SOME HELP WITH THE STRUGGLE. University Diaries does what Big Ten officials dared not do, and throws a flag at The Faculty Bench.

It’s not that the faculty bench has cleared; the faculty bench was always empty. Even as public revulsion grows at the sight of grosser and grosser campuses, the professors stay silent. Why?

Perhaps for the same reason they leave admissions to the diversity hustlers and curriculum to the access-assessment-remediation-retention crowd?

Some professors, to start with, are themselves team boosters. They’re excited by the spectacle of game day, its bracing autumn weather, everyone wrapped in team-color scarves, the TV cameras trained on their guys, the shrieking advertising images on the stadium’s “Godzillatron” screen, generations of university grads gathered in the stands to scream so loudly the other side can’t hear its signals. These are the faculty members who find ways to rack up course credits for athletes who don’t attend classes. As teen nerds, these professors worshipped jocks and wished to serve them. Now they’re serving them.

The university administration has to set the tone. A few years ago, a star player on a Northern Illinois team failed to make grades. The department from which the player's lowest grade was reported did not cave to blandishments from the coach and athletic director. For faculty elsewhere: life after college is the revenge of the nerds. Set the tone.

And some professors are dupes. They actually think the sports program contributes significant money to the academic side of their university. In almost every case, they are wrong, and they could discover they’re wrong. Yet they remain in a sort of bad-faith fog about it. They don’t really quite exactly precisely know where all that money from tickets and TV and endorsements goes, but, hell, some of it’s gotta get to the library, right? A close look at the books (admittedly, sports program managers make such looks difficult) would probably reveal that sports at the dupe’s university drains money from the primary mission of the place. To say nothing of the reputational damage that’s being done to the institution by scandal after scandal.

Common and joint costs can be intellectually draining even to a regulated industries junkie: perhaps we're looking at rational ignorance?

Again, there's an administrative responsibility. I joke about "Northern Illinois Monopoly Pepsi," but here, the concession revenues go to general scholarship funds. At Wisconsin, "Barry Alvarez Monopoly Coke" all goes to 1440 W. Monroe St.

Next, there are the truly oblivious. A lot of professors are eerily good at ignoring everything in the world. They’ve written 14 books with obnoxious children and harridan wives bedeviling them every step of the way. To call them “absent-minded” would be an insult. They are not there. The sports program has yet to be devised which is corrupt and homocidal enough to catch their eye.

(You mean Camille Paglia is right about p***y-whipped academic men?)

Number four would be embarrassed. Professors have shaky egos and are, as a group, preoccupied with academic status. Already, if you’re at one of the big sports schools, you’re unlikely to be at an academic powerhouse; but you still think of yourself as a serious person, and you very much want to think of your university as a serious one. It’s humiliating to your sense of yourself and your institution to have to confront the overriding importance for almost everyone on campus of sports in general and the bad boy football and basketball teams in particular. Understandably, you will find ways to avoid this confrontation.

Here's where the excess demand for a prestige degree can help. Beer and circus is an even worse model than 2A-2R. But it calls for senior professors with guts. Senior professors with guts, however, would prefer to avoid the tedium of committee meetings.

There’s also, finally, the corporate outdoorishness of the venture. Professors have nothing against getting quietly tight in their own snug lodgings, but the idea of braving the cold and getting soppy with a bunch of fellow drunks is revolting. In general, professors are not team players — groups of any kind give them the heebie jeebies.

Precisely because at a meeting, none of us is as dumb as all of us.

The column also recommends an organization called The Drake Group, which has a number of proposals for dismantling the sports factories. I commend in particular their second and third proposal.

2. Make the location and control of academic counseling and support services for athletes the same as for all students.

The proposal further reinforces the notion that athletes are students and should be integrated into the general student body. Separate athletic counseling centers have been spawned by the same "student-athlete" philosophy the Drake Group rejects. The goal of academic counseling is education not athletic eligibility. This goal cannot be accomplished in a setting that is compromised by pressure to produce winning athletic teams. Faculty Senates can and should act to ensure equal access to education for all students.

It's probably an accident that the site uses Northern Illinois colors, but that new "Academic and Athletic Performance Center" (a computer lab upstairs from the weight room) sends the wrong message at the same time deferred maintenance accumulates in the classroom buildings.

3. Establish university policies that emphasize the importance of class attendance for all students and ensure that the scheduling of athletic contests not conflict with class attendance.

To protect the athletes' right to have equal access to educational opportunities, faculty need to enforce the policy that class attendance should take priority over athletic participation. Whenever there are scheduling conflicts between sports and course requirements, faculty members have a professional responsibility to enforce attendance policies that support quality instruction. In some instances, the problem arises because faculty, rather than athletic personnel, does not demand that students attend class. Faculty Senates can and should require faculty to establish attendance policies that treat all students equally.

The problem is exacerbated when athletic departments, in pursuit of greater television revenues, insist on scheduling college football games on Sunday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, and Friday night. The first of these, two years ago, provoked a mild faculty protest in which some professors scheduled quizes or exams for game night. Headquarters, on the other hand, sent a memorandum around encouraging attendance. This year, I have been offered free admission to the Friday, November 17 game. Faculty Appreciation Night. Can't have ESPN-U panning over empty seats, can we?

I received a Wall Street Journal article from Coach Mom that was summarized at College Athletics Clips:

CAR 54 WHERE ARE YOU? … “A Weak Policeman Talks Tough When Tackling College Sports and Its Critics” … headline of an article by Skip Rozin, Wall Street Journal reporter, describing Myles Brand's speech this week to the National Press Club about the state of his NCAA. … Wall Street Journal, 11-1-06

The article is on a paid site. Consider this.

"Institutions hold mortgages on burgeoning facility expansion that represents on average 20 percent of intercollegiate athletics spending," said Mr. Brand in the report. "This factor puts institutions at risk over decades of time if the popularity of college sports wanes."

Lovely. The collegiate equivalent of the 999-year New Haven Railroad bond, payable in gold. No doubt the athletic director, recognizing the Democratic leanings of the faculty, will spin the mortgages as sounder than the Social Security Trust Fund.