"NORMS AND TRADITIONS" ARE PROBABLY OPPRESSIVE.

It's Sunday, bringing in train a familiar sermon.  "Is anybody surprised that when you deconstruct bourgeois norms, bad things happen?"

Sometimes, the beginning of a restoration of a state of good repair begins with organized sports.

The Mid-American Conference (MAC) commissioner wants the NCAA to crack down on what he calls “abysmal behavior” at college sports events, which he said has shown a “lack of respect for norms and traditions.”

The letter, sent on Thursday from Jon A. Steinbrecher to NCAA president Charlie Baker and shared with CNN, argued that sportsmanship and ethical conduct are “urgent issues” that need to be addressed.

It comes days after several of college football’s top rivalry games descended into chaos, with all-out brawls breaking out between teams and players planting flags in opposition stadiums.

“Let’s face it, the behavioral trainwreck we have witnessed is probably great for television ratings, talk show fodder, and social media intrigue,” Steinbrecher wrote. “However, none of this is acceptable to an activity connected to the Academe."

I hope that "academe" is another voice transcription error and he properly used "the academy," although "connected to higher education" or "connected to academia" scan better.

That noted, once the sort of Usenet flame wars or Springer brawls seep too far into everyday life, perhaps it is time for people who might remember what norms and traditions once meant.  And yet, I can't help but wonder whether a Wisconsin assistant coach brought Paul Bunyan's Axe onto the field to surrender it to Minnesota to pre-empt any unpleasantness had the old tradition of the winning team gathering the Axe off a table behind the bench of the team currently holding it.  (Should the team currently holding it retain it, the ritual of running with it around the stadium pretending to hack down the goal posts is the same.)

There are two problems with his use of "acceptable."  First, if anybody associated with the Mid-American says anything, does anyone notice?  Second, if somebody in higher education, including possibly faculty members attached to Mid-American teams, notices, won't they raise objections to what the commissioner next says?

“If athletics are to be sustained within universities of higher education, continue to claim that sport plays a significant role in amplifying the value of the educational experience as well as provide a positive force to rally disparate constituent groups for the advancement of an institution, then a premium must be placed on the values of ethical conduct and integrity.”

That Divine Passive, "a premium must be placed," is a John Galt moment, isn't it.  Placed by whom?  Blank-out.  The poobahs of higher education have been looting the effects of bourgeois norms and blanking out the causes of ethical conduct, for years, and perhaps the remnant of faculty at Mid-American affiliated universities might seek the end of weeknight football as their compensation.  Thus far the advocates of all transgressivity all the time at the likes of the house organ for business as usual and the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, have not yet reacted.

The commissioner concludes his lament by hoping yet another layer of codification doesn't have to be written into codes of conduct.  “The time has come to expect more from us instead of tolerating less.  I hope we do not let this moment pass by.”

So it sometimes is.  As the Consciousness Revolution reached its crazy stage in 1969, Jim "Ball Four" Bouton noted that it was odd for Organized Labor and Major League Baseball to be the last redoubts of bourgeois norms.  Ten years later came Ronald Reagan, Yuppie mania, and Cabbage Patch Kids.

Will history rhyme?