Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:I would appreciate OC's take on this as well. But I will reiterate, this isn't a whalepantsian move. A whalepantsian move would be to withdraw from the ACC, enter the Patriot League and be done with big time athletics. This is simply a feckless, stupid and cheap move by a terrible university president. On the one hand they are addicted to the money and visibility provided by participating in big time sports, but on the other hand he doesn't want to make the necessary investments to maximize the opportunities presented by big time athletics. It is sheer fucktarded incompetence.
I do hope that when Leahy is eventually shown the door, the next President will be a lay person who understands the business of higher education and the role of sports in promoting the brand. I doubt there is a Jebbie under 85 with that sort of insight.
hansen {l Wrote}:Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:I would appreciate OC's take on this as well. But I will reiterate, this isn't a whalepantsian move. A whalepantsian move would be to withdraw from the ACC, enter the Patriot League and be done with big time athletics. This is simply a feckless, stupid and cheap move by a terrible university president. On the one hand they are addicted to the money and visibility provided by participating in big time sports, but on the other hand he doesn't want to make the necessary investments to maximize the opportunities presented by big time athletics. It is sheer fucktarded incompetence.
I do hope that when Leahy is eventually shown the door, the next President will be a lay person who understands the business of higher education and the role of sports in promoting the brand. I doubt there is a Jebbie under 85 with that sort of insight.
Agree 100%.
Leahy-hoo has to go before the value of my diploma is negligible.
BCdee {l Wrote}:How much longer will Leahy-hoo be at BC?
Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:He pushed to de-emphasize basketball. When he took over the #2 slot, Marquette basketball was recovering from the A-bomb Rick Majerus dropped on the place when he abruptly left (or was told to go because he was a big homo) at the end of the 86 season. Kevin O'Neill had come on board in 89 and had built the program back to a national power. They went to back to back NCAA tournaments Leahy's first two years--including the Sweet 16 the second year, but Leahy was apparently instrumental in restricting some of the admission leeway the program had in recruiting and was cutting money to the program. O'Neill quit because of it--taking what was considered at the time a coach-killer job at Tennessee to get away (as it turned out, it was a huge career setback for O'Neill who washed out in 3 years and ended up at Northwestern before becoming an NBA assistant and later the unsuccessful interim coach at Arizona). Thereafter, Marquette made a very small timey hire of Mike Deane from Sienna--whose claim to fame was that he rode Doremus Betterman to an NIT semi-final. Deane made an NCAA with O'Neill's holdovers and then the program imploded (as Leahy was exiting for BC). All in all, Leahy is despised at Marquette.
AngryDick - Serious question, how do you attain so much knowledge about so many different subjects? I imagine you are meeting new people all the time over dinners, etc? What do you read on a daily basis?
eagle216 {l Wrote}:A history and classics major is EXACTLY what I would have been had I done it all again. Being a law talking guy, my so called productive major is useless, so I would have been better off feeding my natural curiosity in history. Not to mention the fact that the reading and writing that come with such a major would have been good training for law school.
I took some elective history classes junior and senior year and said "fuck, why didn't I do this all along".
eagle216 {l Wrote}:A history and classics major is EXACTLY what I would have been had I done it all again. Being a law talking guy, my so called productive major is useless, so I would have been better off feeding my natural curiosity in history. Not to mention the fact that the reading and writing that come with such a major would have been good training for law school.
I took some elective history classes junior and senior year and said "fuck, why didn't I do this all along".
Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:Yep. Because I knew I was going to go to law school when I started school, I was perfectly happy not to be a business or math major and indulge in a steady intellectual diet of history and the writings of dead white guys. And it did make me a better writer.
And militant, I realize I did not fully answer your question. My go to everyday "reads" are the WSJ, the blogs of The New Republic, National Review, Weekly Standard, Times of London, The Economist and The Atlantic, a couple of sports websites and few individual writers--Jim Pethokoukis, Ralph Peters, Ross Douhat, Ezra Klein, Mark Helprin, Jonah Goldberg. I also think you should always be working on a new book--I just finished Eisenhower in War and Peace and am now starting Niall Ferguson's Civilization. In addition, I also think you should re-read something you enjoyed--as the occassional break from the new stuff--right now I am reading through a couple of chapters of Ben Graham's Security Analysis and later this week want to re-read Victor Davis Hanson's The Father of Us All.
eaglesmith {l Wrote}:I also knew I was headed to law school and doubled with political science and history. I've often felt I should have taken economics and political science while just throwing in some history electives, but so many of the history classes were among the best classes I took at BC.
Anyone else here every have Heileman for Hitler and the Third Reich or other WWII-related classes? Those were excellent.
eaglesmith {l Wrote}:Anyone else here every have Heileman for Hitler and the Third Reich or other WWII-related classes? Those were excellent.
Brooklyneagle {l Wrote}:Like many here, I have to hope for the best from Addazio, but really disappointed in Bates. I admit I tend too easily to think well of folks, hoping for the best... but, am often disappointed.
Dick Rosenthal {l Wrote}:A Heileman class should have been required for every BC student. He is/was a master (don't know if he is still alive and kicking). One of the best professors I had at BC was a non-tenured guy who was only there for two years. Dr. John Rossi taught History of US Foreign Policy I and II and The History of the British Raj, which was pure awesomeness because we were assigned to read the fictional Flashman series by George McDonald Frazier because it captured the period so well (Frazier was one of the great British journalists of the 2nd half of the 20th Century and the author of the best WWII memoir I have ever read Quartered Safe Out Here, about his experience as a young infantryman fighting in the Burma theatre). I think Rossi left BC for a tenured position at Ped State. I suspect he could not get tenure at BC because he adhered to a decidedly non-politically correct view of the world--sort of the anti-Breines, although he did serve alcohol in class on a couple of occassions.
As for the Classics, Father Gurtler and Father Madigan were great for the philosphy courses. I had four different linguistics professors, all of whom were not tenure-track and all of whom departed and I ended up having to take the advanced Greek at Harvard because the associate professor who taught that left without any warning to go teach at St. Johns in Annapolis. The history and literature portions of Classics were similalrly covered by visiting or associate professors, although Alan Reinerman, who was an awesome history professor, taught some of the courses on Byzantine and Roman history. All in all, I wasn't too satisfied with the way Classics were taught and organized at BC. It was sort of half-assed and I always assumed that the only reason they offered it as a major was because of the Jesuit roots of the University, but otherwise they would have been happy not to have it.
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