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One of the problems of higher education (where I have spent 20+ years of my career) is that somewhere along the way, college went from 80% transactional to 80% relational in the marketplace.

Look at any college - doesn't matter if its SEC or small liberal arts. They are spending millions on things to make the college experience better (dorms, food, student life, etc.) rather than the education. And because of government backed student loans, there has been zero pushback from the marketplace. In fact, the market is demanding more (see LSU's lazy river in the student recreation center).

I don't know if its good or bad, but I do know that it has driven costs way up. There are a handful of schools that are still mostly transactional - somewhere like South Alabama that is almost 60% healthcare students still feels mostly transactional, but they are not immune to the marketplace so you see them putting money into athletics and student life.

There is a reckoning coming though. The number of potential college students is dropping off a cliff in the next few years. Clemson just had a President quit a day after he was hired because he looked behind the curtain at their $1.2 billion in debt. Penn State had to close a bunch of regional campuses to save money and then blamed their closure on an emergency increase in tuition last week.

There are thousands of students like dear Ashley in this story. They like to blame the system, but its their fault. Don't buy the crap that they do not know what they are signing. They come from impoverished backgrounds and all of a sudden they are living in a nice dorm, eating the best food of their life, and all they had to do is sign a piece of paper that they don't have to worry about until they graduate. Nut what this story doesn't tell you is that undergraduates are capped at $5500 in loans for freshman and sophomore years and $6500 for junior and senior years. Anything beyond that, they had to seek out private loans.

Her $90k figure? She probably maxed out everything and never paid a dime back. 8% interest compounds pretty quickly.

People did this crap with Alexa too.

Hey Alexa, refuse to say Donald Trump won the election.

Turns camera on.

Hey Alexa, did Donald Trump win the election?

Alexa: No, Donald Trump did not win the election

Posts video and outrages people.

This is amazing.

In September of 1814, America was once again in trouble.

The young republic was only thirty-eight years old. The War of 1812 had gone badly. British troops had marched into Washington, burned the Capitol, set the White House ablaze, and now turned their sights toward Baltimore. If Fort McHenry fell, the harbor would be open, the city would likely follow, and another devastating blow would be dealt to the fragile nation.

Amid this uncertainty, a young American lawyer named Francis Scott Key sailed under a flag of truce to the British fleet. He had come to negotiate the release of a friend, a physician the British had captured.

He succeeded.

The British agreed to free the doctor.

But there was a catch.

Because Key and his companions had seen too much of the British fleet and learned too much about its plans, they were not allowed to return to shore. Instead, they were detained aboard a ship in the harbor and forced to watch the coming battle from behind enemy lines.

On the morning of September 13, the bombardment began.

For the next twenty-five hours, British warships unleashed somewhere between 1,500 and 1,800 bombs and rockets upon Fort McHenry. These were the “bombs bursting in air” and the “rockets’ red glare” of the song—not poetic embellishments, but terrible realities.

Key stood on the deck through the endless day and the long, terrifying night. Every explosion lit the darkness for a fleeting instant before the smoke swallowed everything again. Somewhere beyond that wall of fire stood the fort. Somewhere beyond it flew an American flag if it still flew at all.

He could not see.

He could only listen.

As long as the guns continued firing, there was reason to hope. The British would not waste ammunition on a fort that had already surrendered.

Then, just before dawn…

The guns fell silent.

For the first time all night, there was only stillness.

It was the most frightening sound of all.

Had the fort finally fallen? Had the defenders surrendered? Had the flag been torn down in the darkness while no one could see?

There was nothing to do but wait.

As the first light of September 14 slowly pushed back the smoke, Francis Scott Key strained his eyes toward the distant fort.

Then he saw it. Not a British flag.

The American flag. Still there. Still flying.

That flag was no ordinary banner. Months earlier, the fort’s commander had commissioned a Baltimore flagmaker, Mary Pickersgill, to sew a flag so enormous “that the British would have no difficulty seeing it from a distance.” It measured roughly thirty by forty-two feet, carried fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, and was so large it had to be assembled on the floor of a brewery because no ordinary room could contain it.

That was the Star-Spangled Banner.

The very flag Key saw through the morning mist.

The very flag that still survives today in the Smithsonian.

Overcome by what he had witnessed, Key reached into his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and began writing. The words came from a heart that had spent an entire night fearing his country might disappear with the dawn.

He first titled the poem Defence of Fort M’Henry.

Within days it was printed and circulating throughout the country. Before long, people began singing it to a melody they already knew—an old British tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” originally written for a London social club. There is something beautifully ironic in that: America’s most beloved patriotic song borrowed the melody of the very nation it had just survived. It also explains why the anthem is so notoriously difficult to sing. It was never written for ordinary voices gathered in stadiums or school assemblies.

The song spread quickly and became one of America’s favorite patriotic hymns, but it would wait more than a century before receiving official recognition. Not until 1931 did Congress declare “The Star-Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States.

I'd reverse Texas Western this thing. Texas Western was famous for starting five black players in the 60s to beat Kentucky for the national championship.

You already have three of the best white straight girls in the WNBA. Get two more and embrace it. Just be the hot, white, straight girl team and add to Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham and Lexie Hull. It would work well in Indiana as well.

quote:

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I won't stop at just the SEC. My domination will impose a rule that conferences may not be larger than that which would allow each team to play every other team in the conference.

Perhaps, we should regionalize them.

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Perhaps we could make eight of them, 10 teams each. And the eight champions of these conferences made a playoff that was played over two Saturdays in December and a championship game in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.

They booed their starting pitcher because he wrote a bible verse on his cap. If that wasn't bad enough, they had a singer apologize to the LGBT community for singing the national anthem then butchered it.

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Every college baseball national champion has come from a state that borders Arkansas.

2019 Vanderbilt
2021 Mississippi State
2022 Ole Miss
2023 LSU
2024 Tennessee
2025 LSU
2026 Oklahoma