I'm not sure why exactly it is that you think highlighting these incidents benefits your alma mater, or for that matter has anything to do with criticisms of our athletic spending.  For example, this allegation does nothing to change the fact that we got our asses handed to us by a Sun Belt team in an irrelevant bowl game on national television, in a performance that likely harmed our institutional reputation more than a local news report discussing a professor at a branch campus. 

In any event, given that an associate athletic director at Ohio was forced to publicly resign less than 4 years ago after getting caught embezzling university funds, one can hardly assert that all embarassing personnel conduct is coming strictly from the academic side of things.

As for your claim that no OU faculty ever engage in significant research, even if one sets aside the questionable assertion that academic research must be published in a major media outlet in order to be significant, your claim also is incorrect as a matter of fact.  Just last week came an announcement of major licensing deal for anti-cancer compounds developed at OU:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/02/ou-licenses-firm-to-research-cancer-treatment.html?sid=101

For that matter, the very study you are complaining about regarding athletic spending was itself picked up by the vaunted WSJ last week:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703833204576114403232696290.html

My reference to the WSJ's discussion of Vedder's study was tongue in cheek.  You previously said that major news courses like the Journal never discuss research conducted at OU, so I thought it was ironic that the very study that motivated your criticism was itself in fact covered by the WSJ.

More importantly, I agree that there is value to athletics beyond what a lot of the critics acknowledge.  And I understand that as a community devoted to OU athletics, BobcatAttackers are going to defend the current athletics budget more stringently than most.  Indeed, I think it is important that those views get expressed to balance out the criticisms.

I just don't see the value of a campaign highlighting embarassing episodes emanating from our alma mater.  The fact that there are a handful of crazy folks working for the university doesn't have any bearing on whether our current athletics spending model is rational or sustainable.  And the fact that Vedder has some questionable colleagues doesn't mean that his views about athletics spending are wrong or unjustified.  They are totally unrelated issues, so pointing out the embarassing revelations doesn't do any good for athletics as far as I can tell, but instead simply serves to discredit our alma mater.

WSJ writer wrote; "The majority of Ohio Students" ?????? WSJ was provided the info directly to the WSJ by R. Vedder.  He has an open door to WSJ for any of his research. WSJ will grab anything he does even though it was a flawed research effort.  As one Oregon State professor said about Vedder,  his research is  "junk science "

And BLove, I respect your love for OU athletics.  Your passion, even when it boils over, is commendable.  At the same time, this is the sort of attitude that I think really skews things for some people.  You correctly point out the un-recognized (by some) contributions athletics makes to the university and the experience.  However, you then turn around and commit the same sin in the other direction.  It's really easy to denigrate and minimize the role and quality of faculty when you're not on campus, taking classes and teaching classes. I try to walk both sides of the fence but I take the same exception when people trash the faculty as a whole or discuss them as unnecessary or marginal.  We have to find some middle ground.

Actually, it's the average student of the ones who responded to the survey. I think it's been questioned whether the "average student" responded to the survey. After all, the O Zone has more members than total survey respondents, (although even the most vocal Ohio students may want to pay lower fees.)

I think I've read we average 4,000-5,000 students per football game and 1,500 or so per basketball game when school is in session. Throw in hockey (yes, it's club), baseball and volleyball and I wonder if the survey results match with actual attendance.

I have a hard time taking any article, even one in the WSJ, seriously when it starts off by saying "A majority of OU students...." and then two paragraphs later reads "And in the survey--completed by 5% of the student body..."

Since when was 5% a majority?

I know this is a print article on a broadcast "site" but this is the worst story I've ever read... Am I missing something here?

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The student apparently became more afraid after Noroski allowed her to use his calculator for an exam when she had forgotten her own. 

She claimed that Noroski called her after the exam to arrange to get the calculator back, and she ended up at his home in Thornville.

After getting a tour of his home, the student said Noroski drove her back to her parents' house.  A few days later she e-mailed the university.  She wrote, "I was absolutely scared for my life and I thought I was never going to see my family again."
*********

Huh? Seems like there's some missing information here. How does loaning a calculator translate to fearing for one's life? How did she get to his home in the first place? Why would she go there? I'm not saying he didn't have any inappropriate intentions, but this is just horrible journalism.

http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/10-11/2/2010-annual-m...

An interesting piece about positive vs. negative press on the U.

Talk about a waste of money.  The time and effort put into this latest quantity over quality study could have easily sent the track athlete to Washington and paid for football overnights for home games.  Do these knuckleheads in Cutler think that the general populace only watches fox news?

No, they think they only watch MSNBC! 

The athletic leadership at the top right now for Ohio is on very solid ground. Think McDavis, Schaus, Solich, Groce, Carbone, and Thice here. McDavis, Schaus, Solich and Carbone are all likely to retire at Ohio. Theis is running a fully loaded Ohio Volleyball program with a constant influx of new talent. Groce will based on the direction of this season will probably be around for 3 more years to build the basketball program. Maybe even more years for Groce because by the time his perfomance at Ohio makes him worthy of a BCS conference offer the committment by Ohio could be there to price him out of the market. Its not really inconcievable at all with a growing budget and i think at worst Groce in a few years will put a stop to all the attrition that has plagued the program over the last 5 or 6 years. I don't see anything out there throwing the key pieces to the athletic department in reverse. There are schools out there in D1 like say Eastern Michigan that are true second rate institutions with leadership constantly in flux and no home crowd support might for whatever reason decide they are wasting their time in D1 and would be better served cutting costs moving to D2. If ICA spending became a real issue at Ohio the only thing you'll see is a freeze for a 5 year or so period with minimal impact to the programs. Beyond that department wide budget cuts by a percentage. Ohio is spending now 2 times what Eastern Michigan is on football and basketball. There is a lot of room to walk the athletic budget back down before the idea of dropping sports below the FBS minimum of 16 would be entertained.  At the FCS level they are discussing dropping the number of scholarships to 50 in football and you may see FBS drop down to 75 in turn to cut costs. Structural cost cutting across D1 could indirectly benefit Ohio University. If Vedder thinks students are on the verge of mobilizing on the streets against the administration over their ICA fees like what is going on in Egypt then he is delusional.