PRIVATIZATION BY INCREMENTS. The Illinois legislature has yet to pass a capital budget, and the deferred maintenance accumulates. Students at Northern Illinois University will begin paying a Campus Improvement Fee with the start of the spring semester.

The board approved a Campus Improvement Fee that will charge students $6.25 per credit hour to a maximum of 12 credit hours per semester, with a maximum fee of $75 per semester, effective for the spring 2009 semester.

According to the Board of Trustees information book, “the resources generated by this fee will be used to maintain and improve physical classroom conditions, perform renovations needed to enhance the teaching and learning environment, provide support needed for classroom buildings and campus infrastructure improvements such as mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems.”

The trustees took this step reluctantly.

THINKING ABOUT BANKING.

At Talk Left, the short version. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act is not the culprit.

Lehman Brothers did not fail because it engaged in commercial banking. And no commercial bank will fail because it engaged in investment banking.

The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner dissents.

But if government must act to contain wider damage when large banks fail, then it is obliged to act to prevent damage from occurring in the first place. Otherwise, the result is what economists term "moral hazard"-- an invitation to take excessive risks.

That's partially correct. The actions the government takes to contain wider damage sometimes -- as is the case with deposit insurance -- come bundled with moral hazard.

WHAT DID THEY EXPECT? A city builds a skateboard park and then discovers vandalism and graffiti at it.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR? Cub Geovany Soto makes his case, off Salomon Torres, who might have given the Cubs some bulletin board material.

I LISTEN TO FUN-LOVING WOKY. That radio station, with that slogan, might have been the adolescents' favorite in the middle 1960s, playing the Top 40. Evidently there isn't enough of that (now older) audience left for the same playlist, now called "oldies". Station management hopes there's sufficient audience for all country, all the time. Yee haw.

GETTING SUBJUNCTIVE. Jim Rowen chastises Milwaukeeans: Had talk radio and suburban opposition not sunk a 1997 plan, we’d be riding sleek transit by now. I'm tempted to quip about grandmothers with wheels, but there's an even better subjunctive in the column.

Had plans unfolded on schedule, the starter light rail, with an estimated 21,000 riders on weekdays, would have opened in 2006 and run about 10 miles from the Third Ward to Summerfest, downtown, Miller Park, the Milwaukee County Zoo and the County Grounds.

Talk about a missed opportunity. It would have provided Milwaukeeans with a spiffy transit option in the face of $4-a-gallon gasoline, with higher eventual prices predicted.

The system would have benefited from the city's condo-and-loft boom, a resurgent Milwaukee Brewers' ballclub, the successful Potawatomi Bingo Casino and an expanding Milwaukee Regional Medical Center.

He doesn't suggest that the Curse of the North Shore Line would be lifted, but what the heck?

Substantively, look at this map.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel map.

Looks like a through-routing of the old 13 CLYBOURN line and the old 10 WAUWATOSA COUNTY BLDGS line. A century ago, here's what the proposed Miller stop (referring to the brewery, not Miller Park, looked like).

Wells Street Viaduct postcard courtesy
Wisconsin Electric Railway Historical Society.

That's an interurban train, possibly bound for Waukesha Beach or Watertown, or perhaps destined to the Muskego Lakes. The motor car and some of the trailers might have been upgraded at Cold Spring Shops later on. The Wells Street Viaduct lasted to the end of streetcar service, just after the Braves won a World Series.

And long before there was Miller Park, let alone County Stadium, there was a Soldiers Home station.

Soldiers Home Station colorised picture courtesy
The Transport Company Web Station.

That's close to a century ago also. The West Allis branch of the N^o. 10 streetcar later curved here to run alongside the Rapid Transit line. There are latter-day pictures here.

Careful readers of the map will also notice that the car stations are Kinnickinnic Station south of Walker's Point and Fond du Lac Station on the northern spur.

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY. There is no such thing as an unfettered or unregulated market. Arnold Kling at Econ Log.

My view is that financial markets are inherently unstable, because financial intermediation inherently replaces transparency with trust. If my bank were perfectly transparent, then I would know everything about its loans, including the underlying risks of the real estate developers, small businesses, and individuals to whom it is lending money. But in that case, I would not need a bank--I could just make those loans myself. So if you assume perfect transparency, you assume away the need for financial intermediation.

