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Posted on: August 25, 2022; Updated on: August 25, 2022By Craig Brandhorst, craigb1@mailbox.sc.edu, 803-777-3681

The History of American College Football: Institutional Policy, Culture, and Reform, edited by Christian Anderson and Amber Falluca, examines the role of the popular American sport on college campuses from its 19th century roots to its contemporary cultural dominance. Anderson is an associate professor in the College of Educations Department of Educational Leadership and Policies. Falluca is associate director at the Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning and an instructor who teaches a course on intercollegiate athletics and higher education. The two also co-curated a companion exhibit at the universitys Museum of Education at Wardlaw College.

The book begins with your chapter, Christian, looking back at the 100th anniversary of college football or whats generally agreed upon as the 100th anniversary, 1969 and most of the subsequent chapters also focus on that first 100 years. Why that inflection point?

Christian: College football made a lot out of the 100th anniversary. They had a centennial game between Rutgers and Princeton, who played what is generally considered the first college football game in 1869. They had a nationwide homecoming queen. Then they had the Game of the Century between Texas and Arkansas. ABC Sports got them to change the schedule because they anticipated that these two teams would be undefeated at the end of the season, and they were. President Nixon was in the stands and awarded Texas a plaque to name them national champions. Thats one part. Its also just how it fell out. The chapters all happened to fall within that first 100 years, except for the chapter about the NCAA versus Board of Regents decision in 1984. But even that didnt just pop up out of nowhere. The events of the previous 30 years shaped that decision.

You also emphasize mythmaking. You write the mythology looms larger than life in college football and argue that we need to understand the function and purposes of those myths. What is that function on our campuses or in the larger culture?

Christian: Were always trying to make meaning out of our lives and football just seems to fit that niche by helping us make sense of who we are and who we arent. We all seem to give over part of our identity to our football team in the fall. If your school is 12-0, or 10-2 or 6-6, it affects your mood and your campus mood and your communitys mood. Basketball is huge, baseball is huge, they all have their own rhythms, but theres just something about football.

Politics and history also run throughout. And some of it is eye-opening. One chapter explores the relationship between football, masculinity and the Lost Cause in the South following the Civil War.

Amber: When I read that chapter in draft form, I kept asking myself, How did I not know these facts already? One example is the name Ole Miss for the University of Mississippi. Thats how its commonly referred to. On their uniforms, on the helmets, it still says Ole Miss, and you think nothing of it. Then you learn the history, that the nickname originated with the school yearbook. Then when you unpack that, you learn that the yearbook was a reference to the slave masters wife or mistress.

So we have this sport where the student athletes are largely African-American males. Its no question in Division I, particularly within the Power Five conferences. Theyre members of the team, representing their school, but at the end of the day theyre wearing this emblem. Thats a fascinating societal puzzle, especially today. Given all that has happened with Black Lives Matter, why has that not come to bear yet? Or will it come to bear?

We mentioned the NCAA earlier. The second-to-last chapter is about Board of Regents versus the NCAA, the 1984 Supreme Court case that opened the floodgates to the commercialization of college sports.

Amber: The 1984 case speaks to this opportunistic piece of college football, with television. Who controls the revenue? Who will not only reap the rewards from the monetization, but in essence, who will have the power and influence as a result? With the NCAA prevailing, it really set an additional course I wont even say new course, because there was momentum already.

Theres even an anecdote about the rule change forbidding the dangerous flying wedge formation, how the NCAA perpetuated its own mythology on the matter as you write, Christian, to assert their indispensability. Their timeline was wrong, they overstated their role, but whatever. They asserted their indispensability, and they havent lost it.

Christian: Well, let me tie this back to the 1984 case. Byron White, the Supreme Court associate justice, had been a football player himself. In dissenting against the majority decision, he talks about the history of intercollegiate sports. He says, look, were getting far afield from the educational value. When we talk about student athletes, were really moving into something that more closely resembles professional sports. Most likely, even if they had ruled differently in 1984, we would have ended up somewhere close to where we are now. The forces were too big.But that ruling really sped things up.

We started with the 100th anniversary of college football. We just passed the 150th. Theres a lot of debate about those salaries, the big budgets, and the sport continues to evolve. If there were a sequel, what are the chapters?

