NY Times Article

[Des Esseintes]

Pardon me if this has already been brought up, but I need to vent for a minute.

Let me get this straight...the same publication that not only covered, but helped promote the "Occupy Wall Street" movement where people were literally breaking laws every hour of the day, urinating on police cars, and having wild sexual escapades like they were back at Woodstock is the same publication trying to belittle and call for the ending of Krzyzewskiville? This makes no sense at all. This publication should have been put out of business years ago with their propaganda and extreme spinning of almost everything that is printed in their paper or on their website. They are a joke!

This paragraph is emblematic of what I hate about Times threads. It's a PPB war being waged by proxy on the basketball board because the PPB no longer exists. There are plenty of places on the internet for inaccurate political vitriol, but there are specific rules against it here.

[Lar77]

Why is it an easier to "justify" big time sports at a big state school?

As a taxpayer, I might have a differing view, especially when the big state school is trying hard to tamp down an athletics/academic scandal.

[Li_Duke]

Hello,

Though I love things about Duke (particularly the athletics)--the University opened doors for me and gave me the tools so by just about any metric I would be judged a very successful person--my four years there were not a particularly fun time for me. I found many of the students insensitive and I felt isolated. I received a scholarship to attend after having attended a public, urban high school. I was not prepared for the rigors of Duke, either socially or academically. Thank you Duke for having an academic skills team to help me.

What kept me going and made my experience tolerable where without a doubt the athletics and the athletes. Coach K had just come to Duke a few years earlier, I got to know him some. (I wish someone had told me that if he teases you, he likes you.) The people in the athletic department were amazingly nice to me. There were exceptions, the "Colonel" who hung around the basketball program was a bit of a tool, but his wife was super nice so I guess it cancels out. D'Armi was a bit of a curmudgeon and I feared every time I had to talk to him, man was he hard to deal with (at times). I met many athletes from the various sports and they were, for the most part, the people I enjoyed being with. This is not to say there weren't others, it is just well, Duke for me was not a happy, oh I love this place so much kind of experience. It was a stress test. How does this relate to the article?

I guess it is understandable that President Brodhead is troubled, as the author of the article, that kids go to Duke because of the basketball team, but perhaps that is too "simple" an explanation? Perhaps kids go to Duke because they know Duke will be hard (as an aside, a Virginia grad once told me that was how one knows Duke isn't that "good," it is because good schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton aren't that hard, only the bad schools need to be hard--hmmm, er, um, ok, anyway, I digressed) and need an outlet? Perhaps they attend Duke so that after graduation they still have something to latch on to every Fall and Spring? People who attend the Ivy League don't normally have an alma motta to root for in, say, March. I wanted a place to attend that would have "big time" athletics where my team would play the Big 10, Pac 12, etc. in a myriad of sports while at the same time (Virginia grads analysis of the situation aside) getting an Ivy League education. What is wrong with that? My background in life showed me that lots of things aren't that fun, so I kept my head down and got through it, in the end (as I thought it would) it opened doors that I am forever grateful for having been opened.

Duke's athletics helped me stay at Duke. Today they give me a hobby, if you will, so I have a team to root for that I feel personally invested in and proud of being associated with. I again ask, what's wrong with that?

GO DUKE!

Thanks for the reply and sharing your experience. I came to Duke from a public, urban high school as well (where I attended only half my classes my senior year due to fire alarms being pulled multiple times every day, where stabbings happened regularly and even one shooting death). I too found myself unprepared for Duke socially and academically. But Duke paid most my way, gave me an opportunity to learn without the feeling of constant danger, and gave me (a child from a poor immigrant family who spent most my childhood sharing a two bedroom apartment with 12 others) an opportunity to lose myself in following a great basketball team whom I'd get to have court side seats to see for FREE. Trappings of the rich and privileged, perhaps -- but the rich and privileged have the money to enjoy these events regularly. For folks like me, it was a welcome luxury.

[Billy Dat]

As Sage said, the only bad publicity is no publicity. The Duke brand is really powerful.

Aside - I love that the author used the term ziggurat to describe Schwartz-Butters. Somewhere, Fred Schneider is smiling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymmqisvThhk

I was most interested in the following, which others have commented on:

"There have even been timid steps to let some of the air out of Duke basketball. Richard H. Brodhead, a former English professor and dean at Yale who was named Duke’s president in 2004, recently said he found it “foolish” and “disheartening” when high school students listed the men’s basketball team as the primary reason they applied to Duke. The comment set off a typhoon of response — some of it positive, most of it negative — among students and alumni."