In fact, you have to assume the opposite of perfect transparency. You have to assume highly imperfect transparency, with reputation and trust serving as substitutes.

But where there are substitutes, there are tradeoffs.

In banking, deposit insurance helps facilitate trust. A private insurance pool might work, but people trust government-provided deposit insurance even more.

We don't know that for sure, because the 1933 credit crunch and the subsequent Federal Deposit Insurance Act imposed government-provided deposit insurance. In 1933 nobody thought about deposit insurance as a put option for a portfolio of high-flying mortgage-backed securities.

With deposit insurance, the consumer loses all motivation for worrying about the bank's risk management. By the same token, the insurer has to worry a lot. In the U.S., the FDIC has been getting better over the years, but you can never get complacent. Any system can be gamed eventually, so it's a challenge for the regulators to stay one step ahead of the banks.

Here's a research puzzle: does it have to be the case during a rational expectations hyperinflation that all lenders behave in the same way? There has to be money on the table for lenders and borrowers that offer preservation of capital despite lower quarterly returns (until the bubble pops, that is.) Must a pooling equilibrium in which all savers and all financial institutions deal in the same mix of ultimately tainted securities be the necessary outcome?

What, then, of the bailout of trading houses that don't deal in insured deposits? Mr Kling continues,

What we see with Bear Stearns, Freddie and Fannie, Lehman, and AIG insurance are institutions that are not FDIC-insured banks where nonetheless a question arises about whether some of their creditors ought to be protected by the government. I think that just about everyone is unhappy that these decisions are being made ad hoc, after the firms got in trouble, rather than having rules set ahead of time. But maybe what the government is doing is actually pretty reasonable. You can think of the Fed and Treasury as trying to buy good assets at cheap prices, at a time when private intermediaries have lost the trust of investors, which puts undervalued assets out there to buy. But you want the government to get out of the hedge fund business sooner, rather than later. It's not a safe business.

That's possible, although it's optimistic. The Fed and the Treasury might clean up on this, or they might be put in the position of having to print money. We shall see.

The editors at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel don't like the precedent the AIG bailout establishes.

The government threw out management - a good thing - and gained rights to 79.9% of AIG stock. The terms of the loan are rigorous, with the government demanding credit-card-like rates. The Fed claims "the interests of taxpayers are protected" because this monster loan is backed by AIG collateral.

Taxpayers should be skeptical. No banks would touch this deal, which calls into question the value of that collateral, and there is a real risk that the government will be forced to lend the company even more money down the road.

Worse, despite the tough terms, the Fed has bailed out a company that it doesn't oversee and doesn't do business with directly. Count on the Fed and the Treasury Department - not to mention Congress - to hear from other companies.

They conclude,

So, yes, there is a good argument for the government's action in the case of AIG. But after refusing to bail out Lehman Brothers last weekend, the government is sending mixed signals. And there is a risk that the concept of "too big to fail" is giving financial institutions, automakers and perhaps others the idea that the federal government is some sort of corporate welfare agency.

David Leonhardt, writing in The New York Times on Tuesday, compared the current crisis in the financial system to the bailout of Chrysler Corp. in 1979. The reasoning then was strikingly similar to the arguments we're hearing today: Executives argued that Chrysler's failure would cause unacceptable damage to the American economy.

Though that buyout is still widely seen as successful (Chrysler survived, even thrived, for years), the companies, formerly known as the Big Three, learned from the experience that business as usual would be sufficient. Arguably, that allowed foreign competitors to eat their lunch.

What if Chrysler had been allowed to fail? As Leonhardt notes, some experts believe that the pieces would have been reconstituted into a smaller, nimbler company, which might have pressured the other domestic automakers to fix their chronic problems. Instead, they are back on Capitol Hill, hats in hand.

Perhaps AIG is a special case. Even if it is, the government needs to make it clear that the federal checkbook has limits.

Paul Kedrosky (via Economist's View) suggests the moral hazard argument (which the editorial board is using) is "overrated as an effect."

IT'S A SCHOOL NIGHT. There's no Sprecher in the cooler, so we'll make do with Guinness this weekend. Brewers 6, Cubs 2 despite Ben Sheets having to leave after two innings. No division-clinching-monkey-pile possibilities for the Cubs and the beer-swilling widebodies tomorrow.

