There are no neutrals there

Natalie Merchant, Which Side Are You On?, on The House Carpenter's Daughter (2003):



They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there.
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair.

Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?

A line of miners with troops leading them, a photo from the Harlan County Mine Strike Photographic Collection.

Rick Hills has posted a little item that inspires all sorts of thoughts with varying degrees of relevance (all of them positive) to MoneyLaw:

One reason I chose to be an academic is to gain the right to choose my positions a la carte rather than from the prix fixe menu of Left-Right vacuities that dominate the punditocracy and blogosphere. So, for instance (to pull a random example out of thin air), it strikes me as inane to have a general ideological position on "unions," as if one should endorse or condemn together the baseball players' union, the corrections officers union in California, the Teamsters, or District Council 37. Likewise, it strikes me as absurd to think that, because I worry about the latest round of contracts between the public sector and New York City, that I am hostile even to public-sector unions in general. . . .

My hypothesis: Some academics have joined a sort of intellectual's trade union in which two positions — disapproval of District Council 37 and love of Wall Street — must somehow be bundled together as negotiating items. That sort of bundling of positions makes perfect sense in a two-party system as a means of simplifying ballots for busy voters: After all, Duverger's Law requires us to choose one of two sides. But it is senseless in an academic blog. When it comes to thinking and writing, we academics should put our union cards in our shoes and all be shameless scabs, choosing whichever intellectual position happens to yield the greatest payoff.

Rick's post is worth pondering for these reasons:

1. Rick makes an appealing call for pluralism in academic thought. Diversity and freedom of thought, which after all are putatively prized values in academia, should permit the full range of views on all sorts of issues, including labor-management disputes in wildly different economic settings.


2. Rick drops an awesome name, Maurice Duverger. The full cite is Maurice Duverger, Factors in a Two-Party and Multiparty System, in Party Politics and Pressure Groups: A Comparative Introduction 23-32 (1972). Duverger's Law predicts that first-past-the-post voting systems will yield a two-party polity. More grimly, moderate views tend to polarize until two entrenched parties dominate the political landscape. What is true of electoral politics, I'll hypothesize, is also true of the academic equivalent. Articulating the identity and mission of those parties will be an exercise left to the reader, or perhaps even a future MoneyLaw post.



John Henry Blair, Harlan County (Ky.) sheriff, 1922-25 and 1930-33
3. In a society that has rightfully come to scrutinize everyone's terms and conditions of employment, members of the most generously compensated and thoroughly sheltered segment of higher education — yes, the tenured professoriate — should be more circumspect. In case you hadn't noticed, there's a class war going on out there. Tenure and high professorial salaries are not outrageous per se. We do need, in these times as never before, to justify those privileges. Living up to our ideals regarding academic freedom and intellectual pluralism would be a good place to start.


4. In light of all of these points, it seems churlish — even "thuggish," to use a term associated with J.H. Blair — to paint Rick as an "aspiring union buster" for the purported thoughtcrime of thinking and writing for himself.

Seriously. They say in academia, there are no neutrals there. Rick Hills has sounded the proper battle call:

Will you be a thinking prof
Or a thug for J.H. Blair?

The wonders of a pitiful, dreadful life

Almost precisely a year to the day after the publication of Other People's Children and Marie Reilly's meditations on the Bailey Building & Loan Association comes Wendell Jamieson's fantastically insightful reexamination of It's a Wonderful Life:

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is anything but a cheery holiday tale. . . . “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a terrifying, asphyxiating story about growing up and relinquishing your dreams, of seeing your father driven to the grave before his time, of living among bitter, small-minded people. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away, of becoming so filled with rage that you verbally abuse your children, their teacher and your oppressively perfect wife. It is also a nightmare account of an endless home renovation.

I wholeheartedly agree. This year's obligatory viewing of It's a Wonderful Life reminds me that any wise man would swiftly trade all the places, geographic and metaphysical, that he can reach through planes, trains, automobiles, and an Ivy League degree — fifteen countries, four continents, and three languages, if you insist on counting — for devotion worthy of Mary Hatch Bailey and his children's confidence that he really can fix everything complex as well as he can build a rose.

