University of Iowa = Hawkeye
Ohio State University = BUCKeye
Just what were you DOING at your university? Were you on the Marching Bong team?
Object lesson to all Dopeheads: if you want to get a real bitchin’ BBQ Pit thread going, just rips someone’s school! 
I really disagree with excusing Penn State alumnus and family from our wrath. I had two cousins who went to PSU, and I went to a small state college. So you can imagine all I ever heard from them was Penn State this, Penn State that, and my parents saying why can’t you be more like them, they went to Penn State.
Well, here it is ten years later: I’ve got a nice paying job, and they are both now housewives with 10 kids between the two of them. Nothing wrong with that, but all that fancy Penn State education for naught, huh? I don’t want to be sexist… it’s just I get a little joy out of this after being made to feel inferior all these years for not attending the hallowed Penn State and being told I was the loser.
Speaking of alumnus, you know what I am dissapointed in? Where’s all the Penn Staters checking in to stand up for their school? After all the years of chest pounding, getting in my face, and arrogance, frankly I’m a little forlorn that none of you Penn Staters (except dropzone)seem to have any BALLS to step up, or at least admit . . . that I’m right, it’s all over.
Why, I would even accept an apology from a Penn State fan right now.
If this fellow’s serious (not you divemaster), then he is truly pathetic.
I grew up and lived a big chunk of my life in North Carolina, the land of UNC, Duke, NC State. Down there, PSU was just another team. We heard more about Ohio State and Michigan and Notre Dame. You know, big schools with long traditions of winning on and off the field.
Now I live up here in PA, and the ranting about PSU is intensely annoying. You’d think it’s the only bleedin’ university in the whole state. It may be the big dog here, but it’s of no consequence anywhere else, and any kind of ranting like “WE ARE something you will or never could be,” is delusional bullshit. If a PSU education turns you into a slobbering, ranting dipstick, I’ll pass.
oops, let me retract that last message, I was in a soporific state and had just woken up and didn’t read too closely. Apparently he does know the difference between a buckeye and a hawkeye.
BTW, it should amuse any former hawkeyes to know that the team is, as usual, battling it out for last place in the Big Ten. The star quarterback quit the team and left the university. His roommate, another football lineman, beat him up and he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The U hushed the whole incident up and refused to prosecute, instead, they sentenced the attacker to run extra laps during practice. Football ticket sales are at record lows.
So of course, the UofI is embarking on a new $80million construction project to build a new stadium to replace the empty old stadium. Meanwhile, the University has just cut $20mil from other academic departments, and the art department is begging for $20mil to rebuild their campus which was basically destroyed during the floods of '93.
Chas E., old buddy, you are talking balderdash again. A guy is allowed to be born and raised in Ohio and then attend the University of Iowa (back then the State University of Iowa).
On the funding thing, as you surely know, the State is in a terrible mess. Five or six years of a depress farm economy coupled with what looks like hard times for every one is coming home to roost. I would not plan on any more capital improvements for a while, any place. There has been talk about a new football facility for years but not much has come of it and I doubt much will. I went through the art school this fall and while it is crowded and could use some sprucing up, it did not look that bad. Same old dark airless art history lecture room in the basement, same old slide room, same old studios, pretty good more or less new gallery annex, expanded sculpture workshops, same old print making studios, God knows where the potters are.
On the quarterback scandal, 200lb QBs should learn not to get in fist fights with 300lb offensive linemen. They should also learn to keep their mouths shut when it becomes apparent that they are never going to be any thing but second string QBs. It was not the fight with the roommate that caused the young man to go home, it was when he came up number two and the coaching staff and press started touting the number three as next year’s number one. The young man was just the sort of prima donna that offensive linemen are occasionally known not to block for as enthusiastically as they might.
But, enough airing of the family linen in public.
All football players and coaches are cordially invited to get bent. Football is a pimple on the face of sportsmanship. Quite a few football players are the biggest assholes known to humankind. I’d like nothing better than to beat Madden senseless. John Madden Is the worst, lamest, felchingest, hack in sports announcing.
Ah, SG, you haven’t been keeping up with things. The initial spin on the QB incident was that he left because he didn’t make 1st string, but this was quickly disproven as mere spin. If you beat someone up badly enough to send them to the hospital, you should be in jail for assault, not playing on the team.
