incompetent and immoral university officials

just when the so-called “game of the century” is over, bigger and better things in store this week. two major games of note, and as always incompetent university officials at the center.

out of nowhere, JoePa is going to be coaching his last home game for penn state? after 46 years, the all-time leader in victories suddenly bids adieu this saturday and it comes down to a scandal? listening to the media, i really have to feel for the guy. apparently, support for paterno has “eroded” within the university following a scandal involving former assistant sandusky who is being investigated for alleged inappropriate relationships with teen boys over about a 15 year period. it was said that paterno had known something, but “turned a blind eye.” the police investigation released him from responsibility, but critized him for only telling university officials and not reporting it to the police. they say he has a moral responsibility to tell police. in principle, i would agree that would have been prudent to tell police, but the part i don’t understand is that the police let him off the hook for no wrongdoing while university officials are bloodthirsty because he didn’t go to the police? the catch 22 of it is that he went to university officials in the first place when he learned of the incidents. they could have gone to the police. why was it paterno’s sole responsibility? so, the university wants him out for something that they are equally, if not more, responsible for? i can see why the penn state vice president and others are also being targeted, but man i feel sorry for JoePa.

then, just when you thought 'bama-lsu was a good matchup, the pac-12 north will more or less be determined when oregon plays at stanford. third-ranked stanford is a 4 point favorite against sixth-ranked oregon, but this could be a blowout in either direction. too hard to predict. the entertaining part for me is the story that broke in the oregonian on sunday. i won’t say i told you so, but talk about incompetent university officials, i challenge any school in the country to beat the university of oregon in a game of immorality.

the following is an outlined version of facts presented in steve duin’s article referring to the subsisdies the university of oregon athletic department receives.

the university has always maintained that the sports programs, specifically the football team, are self funded. that is, they are independent of the university general fund for support and as such, student fees do not cover any expenses. i am sure that as much as most of the students down in eugene love their ducks, none of them particularly want to fund it. however, the athletic department funding itself has always sounded suspicious. even when they make about $50 million playing in the national championship game, most of that must be dispersed to the other programs in the pac-10 (now pac-12) and a lot of the rest is spent getting to such an event. not a lot left to bring back to eugene.

duin’s article proposed that “hidden subsidies drive the myth that the UO athletic department is self-sustaining” with it’s $78 million annual budget. it gets tricky to prove because the university is quite adept at covering its tracks. but, consider these factors:

1. “overhead assessment”
each “revenue generator” on campus must pay a percentage of it’s budget to compensate the university for services provided. for example, groups like university housing, the health center and even associated students must give back 6% per year (going to 7% next year) to use buildings and other accommodations. the athletic department also pays an overhead assessment, however, in 2009, just two weeks before president frohnmayer left office, he signed a memo with then-athletic director kilkenny that allows the athletic department to pay only 3% through 2013. so, for the $1.378 million the athletic department spent in overhead costs last year, the 3% cap saved them $920,000. in 2013, that same subsidy will save them $1.84 million. that is money not going back to the university. who makes up for those losses?

2. “academic support”
from 2002-2010, the university funneled $8.5 million from the general fund to pay for academic support of athletes. it may be argued that athletes are students and need support like all others, but $1 million per year seems rather steep considering that most of the student body are not athletes while a large percentage of student support services are being given to people that aren’t necessarily accepted into the school based on their academic successes to begin with. why shouldn’t the athletic department fund the support of their own requirements for things like gpa, or at least a fair portion?

3. parking revenues
the athletic department banks the revenue from parking during sporting events. no figures were given, but try to use your imagination. if it only costs say $2 per hour to park during a basketball game and that game lasts three hours, each car pays $5. the arena holds 14500. if as many as half of the fans are students that don’t drive and four people carpool in each car that does drive there, a full arena would still pull in $8750 for one basketball game! and be sure that $2 per hour is a low-ball figure. why does the atheltic department get this break? when there is a linguistics symposium, does the liguistics department get to bank street parking revenue and, if so, is that revenue maximized because the university used general funds to promote that symposium to no end?

4. seating at autzen
the administration must pay the athletic department for use of 800 club seats and the presidential suite at autzen stadium. this comes to $375, 000 per year. where does that money come from? probably would get a convoluted answer if you were to ask the university.