Multimedia bonus: It's a Wonderful Life

Curtains on cowboy philanthropy: a cruel lesson from the Madoff scandal

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip regarding the impact of Madoff's $50 billion scam on Jewish philanthropy around the world.

According to Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University, an expert on Jewish history, Madoff's swindle represents "an unprecedented loss to the 'Jewish economy' — the networks of Jewish institutions, donors and charities that include universities, schools, hospitals and community centers." Among Sarna's many insights is his prediction

that the wholesale destruction of fortunes and endowments would prove to be a turning point in American Jewish institutional life, which over the past 20 years has moved from a model of community funding — collecting small donations from a broad swath of donors — to focusing on a handful of "cowboy" mega-donors who launched hugely successful programs like Birthright Israel outside of the traditional federation system.

Although the Madoff scandal has cruelly concentrated much of its pain on Jewish charities — exclusive reliance on Madoff investments has already forced the Robert I. Lappin Foundation, the Chais Family Foundation, and the JEHT Foundation to close — Jewish philanthropy is not alone in suffering the vulnerability exposed by Madoff's fraud. Charitable organizations across the spectrum, including law schools, have come to rely more heavily on "a handful of 'cowboy' mega-donors" rather than "small donations from a broad swath of donors." Reliance on a single benefactor, like its agricultural equivalent (monoculture), simplifies fundraising at a terrible price. Any instability in that single funding source spells doom for the entire enterprise.

"Cowboy philanthropy," a neologism readily suggested by Jonathan Sarna's evaluation of the Madoff scandal's impact on Jewish charities, is ultimately as unstable and unsustainable as the "cowboy economy." The dreaded counterpart to Kenneth Boulding's "Spaceship Earth," the cowboy economy assumes boundless resources and prescribes no duties of stewardship. As long as the open range or a blameless, wealthy benefactor continues to supply new resources, cowboy economies will appear to operate smoothly, in the for-profit and the philanthropic worlds alike.

That assumption, as the Madoff scandal demonstrates, is deceptive and dangerous. Monocultures don't last. Even the best of benefactors has her limits — mortality, if nothing else. And Bernard Madoff, sadly enough, fell far, far short of the illusory beneficence he used to swindle private investors and charitable organizations.

In discussions of fundraising strategy — which after all is an essential function in educational administration at any level — I am surprised at how many professionals favor cowboy philanthropy over the more democratic alternative. The 2008 political season, so I might have thought, demonstrated the power of small gifts from a broadly distributed base of impassioned donors. But the prospect of a single, decisive strike still holds its allure. Far too many university presidents, deans, and development officers imagine themselves too busy to bother with face-to-face, "retail" fundraising unless putatively transformative money hangs in the balance. Bernard Madoff, alas, has provided negative support for a fundraising proposition that has swept Barack Obama into the White House: small donors on the upswing can open big doors. The broader world of philanthropy, beginning unfortunately with the Jewish foundations that put all of their trust in Madoff, now knows that big financiers on the downswing can wreak utter havoc.

Today Is Final Day to Comment on ABA's Proposal to Eliminate Student-Faculty Ratio Data

Today is the final day to submit comments to the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education & Admission to the Bar on the proposal of the Standards Review Committee to eliminate computation of the student-faculty ratio in connection with the accreditation of law schools (Standard 104 and Interpretations 402-1 and 402-2). Under the current Standards, a ratio of 20:1 or less creates a presumption of compliance; a ratio of 30:1 or more creates a presumption of noncompliance.

The Standards Review Committee will conduct a hearing on the proposal on January 9 at the AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego. Written comments on the proposal and requests to speak at the hearing can be emailed to Becky Stretch (stretchc@staff.abanet.org), the Assistant ABA Consultant on Legal Education.

The student-faculty ratio currently is included in the ABA/LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools and accounts for 3% of the U.S. News law school rankings (and 5% in the U.S. News college rankings and 20% in the new U.S. News world college rankings).

The Legal Writing Institute and Association of Legal Writing Directors oppose the change; other criticism appears at Best Practices for Legal Education, Feminst Law Professors, and Legal Writing Prof Blog.