The biggest reason why the U is in such dire economic straights is mostly because of their sports facility construction program, as well as a stupid investment in a Virtual Reality driving simulator project that sucked up 80million bucks, going over budget by 200%, and now has failed to get one single user (it was supposed to pay its own way). I warned everyone that this would happen, but nobody listened to me.
No, the art studios don’t look that bad, unless you look close. The basement was under several inches of water in 93, and the walls still leak water. The darkrooms in the basement are particularly decrepit. The walls of the building are caving in, the whole site should be condemned.
I actually like to air the local dirty linen in public. This whole town is so goddam sports crazy, it deserves a big kick in the ass. The new Arts Campus fund has failed to even raise $100k in the last 3 years (I contributed, did you?) but the new “Hawkeye Sports Hall of Fame” raised $20 million in 2 weeks. And they’re building it 3 blocks from my house, dammit!
Collegiate Sports is an immediate peril to any academic community. It sucks money out of serious academic programs. I read a quote from one college president who said “how did academia ever get into bed with the entertainment industry?”
Could that be why it costs half to a third as much to go to McGill, one of the finest universities on the planet, as it does to go to one of these public colleges with big sports programs?
Well, we do have a stadium and an assortment of varsity teams (Redmen and Martlets), but somehow they manage to stay out of people’s hair; the same seems to be true at UQAM, U de Montreal, and Concordia, oddly enough. Maybe it’s the Gallic influence.
I’m not sure I qualify as a “fan”, but as a Penn State alumnus I’ll apologize for the jerkwads who think that supporting a college football team that is marginally more successful than other college football teams (when it managed to do that) somehow imbues them with an aura of superiority. But if you think Penn State is bad, try Nebraska – they’re much, MUCH worse.
As someone who attended Penn State during a reasonably successful period in its football history but cared little for sports or the heavy emphasis thereon, I do feel that there were many things about the football program about which I could be justifiably proud, such as:
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the Penn State football team had, at one point, the highest percentage of graduating seniors and highest cumulative GPA of any college football team in the USA. Big whoop, you may say, but considering that most US schools will admit any braindead troglodyte to bolster their football team, it’s a pretty good achievement. Compare with Nebraska, a school I worked at for a while, where more than half of the football players had either a criminal record or a paternity suit pending. And as for Nebraska’s playing, I refer you to Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent. It’s all true.
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The aforementioned JoePa actually enforced the “bad grades, no play” policy. And made sure that students grades were kept up by a vigorous tutoring program (I knew some of the tutors, and it wasn’t one of those “the tutors take the tests” deals) and extended library hours during football season. He later personally donated a whole heap of money ($250,000? $2.5m? I can’t remember) to the library.
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Penn State had, at least at the time, the best marching band. Hey, I was a music major (albeit not a bandhead); I notice these things.
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Screw the games; Penn Staters threw great tailgate parties.
As for the football itself? Ah, who cares…
Whatever the reason, matt, I have suggested that my daughter look into McGill as a possiblity. That they don’t charge extra for foreign students is a plus, too. But it’s significantly cheaper than what she’d pay at University of Illinois, f’rinstance. And I wouldn’t have to worry about you taking advantage of her. 
Same shit at Texas A&M (hurl). Their focus on football is repulsive.
Oh, and for all you OSU fans, you know that you can’t touch Miami University aka J.Crew U. (We were a university before Florida was a state!) One of the things I love about this school is that we could careless about football and sports. (unless it’s broomball and cycling ) We pride ourselves in being a bunch of intelligent, sheltered, Jetta driving, Abercombie wearing, little snots.
I am SO not touching that!
Hmmmm . . jr, I appreciate the gesture, and you make some good points, and what I’m about to say kind of contradicts what I said earlier, but I sense your not a true blue Penn State football fan. Unlike most people that went to PSU, you seem like a decent and honorable person, I really don’t want to see you humiliate yourself this way.
I guess maybe what I’m looking for are actually true Penn Sate football FANS to come grovelling at my feet, begging for my benevolent forgiveness.
I mean isn’t just like Penn Staters to hide behind people like poor jr8, crawling behind the woodwork while jr does the apologizing for them!
I’ll be right here, waiting! 
Then I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed; but even so, I’m sure it would still be cheaper than an American school.