MACROECONOMICS AS IT HAPPENS. William Polley comments on the Fed's decision not to change the Fed Funds rate. King Banaian has questions about economic education.

Are we convinced that talking to Johnny about the Stock Market Game helps his parents understand the traps in an option ARM mortgage?

He also notes the necessary evil of mortgages different from the 20% down, 30 year fixed.

[A]s long as we try to push homeownership for the poor -- which confuses the correlation of homeownership and financial stability with a causal link from homeownership to financial stability -- we will face the problem that the poor will take advantage of riskier mortgage vehicles. We will encourage them to have higher leverage in their houses. (Yes, sir, nobody put a gun to their heads. We just put dreams in them, encouraged with itemized tax deductions. Yes, it's still their fault in the end. Yes, but what would you like to do now?)

There's also a knock-on effect to the return on investment in housing, but I'm too tired to work through it tonight.

Robert Reich notes that the holders of those riskier assets weren't paying attention.

The sub-prime mortgage mess triggered it, but the problem lies much deeper. Financial markets trade in promises -- that assets have a certain value, that numbers on a balance sheet are accurate, that a loan carries a limited risk. If investors stop trusting the promises, Wall Street can't function.

But it's turned out that many promises like these weren't worth the paper they were written on.

That's because, when the market was roaring a few years back, many financial players had no idea what they were buying or selling. Worse, they didn't care. Derivatives on derivatives, SIVs, credit default swaps (watch this one!), and of course securities backed by home loans. There seemed no limit to the leverage, the off-balance sheet liabilities, and what credit rating agencies would approve by issuers who paid them to.

Two years ago I asked a hedge fund manager to describe the assets in his fund. He laughed and said he had no idea.

With everyone believing the underlying assets would appreciate, there was no reason to care, that is, until the appreciation stopped.

Mark Thoma links to much, much more.

GOT A PROBLEM, GET A PROGRAM. Timothy Burke identifies the reason technocrats, and court intellectuals for technocrats, ought to be humble.

What produced widespread alienation and distrust of technocratic solutions? First, that many of those which were implemented went badly awry or wasted enormous resources to no good end. Second, that at least some expertise was uncloaked over time as being nothing more than the Wizard of Oz in his booth with his levers, that strong claims to resources and social power were being made by humbugs of various kinds. Third, the challenge to the technocrats embodied by Jane Jacobs’ work gained a lot of traction.

By the lack of their fruits, or by their poisoned fruits, do we know them.

Via 11-D's Laura McKenna:

My final impressions are that much of the culture war divisions are not real. The assumption that the urban/liberals/technocracy is sneering at the nonurban/old economy/conservatives/moderates/religious folk is a political fiction.

There is truth to that, but there is that certain blue-state (will the colors be reversed for this year's map?) smug.

RUNNING OUT OF EVERYTHING. The Principle of Substitutes works, although legislatures haven't grasped the implications for their transit authorities.

While the politics of transit may appear more toxic here than elsewhere, the Chicago area's mass-transit agencies have plenty of company across the nation as ridership on public transportation surges.

Some 85 percent of U.S. transit systems are reporting capacity problems, due mainly to high gas prices, according to a new survey conducted by the American Public Transportation Association, the trade group representing transit agencies.

In addition, 65 percent of the agencies questioned say they don't have funding for more service, the survey found.

In Boston, Charlie may have to come up with a few more nickels.

Despite record increases in riders on trains and buses because of high gas prices, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is going broke, agency executives admitted last Thursday.

The situation is so dire that the T is borrowing money to pay salaries. The agency has a $1.5 billion budget, but because it is out of cash, it may be forced to raise fares and reduce service. If so, this would be the third year in a row it has raised fares.

Fare revenues are up $11 million because of the increased ridership, but it is not enough. The Authority needs to borrow $35 million just to keep operating.

ISN'T THE POINT TO DIVERSIFY RISK AWAY? Here's how a credit crunch begins.

Home loans became more affordable a few years ago when the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. Politicians of all stripes encouraged home ownership. But lightly regulated financial outfits began slicing and dicing the resulting mortgages into securities and selling them to investors.

Eventually, it all began collapsing, prices dropped, people started losing their homes and Wall Street went into a spin.