As one who teaches at a law school whose strategic plan emphasizes the many educational advantages available when a small student body (375 students) is combined with a comparatively large full-time faculty, resulting in one of the Top 10 student-faculty ratios (9.6 to 1) in the country, I agree with the critics of the proposal:

[T]here are obviously arguments in favor of continuing to produce a student-faculty ratio, as evidenced by the fact that three committee members voted to continue to calculate and publish a student-faculty ratio. First, schools may have put considerable effort and resources into improving the student-faculty ratio, so we ought not to eliminate the ratio without giving more careful thought to the different ways in which schools might be relying on the ratio. Second, even though the student-faculty ratio may not give us dispositive answers to the question whether a law school’s faculty is sufficiently large, it does provide a starting point for inquiry, and we ought not eliminate it until we have developed better output measures that we might use in lieu of this traditional input measure. Third, to the extent that Interpretation 402-1 encourages schools to give more faculty members (e.g., legal writing faculty) security of position so that they count in the ratio, that is a good thing. And fourth, we may invite a range of potential unintended consequences if we eliminate the student-faculty ratio as an isolated question without a full assessment of all of Chapter Four of the Standards.

As I have argued elsewhere, the ABA should require that law schools provide more, not less, information to our various constituencies and to the public.

[Cross-posted on TaxProf Blog.]

Orchestrating the university: Leon Botstein strikes the right note

Yes, times are tough in the American academy. But before panicking, let alone doing anything as drastic (and foolish) as freezing all hiring till further notice or raising tuition beyond levels that are already skyrocketing out of many families' reach, let us consider the wisdom of Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and director of the American Symphony Orchestra. With a hat tip to University Diaries, I present Inside Higher Ed's recent interview with Botstein:

Gatherings of college presidents these days aren’t exactly joyful. Stories are traded about budget cuts, hiring freezes, fund raising woes and more. For presidents who spent years building up their endowments, only to watch them shrink so suddenly, 2008 has been trying and frustrating.

[Leon Botstein has an answer to] the latest round of statements from college leaders explaining their strategies for retrenchment, and for dealing with smaller endowments . . . . The Bard College president has for years been telling anyone who would listen that endowment growth in higher education was irresponsible and encouraged all the wrong strategies. He has called for colleges to spend the money they raise, rather than stocking it away. With the economy crashing, and tuition-dependent colleges like Bard worried about enrollment and wishing they had larger endowments, is Botstein sticking to his views? How does higher education look to the person who warned that endowment dependence was a terrible thing? . . .

[T]o Botstein, what is happening now is proof that the endowment strategy doesn’t work. “Institutions should not be banks. They are not good at it, and they are no better than anybody else. It should come as no surprise that as investing vehicles, there was a certain amount of arrogance and hubris,” he said. “There was much too much time and money spent on getting richer and richer without being clear about why.”

As a result, he said, the wealthiest universities have “endless tiers of overlapping management” and lack a tradition of making tough choices. “Instead of figuring how to cooperate [within universities], wealth let everyone do their own thing. Creativity was that you never subtracted, you added.”

The idea that university presidents at such institutions are publicizing their losses and announcing major cuts clearly offends Botstein. “These places are enormously rich. It’s like a rich person saying ‘I was worth a billion dollars and now I’m only worth 750 million.’ They are still rich.”

The reason this issue matters so much, Botstein said, is that leading universities are “trying to be even [more] risk averse” and are “learning the wrong lesson” from what’s going on. Many wealthy institutions are announcing hiring or salary freezes and doing so largely across the board, assuming equal value for most or all programs and justifying the approach by pointing to losses of 25 or 30 percent or more in their endowments.

“They are crying over money which was excessive to begin with, made faculty risk-averse, because they were like trust fund children. Their patrimony is being threatened. Rich is not better.”

Hiring freezes make no sense, he said. “This is the time to hire the best talent.”

Institutions should be going through programs, eliminating some, but building others — and spending their endowments to make institutions more creative. Operating on the assumption that endowment growth or losses matter “is a tragedy that makes everyone risk averse,” he said. . . .

While [Bard College's] endowment losses don’t cause him any lost sleep, Botstein said Bard will feel the economic downturn. He’s not sure by how much, but expects private donations to drop. Many more students may need financial aid, or more aid. So Botstein is ordering cuts. One is even across the board (in the administration building) — a 10 percent cut in the salaries of senior administrators, himself included.