Well-y, well, well. That’s an interesting statement to make. Good thing there isn’t any drinking at that fine Marionist institute, UD, huh? Oh, wait, the ghetto!
Allow me to laugh, hah!, and just point out a thing or two: [list=1][li]UD has a policy that states, IIRC, that kegs are not allowed on campus property and for every 1 that is found in a residence, there is a $100/student fine. $100/student/keg means that a house-party in a house that 4 students live in that is on campus property that is busted with 5 kegs is going to result in $2,000 in fines. Oh, here’s the other thing, the University owns almost all of the student housing in any proximity to campus (the “ghetto.”) Students get around the keg rule by making hate punch, jungle juice, harry buffalo… whatever you want to call a huge mix of alcohol and a little fruit punch. So, instead of students drinking beer, they drink a lot more liquor. Brilliant.[*]UD runs on semesters. They are a Marionist University (something to do with devotion to the Virgin Mary, I think it has to do with Jesuit something, don’t ask me…) and they never used to have a Spring Break. Every St. Patrick’s Day they would throw the largest parties in Dayton. The streets would run with green beer (and puke.) They would also be filled with drunk students setting fires to dumpsters and couches and trees and desks…. UD now has a Spring Break and it always falls on St. Pats and they have cops on every street corner and they remove all the dumpsters for the days before, during and after.[/list=1]As for you, ckrider and this little quip[/li][quote]
Oh, and for all you OSU fans, you know that you can’t touch Miami University
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you know you are just jealous of The Ohio State University for sharing so much of it’s name with Ohio University, the great bastion of the slacker dopeheaded version of J. Crew U. Go on, admit it. I bet you’re in the Greek system, too! Any school that spawned a group of Fraternities now known as “the Miami Triad” and an 80% (or so) Greek student life obviously isn’t going to be much for athletics, now is it? Too busy with those T-G’s and rush-parties.
Who am I supposed to believe, you, a known Canadian, or National Public Radio?
Oh, yeah! We were supposed to be bashing football players, not Canadians. Sorry!
There is a perfectly rational reason for the great American public universities to emphasize athletics even though they have little to do with the academic or cultural mission of the institution. The key is the dependency on public funding and alumni contributions. To the greatest extent the public universities do not educate the elite, they educate the vast heard of middling people. It is not for nothing that the vast majority of our political and judicial notables attended prestige universities.
The level of sympathy and generosity toward the public universities in related to the success of their athletic programs. Legislatures are more willing to fund a school with a winning football program. Alumni are more generous with a school when it send a team to a post season bowl game or a post season tournament. It may not make sense but it is true. I suppose it has something to do with a sense of identification and self worth. This is the reason that August university presidents humiliate them selves by leading cheers and by posing for photos with bull necked and inarticulate coaches. The success of Iowa football has a lot to do with the U of I getting improvements to the fine arts campus and funding for faculty.
It may not be fair and it may not be right, but it is a fact of life. Remember that ultimately the taxpayer who funds the school and selects the legislators knows a lot more about the box scores than about papers published in scholarly journals. Fred taxpayer will be a lot more willing to pay an associate professor of literature at a school that shows up on TV or Saturday afternoon than the same guy at a school that has had a loosing record for the past five years.
You know, I used to think that way. I spent much of my youth sitting in my Dad’s season ticket seats, he had subscribed for so many years, his seniority (and his donations to the football program) got him better seats than the Governor, about 4 rows above him.
But I just don’t see it that way any more. Especially since I heard about (IIRC) the University of Oregon spending $250,000 to purchase a massive banner advertisement draped over Madison Square Garden, to promote their Heisman Trophy candidate. This isn’t collegiate athletics, it’s Hollywood.
Bingo! Of course it isn’t collegiate athletics, of course it’s Hollywood. It hasn’t been collegiate athletics since TV. Red Grange was a student-athlete. Bill Bradley was a student-athlete. Colonel Dawkins was a student-athlete. Very few of the Goliaths we see on Saturday afternoon or takings jump shots are student-athletes. They are aspirants in a huge farm club system for the NFL and the NBA. But, there is a correlation between how successful the local farm club is and how much funding the university gets. The one thing that mitigates this unholy alliance is that the athletics program is largely funded by donations, sponsorships and ticket sales and not directly with appropriated tax money. Until the connection between big time college sports and public funding of higher education is broken, big time sports will persist as central to the identity of the great public universities.