I haven't seen a survey that asks this specific question, but I am guessing that an equal or greater number of students would say that they are going to Duke because they want to get a job that pays a lot of money. Considering the cost of a 4 year Duke education is close to $250,000, that is not an unreasonable criteria - but is it anti-intellectual, which is what the following quote seems to be saying about big time college sports:

“For a big state school, there’s some justification for big-time sports; for a private institution like Duke, it’s a little harder to figure out,” said Charles T. Clotfelter, a professor of public policy, economics and law at Duke who has written a book called “Big-Time Sports in American Universities.” “Why are we here?” Clotfelter added. “We’re here to educate people. There has been a lot of new chatter about this in the past three years. I think it’s better for us to come clean and say, yes, we do commercial sports.”

I wonder if the same professors who decry the anti-intellectualism of big time college sports would feel the same way about the desire for wealth that motivates many an undergraduate? Considering how much time a University President spends fundraising, and how many times the school contacts me asking me to donate money, I'd think prospective students saying they wanted to go to Duke to make a lot of money after college would be a banner headline in all University materials....but somehow I've never seen that headline.

[lotusland]

As Sage said, the only bad publicity is no publicity. The Duke brand is really powerful.

Aside - I love that the author used the term ziggurat to describe Schwartz-Butters. Somewhere, Fred Schneider is smiling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymmqisvThhk

I was most interested in the following, which others have commented on:

"There have even been timid steps to let some of the air out of Duke basketball. Richard H. Brodhead, a former English professor and dean at Yale who was named Duke’s president in 2004, recently said he found it “foolish” and “disheartening” when high school students listed the men’s basketball team as the primary reason they applied to Duke. The comment set off a typhoon of response — some of it positive, most of it negative — among students and alumni."

I haven't seen a survey that asks this specific question, but I am guessing that an equal or greater number of students would say that they are going to Duke because they want to get a job that pays a lot of money. Considering the cost of a 4 year Duke education is close to $250,000, that is not an unreasonable criteria - but is it anti-intellectual, which is what the following quote seems to be saying about big time college sports:

“For a big state school, there’s some justification for big-time sports; for a private institution like Duke, it’s a little harder to figure out,” said Charles T. Clotfelter, a professor of public policy, economics and law at Duke who has written a book called “Big-Time Sports in American Universities.” “Why are we here?” Clotfelter added. “We’re here to educate people. There has been a lot of new chatter about this in the past three years. I think it’s better for us to come clean and say, yes, we do commercial sports.”

I wonder if the same professors who decry the anti-intellectualism of big time college sports would feel the same way about the desire for wealth that motivates many an undergraduate? Considering how much time a University President spends fundraising, and how many times the school contacts me asking me to donate money, I'd think prospective students saying they wanted to go to Duke to make a lot of money after college would be a banner headline in all University materials....but somehow I've never seen that headline.

I think there always has been and always will be a legitimate concern in academia about disproportional emphasis on athletics. My father is a retired fine arts professor and I've heard it from him many times over the years. He was on the faculty at Tennessee Wesleyan College in the mid-70s when he exhibited a painting of two UT football players rolling dice for Jesus' clothes at the foot of the cross to make a not so subtle point. An article about the exhibit including a photo of said painting was published in the local paper which received less than warm responses on the editorial page to say the least. Anyway I think the tension is a good thing as we have seen at UNC what can happen when a university loses sight of its primary purpose.

[Poincaré]

People here still read the NYT after the crazy stuff it consistently pulled to aid and abet Nifong's perpetuation of the lacrosse hoax through misinformation and innuendo (and worse, never really fully correcting it)? This does not mean that everything in the NYT is wrong, but it does mean that it's worthless as a reliable source of information. Let's not forget the Jason Blair fiasco either.

How can anyone associated with Duke take the NYT seriously anymore? Are most people that trusting or am I being unreasonably paranoid?

[Duvall]

People here still read the NYT after the crazy stuff it consistently pulled to aid and abet Nifong's perpetuation of the lacrosse hoax through misinformation and innuendo (and worse, never really fully correcting it)? This does not mean that everything in the NYT is wrong, but it does mean that it's worthless as a reliable source of information. Let's not forget the Jason Blair fiasco either.

How can anyone associated with Duke take the NYT seriously anymore? Are most people that trusting or am I being unreasonably paranoid?

Citing two reporters as reason to reject a century of world reporting does seem a bit unreasonable.

[MCFinARL]

As Sage said, the only bad publicity is no publicity. The Duke brand is really powerful.

