BEATING THE HUSKIES IS MORE IMPORTANT. Richard Vedder encourages university administrators to ask themselves, "why do they hate us?"

One reason why governmental support is increasingly hard to come by is that universities and their coordinating bodies often behave irresponsibly, taking actions that most Americans view as inappropriate or unwise. Three examples that have surfaced over the past couple of weeks make this point.

I'll focus on the third example.

Finally, at Ohio University (where I teach), the Columbus Dispatch revealed a week ago that 17 football players (14 percent of the total) have been arrested for various crimes in 2006. Bad enough. But the story also showed that NONE of them had missed one minute of football play for legal transgressions, even a player who beat up another person (and former football player) after being kicked out of a bar for disorderly conduct. The University's first response was to say the coach's punishment (that the players had to STUDY for a few days in his office) was severe enough.

Ohio hired that coach from Nebraska in order to win games in the Mid-American and help get the conference out of not-quite-double and not-so-secret probation. Has anybody in Lincoln fussed about the off-the-field habits of Husker starters?