Amber: I think what well see with some of the emerging legislation is the student athletes are the drivers. You cant ignore it. So I think well see implications of Image and Likeness (NIL), good and bad. It gives a good opening for student athletes to finally say, Youre going to market me, Im going to get a piece of the pie. And I think thats great. But one thing Im curious about is the dynamic that creates within a team structure in a sport like football. Are there the haves and the have nots? And how does that play out on the field? Does it influence how the coach interacts with the players or how they recruit student athletes?

And how about you, Christian?

Christian: You know, the origins of college football were students playing students, setting it up and organizing it. It was very student-run, almost intramural except that it was intercollegiate. It wasnt us playing a pickup game on the Horseshoe. It was us challenging Clemson, or, in the early days, even the YMCA and high schools. I mean, you look at some of those early schedules and its bonkers who they were playing.

But then faculty got involved in trying to oversee it, and some were even coaches. Then you saw the administrative take over. Faculty still had a role, but their role diminished. Now were almost coming full circle. Well never have student control like in the earliest days, but theres more student influence, like Amber was saying. So I think that if you were to write the 50-plus years since 1969, you could devote half of the book just to the student athlete. In fact, the term student athlete would be chapter one.

Banner image: University of South Carolina football team, 1898, Garnet & Black yearbook. Photo provided by University Libraries.

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Topics: Faculty, Research, History, College of Education

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Big game on campus - UofSC News & Events - University of South Carolina

By M.D. Kittle

MADISON On the anniversary of the August 2020 riots that devastated Kenosha, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels campaign is out with a new social media ad hammering Gov. Tony Evers on his handling of the destructive demonstrations.

The ad, titled No Regrets, opens with a clip of a mask-wearing Evers telling reporters that his administration had filled every request for assistance as the rioters like the fires they set raged out of control.

Evers is caught in a lie, as the video includes audio of a newscaster reporting that Kenosha County officials were frustrated after their request to deploy 1,500 National Guard members wasnt fulfilled.

Our county is under attack. Our businesses are under attack. Our homes are under attack. Our local law enforcement agencies need additional support to help bring civility back to our community, the Kenosha County Board of Supervisors urgently wrote to the governor.

Scores of businesses, government buildings, and residential properties were damaged or destroyed in the Black Lives Matter riots, causing more than $50 million in damage.

An email obtained by Empower Wisconsin shows a staff member from U.S. Sen. Ron Johnsons office effectively telling Evers top aide to wake up and smell the smoke.

Maggie our office have received numerous calls from folks in Kenosha pleading for help, wrote Julie Leschke, Johnsons deputy chief of staff to Maggie Gau, Evers chief of staff, in a frantic email sent at 8 a.m. on Aug. 26 Theyre really scared and reporting that police are standing down and letting the rioters destroy and take over.

Leschke asked the same question Kenosha city and county officials had been asking for three days.

Will you be talking about steps the governor will be taking? Will he accept the Presidents offer to help? the Johnson staffer wrote.

As has been well documented, the governor was slow to deploy the National Guard, and he failed to provide adequate support when he eventually consented. And Evers initially rejected federal law enforcement assistance from then-President Donald Trump in what clearly was an act of political pettiness.

I did turn down the bringing in the Homeland Security, Evers says in a clip in the Michels ad.

The campaign video is filled with scenes of the chaos from those nightmarish days, including vehicles on fire at a car dealership beneath a Black Lives Matter sign.

I feel confident that we met our obligations, Evers says in the video. I would not change anything we did. I have no regrets.

The Michels ad ends by urging voters to, Have no regrets on November 8th. Fire Tony Evers.

Evers campaign did not return a call seeking comment.

Watch the video here.

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Michels ad hits Evers on Kenosha riots - Empower Wisconsin

Presidential Residences

Joe Raedle/Getty. Inset: Zach Gibson - Pool/Getty Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Inset: Donald Trump.

Just weeks aftertheFBI searchedformer President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, new reports are detailing just how many classified documents may have been kept in the resort.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that more than 300 classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago and recovered by the federal government in recent months.

Roughly 150 of those classified documents, the Times reports, werehanded over to the National Archivesin January but Trump himself went through them before handing them over.