Here's how politicians respond.

As different as their policies are, they were united in their message to voters: It's not your fault.

Courting working class voters who gave him grief in the Democratic primary, Obama sounded an I-feel-your-pain note.

Obama lamented Republican policies over eight years that he said "encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans" and said: "Instead of prosperity trickling down, the pain has trickled up - from the struggles of hardworking Americans on Main Street to the largest firms of Wall Street."

McCain's words were sympathetic as well.

"America is in a crisis today," he said - then added: "The economic crisis is not the fault of the American people. Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, the most productive, the most competitive in the world. ... But they are being threatened today ... because of greed and corruption that some engaged in on Wall Street and we have got to fix it."

Some in the markets, he said, "have treated Wall Street like a casino."

The casino metaphor fails to convince. There's a difference between valuing risk, which is what insurance contracts, futures markets, and bond rating services do, and inventing risk for its play value, which is what casinos do.

The populist preachments are also incomplete. Sure, the Wall Street hustlers created the big bonuses for themselves by persuading people to take out interest-only loans or to use the equity in their houses as a source of cash, but people had to decide to take out those loans.

The upheaval at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., and American International Group Inc. - and the stunning reordering of the financial market that has following - gave the candidates an opening to press their economic ideas anew.

In line with historical positions of Democrats and Republicans, Obama generally supports stronger consumer protections, better regulatory oversight and more government intervention, while McCain broadly prefers a market system of less federal involvement and red tape.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution notes something else.

How are we going to stop all these consolidated financial entities from taking advantage of deposit insurance and other public sector guarantees?

I'll go further: why should anyone expect the consolidation of banking houses to provide more safety for investors? The slicing and dicing of mortgages the article refers to what I call diversifying risk away. An investment manager can look at the mix of thirty-year fixeds, interest-onlies, and variable rate subprimes in a fund and decide whether or not the expected return is worth the risk. More banks mean more investment managers making these decisions. Fewer banks mean the consolidated financial entities are holding the economy-wide mix of interest-onlies and subprimes, and therefore more likely to have to take advantage of deposit insurance ... that's before they start offering high-yield certificates of deposit to attract deposits, something that happened after Regulation Q was lifted.

ENGINEER DISTRACTED? The fatal collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train on the Coast Line is the consequence of what the British call "signal passed at danger" and Destination Freedom shares my surprise at the severity of the crash.

The September 12 accident was made far worse because the commuter rail train’s engine was forced backward into the lead passenger car, nearly destroying it and the locomotive as well. That is unusual for American train wrecks, where high buffing standards (600,000 psi) are required for passenger rail cars. Normally, in a crash, most of the cars that derail will form a zig zag pattern on the ground.

The aftermath of the crash reveals organizational sloppiness at Metrolink.

Monday, the Metrolink spokeswoman who announced Saturday that the engineer's mistake caused the crash resigned. She said the railroad's board called her announcement "premature," even though NTSB officials later backed it up.

Metrolink did not return phone messages on the resignation.

The story about the engineer sending text-messages to some young train enthusiasts also will not go away.

Federal officials investigating a commuter rail collision that killed 25 people said they want to review cell phone records to determine if an engineer blamed for running a stop signal before the crash may have been text messaging at the time.

That story should be easier to confirm or rebut than the assertion, 21 years ago, that the Conrail crew who let a light engine get in front of a Northeast Corridor train at the Gunpowder River interlocking were distracted by a football game. Divers went into the river looking for a battery-powered television but found none.

There is also evidence either of problems with the railroad's communications, or with the crew's assiduousness at calling signals.

[Kitty] Higgins [of the National Transportation Safety Board] said audio recordings from the commuter train indicate a period of silence as it passed the last two signals before the fiery wreck, a time when the engineer and the conductor should have been performing verbal safety checks.

She cautioned, however, that the train may have entered a dead zone where the recording was interrupted.

Higgins said the NTSB would measure the distance between the signals along the track on Monday. Investigators also want to interview the conductor, who was injured, about the recording, she said.

"He'll be able to tell us whether he recalls the engineer calling out and him confirming those signals," Higgins said.

The possibility of mandatory positive train control in order to further ensure against train crews missing signals is out there.

