounded in traditions of Wilhelmine dueling clubs, represent a very small proportion of students, and are considered ludicrous by the majority. "Civil society" organisations, including labour unions,are much more important.

In Italy, familial and social conbections remain much more important than anything to do with where people went to school, and my somewhat less-informed sense is that that is the case in both France and Belgium as well.

I would argue that an important reason for that is the relatively decentralised nature of the US.

The majority of the white* people who successfully use their "Greek" connections to promote themselves do so in the context of state politics, state and local law and judiciary and localised businesses along the lines of car dealers, home builders and purveyors of pressure-treated lumber**.

Such positions simply don't have anywhere near similar prominence in the much more centralised societies of Europe, where the ambitious have always gone to the metropole(s).

* their role at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is more national and more interesting.

** an inside reference that only HP might get.

[San Bernardhinault]

I'm quite curious about the opinions of those who grew up outside the US as to the bolded portion of that quote, but from my own experience with "elites" in various European countries, what is striking to a USian is that universities are not particularly important to the development of such networks.

My sense of the UK, for instance, is that private schools (and the class connections they embody) are much more important (though student political associations have relevance for those in politics).

I might be an outlier because I didn't engage much in the communal activities at university, but I certainly don't think anything existed really outside of Oxbridge in terms of elites getting connected and sorted for the rest of their lives. People make lifelong friends at university, but it's not a wider organisation that ends up helping people up the greasy ladder. The Students Unions, I guess, appear to be a grounding for a start in politics, but is just a stepping stone rather than a future network. The Oxbridge, and particularly individual college, network, does seem to offer a bit of what Greek culture does.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I suspect things vary a lot from one sector to another of the economy, and it's difficult to discuss on any scientific basis because of the wide variety of ways in which social background advantage can manifest itself. One hears of lots of nepotism in small organisations, and in the media. But the sector of which I have personal experience, namely the Civil Service (back in the late 1980s) and large English law firms, things have - for the entirety of my experience over 30-odd years, been emphatically corruption/cronyism free and, at least on a conscious level, diligently meritocratic. In the last decade or so the basic meritocratic imperative has been supplemented by a hugely energetic diversity drive backed up by initiatives such as outreach, "CV-blind" interviewing and unconscious bias training for recruiters.

I suspect that, the Eton mob aside, the old-boy-networking thing has minimal influence on job opportunities these days. The bigger issue seems to be in sectors (media, some creative industries etc) where unpaid intern work is seen as a "must have" and is affordable only for kids from wealthier backgrounds whose parents can keep subsidising them.

[ursus arctos]

Unsurprisingly, the legal parts of that resound very strongly with my experience.

When I was a student, publishing and fashion were the industries that required all aspirants to work for free or a minimal wage over a period of years in order to advance. "Prestige" magazines line The New Yorker were also able to get away with it.

Media as a whole may now be as bad as either of them, especially given the degree to which media jobs are now "gigs".

[S. aureus]

In my experience (pharma) I haven't seen an old-boys network as such, but where you went to university certainly has an impact on how you're perceived when applying to jobs - for me, a Cambridge degree was helpful for getting my foot in the door, I've seen cases where a Harvard or the like background pushed a candidate to the front of the line. Once actually in the job it doesn't make a difference, and then the stumbling block for getting promoted becomes whether you have a PhD or not, which seems to vary between companies and countries (it seems harder to get promoted beyond a certain level without a PhD in larger companies or in Europe).
The above is ignoring race and sex, I haven't seen actual evidence of discrimination at the companies that I've worked at, but they did all skew white male in senior positions.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don’t know if Greek organizations serve much of a networking purpose any more, but I think they promote that idea and probably did do more of that 100 years ago. I think they still have a lot of that in the deep south, but it’s probably in decline.

In the northeast, Greek life is pretty niche. They have an outsized influence on the party scene at a lot of campuses because they do host parties. And at a lot of small schools where there isn’t much off-campus housing or many bars catering to students, they are an important supplier of alcohol and weed - especially to underage students. Especially women.

But the popularity and reputation of that scene seems to be in decline. Possibly terminal. The university administrations wouldn’t mind if they disappeared, although the Greek systems often has friends on the Board. Not sure if that will persist forever.

In the north, the percentage of kids who actually join is often small and the percentage that actually take it seriously and want to continue supporting the organization as an alum is much smaller than that.

Of course, that means that the kids who do join are the ones who are really into it - the drinking, the hazing, the drinking, the violence, the drinking, etc. So that can be a problem.


It also seems that there has been a rise in career-specific organizations, including some with Greek letters that have houses and parties. Those have a networking function, especially for women and BIPOC.

With those, there is more of an expectation that alums will stay involved. For example, Penn State has one of the top architectural engineering programs and I know a few lighting designers who studied there. They all seem to know each other and they come to the AE career fair to recruit, socialize and see their old professors. But that’s a small world.

And of course, the various sports teams often have an informal house of their own. And that is often a lifelong-connection sort of thing.

But the days of the coach being the landlord for his players are mostly gone. They don’t want that aggravation.


One reason why social networks mattered more in the past was that, preinternet, it was just way harder to figure out which companies were hiring for what and whom to contact.

A lot of companies preferred to just “ask around” rather than pay for a classified ad.

[ursus arctos]

I don’t know if Greek organizations serve much of a networking purpose any more, but I think they promote that idea and probably did do more of that 100 years ago. I think they still have a lot of that in the deep south, but it’s probably in decline.

The runaway popularity of "BamaRush" on TikTok (and the host of articles and a documentary it has engendered) suggest that this is not the case.

It is especially striking to me that the University of Alabama credits Greek Life and Big Time Football with a dramatic increase in the number of out of state students it can attract (and charge considerably more).

[Hot Pepsi]

The runaway popularity of "BamaRush" on TikTok (and the host of articles and a documentary it has engendered) suggest that this is not the case.

It is especially striking to me that the University of Alabama credits Greek Life and Big Time Football with a dramatic increase in the number of out of state students it can attract (and charge considerably more).

It’s in decline in the North, I think. Not so much in the SEC, of course.

Yeah, there are occasionally kids from even here who go to Bama. That just sounds like hell, but I’m told the campus is nice.

That’s good, I guess.

Let them all go there and get away from the parts of the country still trying to have a civilization.



College here is hard either way.

All of the school spirit and community-building stuff can be exhausting because, at the end of the day, one is still dealing with a bunch of young people whose brains haven’t fully developed. So one can feel like one is being forced to be in community with a bunch of assholes, especially if the school is selective and/or expensive.*

On the other hand, I have friends who went to schools where there was no common social focus like sports or an on-campus social scene. They all seemed to be even more lonely and/or alienated. My friend who went to American felt that way.

BU felt like that to me. Compared to what I was used to at W&M, the kids there just weren’t nice to each other, for lack of a better term. And the socioeconomic class divisions were prominent and obvious.

* That was a rude awakening for me. The kids in my high school class who were in the honors classes, etc, were almost all very kind and decent. So were their parents. But in the real world, high-achieving people are often raging dickheads or just socially inept. I had no idea.

[ursus arctos]

That's an interesting observation about your high school, and my immediate reaction is that the lesser degree of assholic behaviour reflects both self selection among those who choose an academic caereer and the security provided by tenure.

Among the Ivies of my time, the split you describe was between the "big city" schools of Columbia and Penn and the rest. Boston wasn't a sufficient draw at that time to get lots of people on a regular basis. That may have changed now,