‘Guardian’ Live Chat on Academic Publishing

I’ll let my moderate side comment on this one: What a bunch of sniveling, equivocating, weasely excuses for college presidents. Ask them to take responsibility for bad things that occurred in their ships on their watch, and suddenly they’re captains of only part of the ship, with the athletic department being a separate compartment with, apparently, a separate engine, steering mechanism and, most important, set of rules.

* “Do you really want your president to be the ‘Super AD’?

Well, yeah. We want the president to be the Super Provost, the Super Buildings and Grounds Head, the Super Development Office chief, don’t we? OK, not in the sense that the president micromanages all these departments’ day-to-day operations, but in the sense that the heads of these departments are under the authority of the president and report to him, in summary, about what’s going on. If there appears to be a problem, the president is supposed to call these people on the carpet and compel them to get it resolved. If it’s a “natural” problem, e.g., classroom overcrowding, snow not removed from parking lots, a dip in alumni giving, then the solution has to be less top-down and more cooperative. But if the problem is rule-breaking, flouting of regulations, undeniably and willfully scandalous behavior, then the president has to administrate top-down, and, if necessary, fire (with whatever board participation is required) the malfeasant officials.

* “It’s unrealistic for college presidents to know about every rogue booster or every fancy car a star linebacker has mysteriously acquired, says James C. Garland, a former president of Miami University, in Ohio.”

No, but it’s quite realistic for the president to know that the AD knows what the football or men’s basketball coaches are doing. It’s quite realistic–even minimal due diligence–for the president of a university with big-time revenue sports programs to convene with the AD, say, twice a semester and ask, “Is there anything illegal, unethical or immoral going on in your area of the university that I should know about?” If he does, and the AD says, “No,” and illegal, unethical or immoral doings are revealed, he or she  should fire the AD and go public with what he or she knows. If the AD says, “Well, yes” and the president helps cover it up, then the board should fire the president. The AD, likewise, should ask the same questions of the football and men’s basketball coaches, and proceed accordingly.

What the honorable James C. Garland (was he the one who gave us that stellar citizen, Ben Roethlesberger?) is doing is using the excuse of “I was only following orders” in a reverse direction.

* “Should [Shalala] be the one cleaning things up?”

Hello? She’s the president, isn’t she? Does she know what her AD is up to? (I’ll bet she knows what the Provost and the Dean of the Graduate School and the Director of Development are up to.) One looks forward to yet another iteration of the great Watergate question: “What did the President not know and when did she first not know it?”

If there’s anything worse than the current corruption in big-time college revenue sports, it’s the cowardice (anybody have a better word?) of college presidents who have big-time revenue sports programs and are now hiding behind “I can’t know every detail of my athletic department’s doings” crap that that former president Garland is shoveling or the “Everybody does it and you have to do it in order to compete” evasion.

Oh wait, there’s something worse–if not in real-world consequences, at least in repulsive pseudo-innocence–and that’s the likes of Kirk Herbstreit hand-wringing and shedding crocodile tears on ESPN over the situation. He (and Lee Corso) get paid big bucks to know the inside stuff about college football; they hang out with coaches and AD’s and hear the rumors; they could act like sports journalists and ask a few pointed questions now and then. But Herbstreit acts like he never saw anything coming, and issues such platitudes as “I just think the leadership groups — including coaches, people who care about the sport at the end of the day — have got to come up with some ideas and brainstorming ways on how to police this.” How much of even this feckless twaddle do we think will cross his lips when he’s at the game-day desk in front of a bunch of howling fans?