5. seating at autzen (part 2)
prior to 2002, autzen stadium capacity was 42,000 and 5,800 seats were reserved for students. after the expansion, autzen now holds 54,000 (though it exceeds capacity by several thousand per week) and only 5,500 seats are reserved for students. students may not be paying directly, but they are definitely losing out and the athletic department is banking buckets of cash off seats that should be given to students for free. does any part of that money go back into the general fund or even offset the cost of the presidential suite?

6. court costs
currently, the university is under investigation for possible ncaa recruiting violations. the university general fund is paying 50% of the legal fees. exact numbers would be hard to guess, and the oregonian didn’t give an estimate, but trust that number is in the millions.

just eyeballing it, i see around $20 million the athletic department gets in “favors” from the university that student fees are paying for. that’s not even considering lots of other sources that we don’t even know about. i may be $58,000 in the hole for a degree i wasn’t allowed to finish, but at least i got to attend 4 football games and one basketball game to cheer for a team i don’t even like. yeah it was probably worth it. i’m not bitter. thankfully for that awesome university, not everybody sees this the way i do.

go stanford!

Chip Kelly in "big marble" games

Click here for John Canzano's article in last Friday's Oregonian.

Dear Mr. Canzano,

This would probably be the only time I have ever defended Chip Kelly.
And for how much you always claim to love Chip, you sure have a way of making him look bad. For example, “The head coach is funny, particularly when he’s not trying to be.” If “president” were substituted for “head coach,” that could’ve easily been written about George Bush. . I have never trusted Kelly to be Oregon’s highest paid state employee or even trusted his integrity as he makes himself look bad trying to cover up the same crooked activity all the other “successful” programs have done. But with all that said, I really can’t agree with the statement that Kelly, “Must deliver on the field.”

Last Friday, the day before the Oregon Ducks learned more from Les Miles than they ever have from Chip Kelly, your article asked, “Can he win the big one?” Going into Saturday, Kelly had won 22 games and lost 4. Now he has lost 5 and I assume you still think he hasn’t won the “big one.”

According to you, Kelly was 0-3 in “big marble games.” That sounds especially strange to say after going on to mention beating USC (twice) and Stanford. Let’s consider this a little more realistically… True, Oregon lost a Rose Bowl to Ohio State and a national title to Auburn. But how ugly is it when the only loss of a season comes by 3 points in the last game? If that entire season is not big marbles, I don’t know what is. Don’t forget that the Ducks didn’t just luckily slip into the title game, they thrashed every team (except California, squeaking out by two). And if LSU in a neutral site is a “big marble game” why isn’t playing Tennessee at Knoxville? The Ducks opened last season by thrashing the Vols, 48-13, in a game they weren’t even supposed to win, completely derailing Tennessee’s season in the process the way the Oregonian now talks about this season for the Ducks. Then, there was a 21 point victory at USC. I don’t care what USC is going through right now, that was totally unprecedented in Ducks history. And, oh, the Ducks beat Andrew Luck’s Stanford team by 21 points! That was probably the only thing keeping Stanford from winning the championship. Why isn’t that a “big marble game?”

As for 2009, just making the Rose Bowl was big marbles for the Ducks. Never mind that they didn’t win that or the national championship yet. Baby steps, you gotta be 17 before you can turn 18. What they did to get there was big marbles, mostly that Halloween night in which the Ducks completely embarrassed the Trojans by 27 points with ESPN Gameday in the house! That was the biggest deal in Oregon football history up to that point.

And as for your third “big marble” loss to Boise State to open the 2009 season… In hindsight, it might seem like it was a big marble game. The Broncos have won 56 of 57 home games dating back to 1999. They’ve lost 2 regular season games in the last 3 years. They’re particularly unbeatable on opening day. Given that the Broncos had already won in Eugene the year before, who could expect a guy coaching his first game to walk away with a victory on the blue turf? In context of pre season expectations, no one expected the Ducks to win that game, much less knew what to expect from the season. Except for probably you yourself, no one predicted the Ducks to wind up in the Rose Bowl. Sure, it would’ve been legendary to win at Boise State, but since the team wasn’t yet playing for the big marbles, how can it be a big marble game?

What’s more, it is about as premature to call an opening day game “big marbles” as it is to consider BCS standings in the first half of the season (or at all for that matter). If the Ducks end up 12-1 and win the Pac-12 this season and the Tigers end up 8-4, would last Saturday’s loss still be “big marbles?” No, it would be small change. So, if the Oregonian considers Boise State and LSU games “big marbles” then the other games that were just as big or bigger need to be considered (both USC games, both Stanford games and the Tennessee game). That would make Kelly 4-5 in big marble games. But, it is the poorly structured college system that makes even opening week games seem big stage. It ain’t right to go into the first game thinking, as Darron Thomas did, that the season is over if you lose one game.