Elsewhere in its report, the Times details how Trump fought the federal government's attempts to retrieve the documents, reportedly telling his attorneys, "It's not theirs, it's mine." According to the Presidential Records Act passed in response to the Nixon Watergate scandal any documents accrued during a presidency belong to the federal government, not the president.

RELATED: Mike Pence Says He Didn't Keep Classified Documents, Calls for Transparency in DOJ's Investigation of Trump

A separate report by Politico backs the Times' reporting that an abundance of classified documents was recovered, citing correspondence between the National Archives and Trump's legal team that shows the Archives recovered "more than 700 pages of classified material," including "some of the most highly classified secrets in government" at Mar-a-Lago in January.

"As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President's representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022," National Archivist Debra Wall wrote in a May 10 letter to Trump's attorney Evan Corcoran. "In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials."

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According to the Times, after reviewing security footage taken at Mar-a-Lago and interviewing aides, investigators were concerned some classified documents remained at the resort. So on Aug. 8, agents returned with a search warrant.

Days after their search, the search and seizure warrant along with the signed receipt from the Mar-a-Lago search wereunsealedby the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, revealing that 11 sets of classified documents were among the inventory of the items taken in the search.

Some of those remaining documents were marked as top secret, which theWall Street Journalnotes should only be available in special government facilities.

RELATED: Trump's Former National Security Advisor Says There's 'No Evidence' of 'Partisan Motive' in Mar-a-Lago Search

Trump is now seeking to block the Department of Justice from "further review" of the documentsfrom Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. Inpapers filedin the U.S. District Court's Southern District of Florida and obtained byCNBCon Monday, the former president, through his counsel, asks that the government not be allowed to look at the documents until a "Special Master" is appointed.

The filing says that the government told Trump's lawyers that "privileged and/or potentially privileged documents" were seized, but specifics of what exactly was taken have yet to be provided.

"Significantly, the Government has refused to provide President Trump withanyreason for the unprecedented, general search of his home," the complaint says, noting Attorney General Merrick Garland'smotion to unseal the search warrant.

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Arguing that the documents seized were created when Trump was president, his lawyers state that they are "'presumptively privileged' until proven otherwise," and a Special Master is the only one who can protect their "sanctity."

See the rest here:
Donald Trump Had 'More than 300' Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago: Report

This used to be a thought experiment for law students: Is it possible to seat an impartial jury to pass judgment on a former president of the United States? The question is becoming less and less theoretical these days. From the FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that yielded troves of possibly mishandled classified material to the intensifying scrutiny into allegations of election fraud in Georgia and financial misdealings in New York: it's no longer unthinkable that in some court, some day, former President Trump could face a criminal charge.

That would present a singular challenge, given that the U.S. Constitution guarantees every defendant the right to be tried by a jury of their peers. "It would be the ultimate trust test for the American judicial system," says Craig Torcino, director of the Miami Law Innocence Clinic and a former public defender. Agrees Cornell Law Professor Valerie Hans: "In a way, the Founders envisioned the possibility of this kind of event and envisioned the jury as a protection for that defendant."

But who, exactly, could claim to be a "peer" of a wealthy one-time leader of the free world? And who in Americaor anywhere else, for that mattercould claim to lack an opinion about someone whose every utterance and action has been daily front-page news for seven years? Could all 160 million Americans who expressed an opinion by voting in the 2020 presidential election be disqualified, and, if so, who would be left?

It's uncharted territory even for a nation accustomed to high-profile courtroom spectacles. "Seating a jury for a Trump case is going to be really much harder to do than almost any case because, as you know, everything has been so polarized, people have very strong opinions on either side about him," jury consultant Richard Gabriel says. Gabriel worked for the defense teams that won acquittals in the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony and advised the Justice Department in selecting the jury that convicted ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on mail and wire fraud in 2013.

"There's a lot of people who are gonna think, 'Yep, he did it, I'm done already.' And there's other people who think he's being prosecuted for political reasons," Gabriel says. "What you do is, you look for people who are aware of their own biases and you find middle-ground people. They do exist. Some people, they just live their lives and don't have strong political opinions."