And he’s talking to faculty members about a range of ideas to save money, but these ideas are intentionally not across the board.

For instance, Botstein plans to ask professors to teach some sections for which they used to rely on adjuncts. “We have a first year seminar — a Great Books seminar — and everybody agrees it’s a good thing, but not everyone wants to teach it, so you hire outside,” Botstein said. “I’m telling faculty they need to teach it themselves. It will be a better course.” Another example: the college currently has 15 courses that can be used for the science requirement and Botstein would like the scientists on the faculty to instead come up with “a good course or two with problem based sequences” that could be taught in multiple sections. He thinks the course could be better than current offerings. In addition, he will ask professors to identify programs that could be changed or even eliminated.

Botstein is also putting his money where his mouth is on fund raising. He is converting a $500 million capital campaign — originally planned for endowment growth and building projects — entirely to current operations. And he’s starting new programs — programs that are unendowed — and planning others.

Among the ideas he wants Bard working on now are: creating better general education programs in the sciences, expanding its relationship in the sciences with Rockefeller University, and setting up new relationships with colleges abroad with the aim of using technology or exchanges to improve the teaching of foreign languages. In addition, he says that colleges like Bard need “to put a line in the sand” on certain issues, and refuse to cut spending whatever happens to endowments. One of those issues is student aid.

The other is the arts — not surprisingly given Botstein’s musical career and Bard’s strength in the performing and creative arts. “No one in this democracy is concerned about the arts. Who are those first on the firing line for cuts? Musicians and artists. We need to keep them alive.”

Most college presidents would say that if you care about your arts programs, you should endow them. Botstein disagrees. In a few years, when the economy is stronger, he said, Bard should build up its endowment so it has larger reserves to spend as needed. But for now, he sees the economic crisis as a good thing, and something to handle without worrying about the endowment.

“What’s great about the economic crisis is that it’s such a huge opportunity to rethink what you are doing,” he said. “This is such a very exciting time in which to be working in this field — there’s a certain relief that good times are over.”

When the lights dim and the crowd fades

Portraits of shame

Scandal scored a trifecta this week, as heavyweights from the worlds of politics, business, and law were accused of fraud. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested for offering to sell Barack Obama's open Senate seat to the highest bidder. Bernard Madoff ran his investment firm as a giant Ponzi scheme; losses are thought to approximate $50 billion. And lawyer Marc Dreier bilked sophisticated investors of $380 million. Neither law nor higher education in general can escape responsibility for the behavior of these men. Blagojevich and Dreier held law degrees. Indeed, the New York Times took pains to describe Marc Dreier as "a Yale graduate and Harvard-educated lawyer." For his part, Madoff served as treasurer of Yeshiva University's board of trustees.

The diagnosis is simple. Greed kills. One of MoneyLaw's running themes is that American universities fare rather poorly in identifying, let alone living or inculcating, moral values. As a partial antidote to the poison represented by Blagojevich, Madoff, and Dreier, I thought I would mark the untimely passing of an academic hero:

Jan Kemp, a former English instructor whose lawsuit against the University of Georgia in the 1980s drew national attention to preferential treatment of college athletes unable to meet academic standards, died on Dec. 4 in Athens, Ga. She was 59. . . .

While coordinator of Georgia’s remedial English program, Dr. Kemp was among several faculty members who had complained that officials at Georgia intervened in the fall of 1981 to enable nine football players to pass a remedial English course in which they had received failing grades. The athletes remained eligible to play for Georgia against Pittsburgh in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day 1982.

Dr. Kemp was demoted in 1982 and dismissed the next year. She filed suit, maintaining that she had been ousted because of her complaints, a violation of her constitutional right to free speech.

In Atlanta Federal Court in January 1986, university officials defended their actions concerning the football players . . . . O. Hale Almand Jr., a lawyer for the defense, offered a justification for the favorable treatment accorded the athletes, citing a hypothetical player. “We may not make a university student out of him,” he told the jury, “but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbageman when he gets through with his athletic career.”

