Come Root for the Guys who Matter, Insects

I just saw a weird article. If it’s true, a college football coach just emailed his school’s entire student body and told everyone to go to the next game. He said the team needed them. He said studying could wait. That’s unbelievable. Of course, he probably has a number of players who have other people who study for them, so his perspective may be twisted.

I love writing about our national sickness of sports worship. This is a great example. His school, Indiana University at Bloomington, is supposed to be dedicated to learning, and surely there must be over a hundred extracurricular activities to choose from, but a man who gets paid over $4 million per year to coach one sport for one sex is telling kids the university needs them because his sport needs support.

I don’t get this stuff. I went to one game when I was in high school. I went to one game when I was at Columbia University. When I was getting two degrees at the University of Miami, I didn’t attend any games.

Incidentally, Columbia had an amazing won-loss record. They went at least a decade without winning a game after I left. They played at Baker Field, a tiny stadium which was mostly condemned for safety reasons. There were chain-link fences between seats, separating the safe ones from the dangerous ones.

Our band was The World’s Most Dangerous Band. They wore jeans and T-shirts. I don’t think they practiced. The game I saw (partially) took place during the Carter era, and the Hamilton Jordan cocaine scandal was in the news. At halftime, our band formed a giant nose on the field, and various band members ran up the nostril.

The coach who wrote the email is named Curt Cignetti. He says his team is trying to achieve something historic. Call me crazy, but I think winning a stupid game designed to amuse children is not historic. Groundbreaking research would be historic, though. Or how about a campus-wide revival, featuring thousands of conversions and miracles?

He doesn’t mention the other extracurricular groups. They’re not important. Don’t support the chess club or the forensics team, kids.

I really hate stories about athletes and coaches receiving worship and special treatment. These are people who don’t belong on campus to begin with.

When I lived in Miami, I knew a prosecutor. Then, as now, the main prosecutor was a lady named Kathy Fernandez-Rundle. My acquaintance told me a story about her. Is it true? Well, he “alleged” that it was.

He said a UM football player beat a smaller student severely for no reason. Felony case. From the sound of it, he deserved years in prison. My acquaintance was given the case.

He told me Fernandez-Rundle had him come to her office. He said she told him he WOULD get the victim to agree to lesser charges because the team really needed the player. So prison was not an option, nor was expulsion, nor was the nuclear option of…removing him from the football team.

When I was at Columbia, a huge baseball player named Chris Boyle beat a smaller student who wore glasses. It made the school paper, which is how I know. The story said he ambushed him from behind. He was dating a girl named Carolyn, and the story said Boyle was jealous. Boyle was not expelled.

I knew Carolyn well enough to recognize her in a hallway. She was beautiful. She started up a conversation with me one night while a bunch of us were drinking and hanging out. Good thing I didn’t follow up. I later found out Boyle and his pals hated me for some reason or other, so I guess I dodged a bullet. They used to write nasty things about me in a dorm elevator. Weird. I had no idea who was doing it. I barely knew who they were.

No, wait. Chris, in case you read this, Carolyn and I went to hotels a couple of times every month, behind your back.

Not really.

I hope she married someone who didn’t beat smaller people, including her, for that matter, up.

I decided to Google. She married a doctor with what looks like a Jewish last name. She had 4 children and died at 49.

It’s amazing that an Ivy League school with hopeless athletic teams would let a mediocre athlete destined for a cubicle beat another student badly and then let him get away with it. It’s the kind of thing you would expect from Ohio State.

One of my dad’s partners had a relationship with an NFL player named Najeh Davenport when Davenport was in school. I think he hoped to represent Davenport when he turned pro. That did not happen, perhaps because the partner’s law license was suspended over some interesting behavior.

One day Davenport got upset about something, broke into a female student’s dorm at Barry University in North Miami, and defecated in her closet. Should I say “allegedly”? I don’t think so, because he took a plea instead of risking a long prison term.

At the time, he was attached to the Green Bay Packers. They held onto him. After all, football is important.

She told the police she was in bed when it happened. She saw a strange man a few feet away, pooping in her laundry hamper. That must have made her feel safe. In Florida, she could have shot him, legally, without facing consequences.

America is full of athletes’ rape and DV victims who have been ignored, threatened, or paid to be quiet. It’s business as usual.

If Nicole Simpson had been married to a dentist, he would have been jailed several times instead of being turned loose by cops who asked for autographs.

Nicole Simpson was not important. She could not run very fast or catch a ball. Same goes for Ron Goldman.

I’m glad I’m not a student at Indiana University, because I would be tempted to respond to Coach Cignetti’s email, and after that, I would probably have to watch my back. Someone might poop in my closet.

This world is ridiculous.

Back in May, a court decided college athletes were entitled to be paid. The decision has not gone into effect yet, but it will probably happen later this year. It is expected to help male basketball and football players, female basketball players, and pretty much no one else.

People are saying it will destroy college sports. Man, I hope so. Nothing could make me happier. We need a system in which the hopes of 90% of universities are utterly obliterated. We need to see fans so discouraged they quit buying tickets. Athletes who simply are not smart enough to understand college courses need to be removed from campuses. Coaches who abuse people and teach aggression and dishonesty should be sent home. I suppose the new system would help a lot of these people remain in place, but maybe it would rid us of many others.

I guess I’m hoping for too much, though. The system will surely evolve to avoid reform.