Potential jurors could be subjected to deeply personal interviews in the part of the process known as voir dire; it would likely include a screening questionnaire aimed at weeding out obvious, overt partisans. But a presiding judge also would have to decide what's OK to ask about: questions about how someone voted in 2020 or 2016 may not be permitted but general feelings about the political parties, Trump, and his presidency could be fair game, experts say. Teams of jury consultants on both sides would be combing each potential juror's social media postings and political donation history, too. "Anything that's public, you can look at, but you can't be invasive: you can't 'friend' somebody or follow somebody because that would be inadvertent contact with a juror, which could be construed as jury tampering," Gabriel says.

The voir dire for the 2021 trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teen acquitted of murder in the shooting deaths of two men at a Black Lives Matter rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shows how judges try to walk the tightrope of what's allowed. The judge in that case refused to let lawyers probe jurors about their views on many political issues that surrounded that case. "It was actually a fairly bland voir dire where we couldn't ask politics, we couldn't ask anything related to George Floyd or Black Lives Matter or the Proud Boys," says Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, who advised the Rittenhouse team on jury selection and worked for O.J. Simpson on his murder trial. "We could ask people where they were at the time that the riots occurred. We could ask general opinions about law enforcement and about gun ownership. And that was it. That was absolutely it."

Questions about personal politics may be allowed when the defendant is an elected official, says Gabriel. But the answers might not be that illuminating. "There's a lot of people who voted for Trump who don't like what he did," he says. "A judge would probably want to curtail this somewhat, because they don't want to have a three-month-long jury selection process. It's going to be a nightmare for whatever judge has to try this case because you're going to call thousands of people to try and find those 12."

Professor Hans is optimistic that such potential jurors exist: she can point to one, at least. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted in 2018 on eight counts of financial fraud in Alexandria, Virginia. After that verdict, a juror who described herself as an ardent Trump fan told Fox News she voted to convict because of the evidence. "I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty," said the juror, Paula Duncan, "but he was, and no one's above the law."

"That was a great line," Hans says. "It proves that most people take jury duty very seriously and set aside their personal views to focus on the evidence."

(On the other hand, Duncan also said Manafort would've been convicted on the 10 additional counts he faced except for a lone holdout on the jury who, despite the "overwhelming" evidence against Manafort, "still said she had a reasonable doubt.")

The location of a Trump trial could affect how hard it would be to seat an impartial jury. If the Department of Justice indicts him for taking classified records home with him, for example, that case would likely be filed in Washington D.C., where the alleged crime would have taken place. Trump and his lawyers could argue that the jury pool is tainted by a population that is overwhelmingly Democratic and is also a workforce closely tied to the federal government over which Trump once presided. Trump's team would likely commission a study of public opinion in the area where Trump would stand trial, and Dimitrius believes he'd have a strong case for a change of venue from Washington, where Joe Biden took 92.1 percent to Trump's 5.4 percent of the vote in 2020. "The remedy the judge sometimes comes up with is to bring in jurors from another venue," she says. "Maybe they bring in jurists from Virginia to supplement who is there."

But the jury pool in Maryland or northern Virginiaalso Democratic bastionsmight not be much of an improvement. "At the end of the day, I don't think you're going to find a venue that's better," says John Anderson, a former federal prosecutor in New Mexico. "There's no place in America where people don't watch the news or read the newspaper or have strong feelings about the former president one way or another."

Those strong views point to the need for a supersized pool of alternate jurors. A typical trial features just a couple of alternates, but the circus that would engulf a Trump trial would require perhaps two dozen or more, Torcino says, because activists on both sides would be hard at work trying to unearth proof of bias that eluded voir dire. A politically charged text exchange revealed by a relative or a "like" of an offensive meme found deep in someone's Facebook history could throw the proceedings into chaos if there aren't sufficient replacement jurors on tap.

The prosecution of an ex-president would be novel to Americans but it's not infrequent in other democratic countries. In the past decade, Italy's ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted of paying underage girls for sex; France's ex-President Nikolas Sarkozi and ex-Prime Minister Francois Fillon were convicted of various corruption charges; and South Africa's ex-President Jose Zuma is in prison for failing to participate in an inquiry into corruption. Israel's ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu currently is in the middle of a fraud and bribery trial and Portugal's ex-Prime Minister Jose Socrates faces charges of falsifying documents and money laundering.

In those kinds of cases in those countries, however, a judge or panel of judges decides the defendant's fatenot a group of average citizens who happen to live in the court's vicinity. America's jury system would make a Trump trial even more of an international fascination.