The jury found that Dr. Kemp had been dismissed illegally and awarded her more than $2.5 million (later reduced to $1.08 million) for lost wages, mental anguish and punitive damages. She was later reinstated.

The university’s president, Dr. Fred C. Davison, announced his resignation in March 1986. The board of regents of the University System of Georgia issued a report in April implicating Dr. Davison and the Georgia athletic department, headed by Vince Dooley, who was also the football coach, in a pattern of academic abuse in the admission and advancement of student-athletes over the previous four years. . . .

Dr. Kemp, a native of Griffin, Ga., received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a doctorate in English education from Georgia, where she began teaching in 1978. She retired from her second stint as a faculty member in 1990. . . .

“All over the country, athletes are used to produce revenue,” she told The New York Times a month after the trial. “I’ve seen what happens when the lights dim and the crowd fades. They’re left with nothing. I want that stopped.”

I thank University Diaries for bringing Jan Kemp's obituary to my attention. And Pat Forde of ESPN has written a fine tribute to Dr. Kemp. I laud her here because she did something as important as it was simple: Jan Kemp told the truth. Even though she faced dire consequences for telling the truth, she did so for the best of reasons. The American academy, especially in its treatment of student-athletes, is a far better place on account of her actions.

If only the whole of our society understood the value of telling the truth. In political, financial, and legal arenas, no less than in collegiate coliseums, decency may be all that keeps us company when the lights dim and the crowd fades.

Looking for Help on SSRN

I do not want to jump to conclusions and may be the last to know so I'd like to understand the SSRN business plan. I have in the past expressed my suspicions about what numbers of downloads mean and why there appears to be a top ten list for virtually everything. I personally have made some with just a handful of downloads. My non-holiday-spirit side thinks that the infinite number of top ten lists is a selling point to encourage people to upload, then make a top ten list, and promptly report it to the dean or the world.

Now, again perhaps the last to discover it, there is something else. If you click on my ssrn page which I think is to the right of this post an then click on the second article down, you will see that it is about estate planning. And, to the right of the abstract there are ads for estate planners.

I assume the advertising is not free and that this the source of ssrn revenue. If I have this right, should ssrn be paying law professors or their schools to upload their articles? Or, is there already payment in the form of "top ten" lists.

I guess in a world in which Senate seats may appear on ebay soon, I should not be surprised.

Beyond IRAC: Law Exam Taking Tips

Visit my official grading procrastination site over at Legal Profession Blog for a few choice but undoubtedly useless words to students on taking exams.

Hot Topics Panel: The Financial Crisis

The Financial Crisis: Hot Topics Panel, AALS Annual Meeting
Friday, January 9, 8:30-10:15 am.

A discussion of the causes, short-term solutions, and longer-term implications of the current financial crisis.

Moderator: Theodore P. Seto (Loyola Law School – LA)

Speaker 1: Lauren E. Willis (Loyola Law School – LA): The Role of Mortgages

Professor Willis has written extensively on problems in the subprime mortgage market and consumer financial transaction regulation more generally. In speaking engagements in the U.S., the E.U., and South Africa, she has discussed regulation of the U.S. home mortgage market, predatory lending, financial literacy education, behavioral decisionmaking, and other consumer law topics. She was one of a select group of law professors that conferred with members of the Federal Reserve Board in crafting new mortgage regulations that will take effect in 2009. Before joining the Loyola Law faculty, she practiced at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, litigating lending discrimination matters.

Professor Willis will discuss the crisis at the retail level – the evolution from credit rationing to risk-based pricing of mortgages, the effects of risk-based pricing on consumers’ mortgage decisions, the financial and psychological antecedents of borrower demand for mortgages posing a high risk of foreclosure, and the marketing and sales practices that respond to and create that demand. She will further explain why prior law governing mortgage transactions and even law enacted to address subprime lending problems were ineffective.

Speaker 2: William K. Black (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law): The Role of Securitization and Financial Instruments

Professor Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at UMKC. In October 2009, he testified before the relevant Senate committee on the role of financial derivatives in the ongoing crisis. Before joining the academy, he served as litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision, and deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. He is author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry (University of Texas at Austin Press 2005), has written extensively on financial sector issues, and recently helped the World Bank develop an anti-corruption initiative.