Likewise, it’s complete crap when the Ducks win out the Pac 10 and get more credit than the Badgers did for losing only one game in the Big 10. Nationally, it is pretty widely thought that there was no better team in college football than Wisconsin last year. You want a “big marble” game? That will only ever happen when there is a playoff system. It becomes a big stage only if a team can create it for themselves. A big stage is getting to play a team like Wisconsin after having beaten Auburn and Boise State in back to back to weeks. Until that happens, there will be no true champions, thus no big marble games. But if you wanna waste time dreaming up these various big marble scenarios then I will take away credit for losses to Ohio State and Auburn, but Chip Kelly deserves credit for two USC victories and another for thrashing Stanford while being under serious pressure to do so. As much as I loathe the guy, I’d say Chip Kelly is 3-2 in the biggest games he’s coached.

daniel “kid” yoshida
La Grande


matching game:
a. les miles
b. george bush
c. chip kelly

the "Portland Oregonian"

I read the “Oregonian” pretty much everyday, primarily because of the easy availability. Although the “Oregonian” is available all over Oregon, I don’t find it to represent all of Oregon very well. The more I read, the less I seem to see places outside the Portland area mentioned. For the month of August, I derived a bit of data to see just how well the entire state was represented. I did not consider the weekly arts and entertainment section, since it is relevant only to Portland, or the sports page because its Oregon inclusions were limited to Portland, Corvallis and Eugene, save minute entries on things such as river fish counts.

Last month the “Oregonian” had roughly 1861 articles. Most of these were of national or international interest, 39.4% and 18% respectively. Another 3% concerned Washington state beyond the Vancouver area, which left 39.6% ostensibly as “Oregon” articles. Concerning those 737 “Oregon” articles, the Portland-area constituted 61% (an area I chose as the highlighted area on the state map: north of Wilsonville, east of Forest Grove, west of Troutdale as well as Vancouver and Camas, Washington). The state capital of Salem had 51 articles (7%). Even heavily populated Eugene had only 7 articles pertaining to them (less than 1%), Springfield had zero. The central Oregon area, including Bend and the Dalles, had just 38 articles (5%). And my own region of eastern Oregon was represented only 17 times (2%).

Luckily, there were a few entries on the last two days of the month that allowed eastern Oregon that 2%. More troubling, of those 17 articles, 2 were the same blotter about Hermiston’s police chief, 2 more about the prison shooting in Ontario, 3 about the police shooting in Elgin and one about the Wallowa marijuana raid. After the Oregonian had given eastern Oregon’s police and crime rate about as positive an image as Portland’s, that left 9 articles. And one of those was reprinted from the NY Times!

I tried to give a benefit of the doubt in counting 69 articles of general statewide interest, although a deeper look would show that most of those dealt with Mark Hatfield, David Wu, Hood to Coast and a few other things mostly relevant to the west side of the state. Of those “statewide” articles, only two even acknowledged the existence of places in eastern Oregon; a reference to a National Guard woman from Milton-Freewater and one-line mentioning a Greg Walden townhall meeting in Heppner. Not only were the articles mainly relevant to Portland, but only Portland area businesses seem to find it useful to advertise and community calendars only feature local Portland events. I venture to guess that a good part of the reason Portlanders don’t realize things such as the fact that it doesn’t rain in eastern Oregon can be attributed somewhat to the “Oregonian” never writing about eastern Oregon.

In principle, the focus on Portland doesn’t bother me. I do love Portland and am happy it is such a nice place and that the paper has so much to report on. What bothers me is the illusion presented by calling the paper the "Oregonian” and the heavy distribution around the state. In other parts of the state, we have only so much interest in Portland events, restaurants, shops and such that we can’t go to. Other parts of Oregon do, of course, have their own newspapers, such as The Observer in La Grande and The East Oregonian in Pendleton, which publish few articles related to the west side. However, these other papers with such a specifically focused area are only available in the relevant areas. In my home state of Missouri, we don’t have a “Missourian” which pretends to serve the needs of the entire state. Instead, we have more appropriately named papers like the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. So, in considering how little the “Oregonian” considers non-Portlanders, do you think it would be possible to change the name of your paper to the West Oregonian, or perhaps even more appropriately, the Portlandian?