Aside - I love that the author used the term ziggurat to describe Schwartz-Butters. Somewhere, Fred Schneider is smiling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymmqisvThhk

I was most interested in the following, which others have commented on:

"There have even been timid steps to let some of the air out of Duke basketball. Richard H. Brodhead, a former English professor and dean at Yale who was named Duke’s president in 2004, recently said he found it “foolish” and “disheartening” when high school students listed the men’s basketball team as the primary reason they applied to Duke. The comment set off a typhoon of response — some of it positive, most of it negative — among students and alumni."

I haven't seen a survey that asks this specific question, but I am guessing that an equal or greater number of students would say that they are going to Duke because they want to get a job that pays a lot of money. Considering the cost of a 4 year Duke education is close to $250,000, that is not an unreasonable criteria - but is it anti-intellectual, which is what the following quote seems to be saying about big time college sports:

“For a big state school, there’s some justification for big-time sports; for a private institution like Duke, it’s a little harder to figure out,” said Charles T. Clotfelter, a professor of public policy, economics and law at Duke who has written a book called “Big-Time Sports in American Universities.” “Why are we here?” Clotfelter added. “We’re here to educate people. There has been a lot of new chatter about this in the past three years. I think it’s better for us to come clean and say, yes, we do commercial sports.”

I wonder if the same professors who decry the anti-intellectualism of big time college sports would feel the same way about the desire for wealth that motivates many an undergraduate? Considering how much time a University President spends fundraising, and how many times the school contacts me asking me to donate money, I'd think prospective students saying they wanted to go to Duke to make a lot of money after college would be a banner headline in all University materials....but somehow I've never seen that headline.

Because your statement about "professors who decry the anti-intellectualism of big time college sports" comes right after a quotation from Charles Clotfelter, I just want to point out that his approach to the subject is much more balanced than the kind of reflexive opposition that phrase suggests and is solidly based in extensive economic and policy analysis. As his quotation above suggests, his focus is primarily on acknowledging the economic realities of big time college sports in order to tackle issues about their role head on. For anyone who is interested, here is the link to the website about his book. http://sites.duke.edu/bigtimesports/

[Poincaré]

Citing two reporters as reason to reject a century of world reporting does seem a bit unreasonable.

That would seem reasonable until you consider that the reporters were not lone gunmen. They did not just get to post articles like bloggers do. The editors at the NYT either allowed this to happen or missed it. Either way, that makes them unreliable. Furthermore, I think that it is unreasonable for the current staff at NYT to get a pass because of the work done by their predecessors 40 years ago (or 100 or whatever). Okay, 1 vote for paranoid. I suppose people are just different.

[sagegrouse]

People here still read the NYT after the crazy stuff it consistently pulled to aid and abet Nifong's perpetuation of the lacrosse hoax through misinformation and innuendo (and worse, never really fully correcting it)? This does not mean that everything in the NYT is wrong, but it does mean that it's worthless as a reliable source of information. Let's not forget the Jason Blair fiasco either.

How can anyone associated with Duke take the NYT seriously anymore? Are most people that trusting or am I being unreasonably paranoid?

Uhhh.... The offending articles were on the NY Times sports pages, which are undistinguished. The offending LAX pieces were commentary IIRC (and there is always a first time). One was by Selena Roberts who took the opportunity to write a gimme column (totally offbase, of course) that played on the compelling themes of black-white, town-gown, rich-poor, south-north, jock cultures, sex and violence at a would-be Ivy League university. I can't remember who wrote the other column.

These were not news articles by the national and international reporting staff. I have read the Times for decades and almost never even look at the sports section.

sagegrouse
'At least the sports pages WERE undistinguished before they devoted four pages to Jay Williams a couple of weeks ago'

[oldnavy]

That would seem reasonable until you consider that the reporters were not lone gunmen. They did not just get to post articles like bloggers do. The editors at the NYT either allowed this to happen or missed it. Either way, that makes them unreliable. Furthermore, I think that it is unreasonable for the current staff at NYT to get a pass because of the work done by their predecessors 40 years ago (or 100 or whatever). Okay, 1 vote for paranoid. I suppose people are just different.

I'm with you. There are probably more errors of omission than we could get into, but just look at the lack of interest in the whole Benghazi episode. Anyone who views any major media outlet as being fair and unbiased these days are being led down the prime rose path IMO. But hey, the first amendment is there for a reason and I support the right for the Times to publish whatever they want, I just won't be reading it.

[-jk]

I think this one is veering too PPBish, now.

-jk