Higgins said she believed the crash could have been prevented with technology that stops a train on the track when a signal is disobeyed. The technology was not in place where the collision occurred.

An NBC News segment on the crash mentioned positive train control, which, not surprisingly, protects the Acela Expresses. The segment also noted Sarah Palin's railroad has it.

CELEBRATING ON THE HIAWATHA? Milwaukee radio was reporting serious traffic congestion as the usual quitting time traffic mingled with Cub traffic going home after a two game sweep of notional home team Houston at Miller Park.

The 10.20 down Hiawatha delivers the beer-swilling widebodies downtown, with plenty of time to leave a few bills at the casino before the first pitch and then head to the stadium, or they could have gone directly over on the N^o. 10 streetcar. The game ended early enough for fans to catch the 5.45 up Hiawatha, or they could hoist a few near Marquette or at the Milwaukee Ale House or one of the other riverwalk watering holes before returning on the 7.30. (That schedule could do with a late evening departure in each direction, something that's been missing since the North Shore Line quit.)

I gave up on listening to last night's game. before it registered that Carlos Zambrano had a no-hitter going. Today, Ted Lilly carried one into the seventh inning, before ex-Brewer Mark Loretta broke it up.

Milwaukee Brewer management reacted to the disaster that has been September in the usual baseball fashion.

Now [manager Ned] Yost has paid the price.

Yost became a lightning rod for fan criticism in Milwaukee in recent years as he stubbornly stuck by players mired in slumps and refused to criticize them in public - even when they get in shoving matches in the dugout during games.

And the Brewers haven't looked like contenders in some of their biggest series this season, including a three-game sweep by Boston in May, a four-game sweep by Chicago at home in July and the just-completed four-game sweep by Philadelphia.

Yost was in his sixth season as the Brewers' manager. When Milwaukee hired him from Atlanta after the 2002 season, the team was in the midst of four straight seasons with 94 losses or more.

Under Yost, the young Brewers improved to records of 81-81, 75-87 and 83-79 in the past three seasons - a significant improvement for a franchise that hadn't had a winning record since 1992. But Yost seemingly couldn't get the Brewers to take the next step.

Some baseball pundits will argue the Brewers brought this on themselves, by appealing Pittsburgh's scorer, who ruled an error a hit. Perhaps so. I suspect, however, that it is the absence of a North Shore Line or a N^o. 10 streetcar that keep the Brewers out of the playoffs. Perhaps some of Milwaukee's pundits ought to rethink their position on light rail.

WE'VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU, MISTER BOND. Destination: Freedom publishes a translation from the German of a night with a European sleeping car attendant. The article describes the overnight ritual of the passports in care of the attendant.

As sleeper coach conductor he locks away their passports. They don’t bluff anymore as he, the sleeper coach conductor already knows about them. Their nationality, the age of a supposedly young woman, Honorary and professional titles, neat signatures, sloppy signatures, black-ink fingerprints on official paperwork, gaudy visa stamps from sunny island nations, or from rouge states, mindlessly glued-on baggage tags from some airport, child passports, provisional passports, and diplomatic passports. Prestele, the sleeper coach conductor, has already checked-out the sleeper coach occupants before they even had taken notice of him. He stores their documents in locked cassette, he the high priest of discreteness in the night.

I'd encountered that ritual on the Donau Kurier and didn't ask any questions, although it is an odd practice given that I made the reverse run, by day, and never had to show a passport let alone leave it with the car attendant.

With the end of the Cold War, the honey traps on the Muinchen-Milano are for the financial security of immigrants, no longer matters of state security.

YOU HAVE TO PLAY THE WHOLE GAME. The Packers built an early 21-0 lead at Detroit, then gave all of it back, then converted three interceptions into touchdowns, two of them without involving the offense, to take an early lead in the division.

ALL POWER TO THE PROVODNITSA. En route to Gori and beyond, Michael Totten encounters train service to the khanates, which brings back memories of the Evil Empire.

I didn't know it at the time, but the train I took from Baku to Tbilisi is identical to the train you'll see in the nail-biting thriller Transsiberia currently playing in theaters and starring Woody Harrelson and Ben Kingsley. The film takes place almost entirely on a Russian train from Beijing to Moscow. Whoever wrote and directed the movie is familiar with the train system in the former Soviet Union and took pains to get even the small details right. The film was shot on one of the these trains. I recognized the cheap wood paneling, the formica tray tables, the broken light switches, and the dirty windows that wouldn’t open.