Professor Black will cover the securitization of home mortgages and the development of derivatives that contributed to the financial crisis. He will describe the legal and regulatory actions that allowed for these developments and will explain why the securitization of heterogeneous subprime mortgages and the existence of an over-the-counter credit default swap market are fundamentally inconsistent with a stable financial system.

Speaker 3: Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. (George Washington University Law School): The Role of Financial Regulation

Professor Wilmarth is chair of the AALS Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Banking Regulation. He has authored numerous articles in the fields of banking law and American constitutional history and co-authored a book on corporate law. In 2005, the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers awarded him its prize for the best law review article published in the field of consumer financial services law during the previous year. He has testified before committees of the U.S. Congress, the California legislature, and the D.C. Council on bank regulatory issues.

Professor Wilmarth will speak on the role of large financial conglomerates and the failure of the various regulators (especially the OCC, the OTS, the Fed and the SEC) to control the risk-taking of those conglomerates. He will cover the failure of capital regulation and the evident failure of on-site examination teams at major financial institutions.

Mad Dogs and terrific trios

Any careful reader knows that the Atlanta Braves are the official Major League Baseball team of MoneyLaw. Just look at the banner atop this blog.

It's worth a MoneyLaw post, then, to note the impending retirement of Greg Maddux. Some of the key numbers: A lifetime 355-227 record. A 3.16 ERA. Four consecutive Cy Young Awards. Eight All-Star games; 18 Gold Gloves. A key part in the Braves' 1995 World Series championship, the only one they've won in Atlanta. A sure-fire first-round Hall of Famer.

Chicago Cubs fans may argue that Maddux's image in the Hall should wear a Cubs cap or, at least, should wear no logo at all, akin to Catfish Hunter (who divided his career between the Oakland A's and the New York Yankees). No. Maddux was part of a terrific trio. He, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine helped the Braves dominate the National League for more than a decade. If Smoltz and Glavine also decide to retire during this offseason, the trio should enter the Hall of Fame together — all wearing Atlanta Braves caps.

Maddux's retirement reminds me of the hundreds of Braves games I've watched, especially during their streak of 14 consecutive division titles from 1991 through 2005. And thinking about Maddux with Smoltz and Glavine reminds me of another terrific trio that looms over my memory of the 1990s: Dan Farber, Phil Frickey, and Suzanna Sherry. Hall of Famers all, if only our sport enshrined its legends as baseball does.

College football deserves the BCS

On good days I wouldn't wish the BCS on Division I-A college football. No serious fan prefers that lousy, irrational system over a real playoff. But December 3, 2008, was not a good day in college football.

Auburn fires a good coach in Tommy Tuberville, while Notre Dame clings to Charlie Weis, who is quite possibly the worst football coach in the universe. At a minimum, Weis is probably the most arrogant coach in the business.

In ten seasons at Auburn, Tuberville went 5-3 in bowl games, won six consecutive Iron Bowls against Alabama, and posted a magnificent 13-0, SEC-winning record in 2004. The BCS cheated Auburn out of a shot at the national title. Weis can't name a single victory of note. His high-water mark came in 2005, in a 31-34 loss to Southern California that prompted Notre Dame to extend his contract and to saddle itself with a buyout reported to be as high as $20 million. That is a bit more than the payout per team for a BCS bowl appearance. For the foreseeable future, Notre Dame is no likelier to appear in a BCS bowl, notwithstanding that system's strong bias in favor of the Irish and their rabid fan base, than it is likely to break its nine-game losing streak in postseason play.

Oh, did I mention that Tuberville, a 14-year veteran in college coaching (four at Ole Miss, ten at Auburn), works for $1.375 million less than Weis? Losing is awful enough as it is. Imagine how much it must feel to spend profligately for terrible results.

A sport this irrational deserves a championship system that is as bad as the BCS. This prescription is as harsh as condemning American legal education to the continued reign of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. Then again, law schools also make regrettable personnel decisions. Perhaps it is enough to praise the deans and professors who deserve better and to hope that somewhere, somehow, someday, our corner of the American academy will discover the sense of decency and proportionality that evidently eludes our athletic counterparts on campus.