Mark Emmert – Asshat

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The NCAA is suing over a recent law passed by the Commonwealth Government of PA that mandates any fines levied by the NCAA related to Jerry Sandusky’s crimes must remain in the Commonwealth.  Ever absent of self-awareness and irony Emmert declares:

NCAA President Mark Emmert released a statement saying that it was important that the organization’s members abide by its rules and that college sports would be “dramatically altered” if others are responsible for deciding what penalties are appropriate.

Of course, abiding by the organization’s rules doesn’t apply to the NCAA administrators themselves.  Mark Emmert certainly didn’t abide by the organization’s rules when he circumvented the organization’s rules for investigating and sanctioning members, instead choosing to bypass the infractions process and unilaterally hammer Penn State.  Oh, and threatening Penn State with worse if they didn’t agree to sign the Consent Decree without external consultation or in public.

But, hey what does that matter?

This is about an NCAA money-grab and power play.  College athletics will be just fine if the law stands.  However, Emmert is right to worry that his organization is soon to be a relic of history.

Demographics is destiny.

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An excellent, well-balanced article on the declining birthrate in the U.S.  Given the current fiscal trajectory of our government, the declining birthrate is only going to become more problematic with time.  For the simple arithmetic shows that there simply won’t be enough new young people entering the work force – and who thus pay taxes – to sustain the financial commitments to those who have exited the work force – and thus pay no taxes.

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PSU Ice Hockey on the rise

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David Jones of the Harrisburg Patriot News has an excellent article on the rise of PSU’s new Division-I ice hockey program.  People here are very excited about the program and the opening of the new ice hockey arena next fall.  But what struck me in this article was this:

But what’s really important for Steinour isn’t that he’s basking in ersatz glory as a sudden D-I athlete. It’s that, like his sister Hilary was at Seton Hall, he will soon be a college graduate. His mom Vicki and his dad Andy, a traveling furnace maintenance man for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, were not. They’ve both worked hard for this.

They fed his hockey dreams, too. Eric was sent away to the Hudson Valley Eagles junior hockey program in Albany, N.Y., for the fall and winter his senior year in high school. After graduating from Carlisle High that spring, he played three more years for the Boston Bulldogs junior program before finally deciding on college at age 21. He will turn 25 in March.

That education has served him well. During his senior year at PSU, Steinour finished development of a mechanism that senses expansion and contraction in steam pipes. It can warn of possible fractures before they occur, ostensibly saving thousands of dollars in possible repair costs. Penn State has applied for a patent on the device. Should it be successfully marketed, Steinour is in line for 40 percent of the profits.

That’s what a college education is supposed to do – build a career that affords options and freedom in life beyond a mere fleeting sport. And if he got into D-I hockey through the out door, at least he didn’t get the important part backward like so many others.

What a great story.  I wonder if this is part of the cultural problem at Penn State Mark Emmert was so boisterous about while his organization was unethically contracting with an attorney to surreptitiously get access to evidence they couldn’t otherwise get, maliciously smeared form USC coach Todd McNair, or breaking the confidentiality of the investigation of UCLA basketball player Shabazz Muhammad.

Mr. Emmert, you’re eyeballs deep in muddy water.

Oops!

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Howard Fineman, one of the most partisan and least insightful political hacks in the media today, decided last year to chime in with his two cents about Penn State and the scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky’s crimes.  Not simply content with condemning the alleged malfeasance of a few bad actors, Fineman went “all in” and used the scandal as the opportunity to criticize Penn State as an academic institution:

And just what did all this fame gain Penn State or the cause of higher education? The school clawed its way from obscurity to mediocrity in the national academic rankings. It convinced the Big Ten Conference, with prestigious schools such as Michigan and Northwestern, to admit Penn State.

But especially for a school of its size and budget — it has the largest campus in the Northeast and the 10th largest in the country — Penn State doesn’t match its football team’s prominence in very many of its myriad classrooms.

I took a look at the U.S. News & World Report rankings to see where the school stood. Its professional schools are barely mediocre: Business ranks 44th, law ranks 76th, medicine is so obscure that I couldn’t find it on the published list. The school is in the top rank nationally in only a handful of disciplines: earth sciences, criminology, and industrial and nuclear engineering.

Penn State’s other major strength, at least until now, was in several sub-specialties of education: administration and supervision, counseling and personnel, educational psychology, and higher education administration.

Fineman, though, displays a stunning lack of self-awareness.  Fineman has a bachelor’s degree from Colgate, a Masters degree from Columbia, and a JD from Louisville.  Since Fineman focuses on graduate school, let’s compare how Penn State stacks up against Louisville (comparing Columbia, an Ivy, to Penn State is invalid):

Law Penn State #76 Louisville #89
Engineering Penn State #35 Louisville #121
MBA Penn State #44 Louisville Unranked
Medical Penn State Unranked Louisville #75

And so, while Penn State could certainly improve its standing in terms of graduate education, with exception of Medicine, it leaves the University of Louisville far behind in its wake.  And Fineman talks about frauds.

Well, today brings us even more irony as the Wall Street Journal has an expose arguing the value of an MBA may be declining and it uses University of Louisville graduates as its evidence.  Yikes!

To borrow a line from the band Tool’s song “The Pot,” Mr. Fineman, you must have been high.