After Atalanta

 I started this post on the plane ride back from a conference in CA in November. Conferences always gave me a spurt of writing energy. But the end of the fall 2024 semester got in the way of its completion and transcription (it was easier to pull out a notebook rather than my laptop on the plane). It is still relevant and so... I have been wondering if the (University of) Iowa women's basketball t-shirt (and sweatshirt) I wore last year now after the end of that 2023-24 run to the final four and the subsequent 2024 WNBA season. Last year, an observer might have wondered if I was a bandwagon fan, i.e., experiencing the Caitlin Clark effect. I am an Iowa alum (PhD 2013). with a complicated relationship to Iowa athletics (see the myriad of Title IX issues, racism within programs, incompetent and violent coaching, etc.) And though I have watched women's college basketball for some time, it's mostly because I want to support women's sports. I understand very little about str...

One of my favorite college administrators had a lot of interesting axioms, which those of us who worked with her believed were largely of her own creation. But now I realize, they were just old. Like nineteenth century old in the case of one of my (and I believe her) favorites: a tub on its own bottom. The exact phrase is "every tub on its own bottom" and is apparently used all the time at Harvard (of course). It means a decentralized economic system and is employed up by university administrators to describe the way each unit is in charge (for better or worse) of its own finances--its own success, and arguably its own demise. She used it in reference to the athletic department at my undergraduate DI school. I have, being the good marxist feminist (kind of) that I am, taken a cultural interpretation of the phrase as well, and translated it to mean a unit of the university that is so financially different than others that it has its own, exclusive culture. And this is certa...

According the Title IX Blog, the University of Iowa athletic department is in trouble --again. Several years ago there was Pierre Pierce incident in which the star basketball player was accused of sexual assault against a female student-athlete. His coach, Steve Alford, came to his defense long before any evidence was in. Turns out the evidence did not quite exonerate Pierce who, regardless, got off lightly--to put it mildly. Not too long afterwards he was involved in another criminal offense and this time he was out. Now a couple of members of the football team have been accused of assault and harassment of a female student-athlete who was told not to come forward with her allegations because it would handled from within. Except that it wasn't, of course. The harassment continued despite assurances from football coach Kirk Ferentz and AD Gary Barta that things would be taken care of. I mentioned this case to someone not as familiar with athletic department culture who was incredul...