daniel “kid” yoshida
La Grande


Oregonian articles in the month of August, 2011 = (1861)

National (735)
International (334)

Washington state (55)
Seattle (14), Vashon Island, Ballard, Tacoma (3), Oly (8), Lewis-McChord, Neah Bay, Port Angeles, Olympic NP, Bremerton, Shelton, Omak, Tualip, Cape Horn, Longview (2), Long Beach (2), Hubbard, Carson, Eatonville, Battle Ground (2), Goldendale, Skamania Co., Crystal Mountain, Yakima, Richland, Maryhill, Spokane (3), Pullman

Oregon (737)
“statewide” interest (69)

Portland area (450)
Vancouver (20), Camas (2), Portland (340), Beaverton (9), Aloha (3), Hillsboro (15), Cornelius (3), Forest Grove (2), Washington Co. (7), Wilsonville (10), Tigard (3), Tualatin (2), Milwaukee (7), Oregon City (8), Gladstone, Sherwood, West Linn (6), Lake Oswego (2), Fairview, Gresham (7), Troutdale

Outskirts of Portland-area (26)
Newberg, Estacada, Eagle Creek, Molalla (3), Clackamas Co. (4), Clatskanie Co., Westport, St. Helens (2), Banks, Vernonia (2), Warren (2), Gaston, McMinville, Yamhill (3), Willamette River (2)

Coast (34)
Astoria (3), Wheeler, Cannon Beach, Tillamook (2), Lincoln City, Glenden Beach, Yaquina, Newport (5), Seal Rock, Yachats, Florence, Coos Bay, Reedsport (2), Myrtle Point (2), Waldport, Coquille (5), Bandon, Port Orford, Rogue Co., Brookings (2)

West-Central (79)
Salem (51), Monmouth, Silverton (2), Scotts Mills, Mill City, Lebanon, Sweet Home, Albany (5), Corvallis (5), Shedd, Eugene (7), Coburg, Oakridge (2)

Southwest (24)
Klamath Falls (3), Roseburg (3), Tenmile, Medford (6), Jacksonville, Jackson Co., Grants Pass (2), Ashland (2), Selma/Cave Junction, Mrytle Creek, Chiloquin, Douglas Co. (2)

North-Central (14)
Bonneville/Cascade Locks, Mt Hood (5), Hood River (3), The Dalles (5)

Central (24)
Sisters, Bend (8), Warm Springs (4), Wheeler County (2), Madras (3), Terrebonne, Redmond, Prineville, Pelton-Round Butte, Goat Lake/Mt Jefferson, Fossil

East (15)
Morrow Co., Hermiston (2), Pendleton, Elgin (4), Wallowa (2), Canyon City, Imnaha, Ontario (3)

Southeast (2)
Owhyhee basin (from New York Times), Malheur Lake

annoyagonian

it’s a small thing, but the oregonian often pulls this crap.
in the arts section of the sunday o! there is an article called “street corner symphony.” (oregon live version of the story here). this could be a really cute article if it wasn’t so condescending to the reader. it is less of an article about this cool kid’s attempts to raise money to get a music education and more about the oregonian talking down to its audience about the meaning of busking. the term busk or busking is used at least 16 times in the article. the meaning of the word is explained three times, including once with an insert about the history of the word. a little explanation is fine, but that was complete overkill. i realize that not everyone is keen on the music world and would necessarily be familiar with the term busk, but just mention it once and get on with the point of the article.

further, the above article about the new gillian welch cd says, “she could be found on records from tom jones and bright eyes and old crow medicine show and robyn hitchcock.”

ok, first of all, the oregonian doesn’t need to try and sound so hip by acknowledging that they listen to records. but, more importantly, don’t name drop artists like that in one article and then go into a long-winded lesson about busking in the next. now, sure, i may know who all those above named musicians are, but it’s not your average person that listens to robyn hitchcock. i am guessing that people that listen to “records” are likely to know what busking is, but i’m even more certain that anyone who knows who robyn hitchcock is also knows what busking is.

so, to the oregonian, i say next time you feel like giving a sesame street lesson about a word we could just as easily derive from one little caption, why not be consistent and give us a full page biography on robyn hitchcock. we could all use a little soft boys flashback, as a refresher.

i should give at least one obligatory nice comment about the oregonian. the article about american idol concert at the rose garden was pretty spot on and humorous. not that i would’ve gone to such an event, but it was described well enough that one need not actually attend.

anyway, anyway, anyway, continue having a great day!