In the face of scandals that have repeatedly rocked NCAA Division I Football and Basketball of late, it is sobering to see that Texas A&M just signed Jimbo Fisher to a ten-year contract at $75 million. I daresay this is more than the Nobel Prize winning physicist on their faculty makes — if there is such an animal at Texas A&M.
Recent scandals have hurt the University of Tennessee so much that no one seems to want to go there to coach their beleaguered football team. They have already spent in excess of $13 million simply trying in vain to find someone willing to coach their team!
What this teaches us is that we all know semi-professional men’s sports at the NCAA Division I level are rotten to the core. We know that and further we know what to do about it, namely, reduce the obscene amounts of money that are being shoveled into those programs at the highest levels. But the golden goose is safe from the slaughter-house because money talks and there are sources out there that are apparently willing to pay whatever it costs to have a winning team — whatever it costs.
The costs to the academic programs at those universities are already beyond rubies, I suspect, as students increasingly find themselves drawn to the party schools where the Saturdays are filled with many beers and endless boola-boola (and most likely rumpy-pumpy) and the rest of the week is spent planning for the weekends.
Lost in the shuffle is the antiquated notion that colleges are supposed to prepare young people to deal with an increasingly disjointed world. They need to learn how to use their minds, not how to raise their glasses to the most recent success on the gridiron. And how is one to justify the millions of dollars being spent on mindless sports that are really nothing more, or less, than a diversion to allow us to escape from our dull, wretched lives?
As I write this I do wonder where the TV remote is. I don’t want to miss the games this Saturday. After all, the four teams that will play for the national championship will be determined today!
hughcurtler 
Boola-boola? Rumpy-pumpy? I missed out lo those eons of university days ago! Sign me up, Hugh…I may be old but I’m not dead.
Oh! Posting you my own tv 📺 remote. I won’t be watching but packing for freshman
“orientation”. So excited….
We both missed out on the fun!!!
The word ‘scandal’ seems to be entering the conversations a lot these days, doesn’t it? Has the word ‘integrity’, then, become archaic?
On a more comic note … you are only the second person I have heard use the term “rumpy-pumpy” … the first being Colette, who is a Brit, so I thought it was a term exclusive to our friends across the pond, but I guess not! At least you made me chuckle with that one!
Peace, my friend.
You must understand my wife and I watch British shows very often. I dare say I picked it up from an episode of “Inspector Lewis.” Fun stuff!! And I do think integrity has somehow disappeared.
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It certainly seems like big time college sports need a reset. Universities are breaking every rule to recruit top talent and are spending big money covering it up. What is also outrageous is the fact that the players are essentially used for slave labor. They may get a free education, but the monetary value of that is dwarfed by the revenue captured on the backs of these players by universities. If a player gets injured during their college career it could cost them millions of dollars in lost opportunity.
In the ideal world colleges should be out of the sports business and developing players should be the business of professional teams. Good luck trying to change it now.
I doubt the “student-athletes” at the Division I level get much of an education. Their graduation rates are very low and many times they take courses that are designed to pad their GPA rather than help them learn things that will benefit them later on. If you read my piece about the “Tail that wags the dog” on my blog you will see the I have made a suggestion that would solve the problem and allow the fans to continue to enjoy what is clearly semi-professional sports at the collegiate level.
Hugh, large universities and now even small schools must fund football programs to drive revenue. In that pursuit, they have sold their soul. So, everyone knows the football coach, but few know the college President.
In North Carolina, we have a nice university who had an attendance-less class that required one paper. For athletes, it was not uncommon for the paper to be written by another student. To me, this was designed to enable cheating. I think they should have pulled accreditation until a plan to remedy with audits was set up. Keith
What you are describing at North Carolina has become commonplace. The University of Minnesota had a scandal a few years ago centering on the writing of the papers for members of the men’s basketball team by the departmental secretary!! And the interesting thing is that apart form the very top teams, most of the schools in the NCAA at all levels lose money on football. They live in hope, apparently, or figure it will help them to recruit students — which the data show it does not do!! It borders on delusion — about which we are learning more and more each day!
Hugh, not surprising about the impact on recruiting. Most kids who are wooed by football u’s are attracted because they win or have a history of winning. So, if a school does not have a football team, they certainly aren’t going to make money off one. They’d be better served to pass, pun intended. Keith