BANKRUPT

Analysis--Recently I sat under the canopy as Gene Rankin assembled a lesson nearby. It was joyless, with a total lack of enthusiasm all around. It's not because Gene is old or because he's a grouch, I don't think. Gene and others were behaving as if somebody had died. Well, two people have (see below), but the lack of enthusiasm and joy had mostly vanished years before that.

The end of the sailing season is always a sad time of year, just like the end of UW football's dominance and the end of UW-Madison as a top university.

Like Hoofers, the UW football program is finally bankrupt. A week after being dominated by Alabama, UW lost 27-10 at home on Saturday in embarrassing fashion to Maryland. Maryland--who had never before beaten the Badgers. The Terrapins led 27-3 late in the 4th quarter, so the thrashing was even worse than indicated by the final score.

Sadly, there is no going back, and that's the real tragedy. Starting in the 1990s, UW brass wanted to stress football over academics, thinking that just perhaps, the UW could be good at both. They wanted to run with the big boys--Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State--and for awhile it succeeded.

But now it's over.

The football program has come crashing back to Earth, and in the meantime, the UW's national academic ranking has plummeted.

In the aftermath, UW admins are learning that it's much more difficult to elevate a university and its reputation than it is to improve a football program. The former takes decades or longer. Nor will dishonest UW administrators even admit that the UW's standing has slipped, even as they continue to cut funding and close libraries, with most being turned into useless study halls. Libraries without books! It's almost unthinkable. The administration blames it on budget cuts, yet even as campus libraries are closed with journal subscriptions cancelled by the hundreds, new hundred-million-dollar buildings are popping up all over campus.

It's an incompetent university leadership in denial.

Indeed, the UW's decision in the 1990s to emphasize football over academics paid some dividends, including Rose Bowl wins and a Big Ten championship appearance (in which they were trounced by Penn State). The flip side is, the UW has fallen steadily in college rankings and now limps in as the 10th best state university. In the late 1980s, it was 3rd behind only UC Berkeley and Michigan--and the 10th best university overall, including private and Ivy League schools. Now it barely cracks the top 50 overall.

What goes up must come down. Hence the UW's fall may have been inevitable even without the presence of incompetent administrators like John D. Wiley and Rebecca Blank stare.

Similarly, Hoofers' decision to gut their program and replace it with a neutered one led by bland-but-crooked staff has been a disaster. Hoofer Sailing have replaced the rock stars that once drove the keelboat program with asexual, semi-incompetent team players, the result being that two Hoofer sailors have died (link 2) in recent years--the first-ever deaths in Hoofers.

Significantly, both deaths occurred under the criminally negligent oversight of Wis. Union Director Mark Guthier.

Above are late summer photos of two types of HSC craft--a Tartan-10 and a, um, cardboard box, many of which were built for C-Cup. And all that cardboard, duct tape, etc. ended up... in the lake. Omg, can you even spell m-i-c-r-o-p-l-a-s-t-i-c-s?

So join Hoofer Sailing now! (We urgently need an infusion of cash)