I must make time to see this movie.

Some of the train staff remember their Cold War era doctrine, when any foreigner riding the strategically important railroads was a spy, and anyone taking any interest in the railroad's operations was a particularly clumsy spy.

The severe and bullying women who run these trains and watch over the passengers like prison guards are portrayed with precision. They bark orders at every passenger and seem beaten down as if they’re treated the same way by their superiors. They stare holes through you if you smile and act as though your very existence is an offense that may get you thrown off the train at any moment.

It's a very different experience from being a guest on a private train, with two sleeping car attendants and a glass of tea in a metal holder first thing in the morning.

Mr Totten enlists the help of a local to engage in some proper speculation.

He summoned the angry attendant and spoke to her in Russian.

“She wants to know if you have ten manats,” he said. Ten Azeri manats is about twelve American dollars. I sighed, pulled a ten manat note out of my pocket, and handed it over. Then she nodded as if to say I could move wherever I wanted without being harassed.

I walled myself off in my private compartment and edited a long essay that will soon appear in a quarterly magazine. The air conditioning had kicked on and the train was finally comfortable. Then I let myself be rocked to sleep by the wide swaying of the old communist train as we slowly made our way to the border with Georgia.

Border crossings still have the old thrill of the long delays for careful inspection (the better part of a day to move ten miles from Erlian to Dzamyn Uud, with the added risk of being shot.

BIZARRE WORLD. Early in June, I observed,

Consider two teams. One has a new field with a retractable roof. Another has a Eugene Debs era open air field. At the end of May, which team do you think had 33 of its first 56 games at home, and which one had 31 of its first 56 games on the road?

Now comes September. Hurricane Ike ripped up Houston's ballpark, and the public relations disaster of restoring lighting while the power is out in the neighborhoods is too much for baseball. The pennant races, however, must go on.

The Cubs and Houston will play two of their postponed games at 7:05 p.m. Sunday and 1:05 p.m. Monday at Miller Park in Milwaukee, Major League Baseball announced late Saturday night.

The third postponed game will be played only if it affects the postseason situation, and not until the day after the end of the regular season.

Because of the clear-channel regulations, I have to make do with WGN's broadcast of the Cubs' game. Houston is the home team for this game, but a majority of the crowd are Cub fans (probably including a few Wisconsinites who acquired a taste for Chicago teams) who are enjoying their team's early lead, and cheering as the scoreboard keeps track of the continuing Milwaukee disaster in Philadelphia.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Bill Sjostrom at Atlantic Blog finds European columnists who have not succumbed to Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Religious fanaticism. A good description of the Democrats this year. And some European pundits have the sense to spot it.

Go. Read. Understand.

Obama voters: get a grip.

Disclaimer: Bill and I hired out at Northern Illinois at the same time and we wrote and graded the doctoral candidacy exams for years.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL? Profane reports athletics at the University of Nevada have been cleared of alleged gambling violations. The linked story (from a Reno newspaper) hints at a sub-plot.

The NCAA launched an investigation into the program after women's soccer coach Terri Patraw filed a whistle-blower complaint alleging she was fired in retaliation for reporting rules violations within the Nevada athletic department. The most damning allegation claimed that men's golf coach Rich Merritt, who has since resigned, bet on sports.

The former coach runs several weblogs. On one she notes that inter alia Northern Illinois University served a year of probation for NCAA violations during Nevada athletic director Cary Groth's tenure as athletic director here. The details of that probation are here (top two posts) It had nothing to do with gambling. Perhaps Ms Patraw has valid disagreements with Ms Groth, but her innuendo about an attempt by an academic staff member to help a young lady in a difficult position, contrary to the pose of "amateur athletics" is not the same offense as sports betting.

What amuses about this story is that current Nevada womens' basketball coach Jane Albright might have been retaliated against at Wisconsin in the fallout of sanctions there involving shoe contracts.

I'm not surprised that spats within the athletic department might become as vicious as those in academic departments.

Disclaimer: Cary, Jane, and I all hired out at Northern Illinois at about the same time and we'd on occasion hang out after work.