"When I first was working on the O.J. case, I got calls all the time from Sweden, Japan, and all these different places going, 'What is this thing you call the jury system?'" Gabriel says. "We are very unique in how we've formulated our system. They look at all of our high-profile trials and think we're just crazy Americans."

It's even possible that the presence of a jury might help the public see a Trump trial as fair. "The jury is not part of the government," says Hans. "The charges are brought by the government, but it requires a jury to make a decision. The jury can protect a defendant from an overreaching prosecution and overreaching government. You've got to get a unanimous group of individuals to say the claims are supported by the evidence."

More here:
Can Any Donald Trump Prosecutor Find an Impartial Jury Anywhere in America? - Newsweek

In the movie, Animal House, theres an iconic scene where a pledge is being initiated into his fraternity, and, after each vicious hit with a wooden paddle, cries out, Thank you, sir! May I have another? Although many of us laughed at that scene, it wasnt funny. Abuse of any kind, especially by someone in a position of power, is never funny given its lasting and traumatic impact on the victim.

That particular scene is even less funny now given that Donald Trump spent four years in the White House and the last two years at Mar-a-Lago abusively wielding political power and traumatizing our country in the process. He wasnt the commander-in-chief during his presidency, he was the abuser-in-chief.

Former US President Donald Trump speaks at the America First Policy Institute Agenda Summit in Washington, DC, on July 26, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Many Trump supporters say those of us who are anti-Trump suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), an accusation meant to demean us into thinking were the irrational ones given how negatively we view the former president. I would counter that by saying many of us who are anti-Trump dont suffer from TDS but from PTSD, Post-Trump Stress Disorder. People all over the country, even some who were once enthusiastic supporters of the former president, are tired of the sideshow and exhibit many of the symptoms of trauma associated with having been under such toxic leadership.

Trumps abusive style of leadership traumatized our country in four main ways.

First, Trump traumatized our country with his ignorance. He came into office profoundly ignorant with regard to the Constitution, the rule of law, national security, climate change, racial injustice, infectious diseases, economic recovery, international relations and numerous other matters of grave importance related to fulfilling his duties as president. And because he was more interested in reading putts than his daily briefings, Trump never learned anything in office.

Trump traumatized our country with his incompetence. Lauding himself as a successful businessman, something he never was or ever will be, Trump was grossly incompetent when it came to developing and implementing policies that left Americans better off. Trumps administration was the gang that couldnt shoot straight, and his utter incompetence as a leader left us much worse off as a country. As the Lincoln Project ad, Mourning in America put it, we are weaker and sicker and poorer because of Trumps grossly incompetent leadership.

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Trump traumatized our country with his insanity. Mental health experts have been trying to warn us for years that Trump is malignantly narcissistic, sociopathic, sadistic and delusional, four psychological maladies that clearly made him unfit to be president. Trumps unbridled psychopathology is what led him to repeatedly tell the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen and malevolently point his supporters at the U.S. Capitol to overthrow democracy. Our country is still traumatized by this particular act of insanity on Trumps part.

Last, Trump traumatized our country with his immorality. Because hes a sociopath, Trump has no moral code or conscience. Nothing other than narcissistic self-interest guides his every action. He is a pathological liar, serial cheater (wives, taxes, vendors, even golf), and shameless grifter (Trump University, his charitable foundation, the 2016 inauguration committee, fundraising). Trump is one of the most immoral presidents weve ever had, something that has embarrassed us around the world and traumatized us as a country.

Our country simply cannot afford a president who has even one of these characterological defects. Trump has all four. Only the most politically delusional person would want someone this ignorant, incompetent, insane and immoral to lead our nation, and they wouldnt be doing it out of a love for their country but an unquenchable thirst for staying in power.

The most concerning thing right now is that Trump is considering another run for the presidency and a large number of so-called conservatives are thinking about supporting him. As if he hasnt caused enough damage, Trump wants the political power of the presidency back in his hands so he can traumatize our country further with his abusive style of leadership and stay out of prison a little longer.

It would be foolish for us to look to any government agency or political party to keep Trump from being president again. Two impeachments didnt get it done. The Jan. 6 committee isnt likely to get it done. And the FBIs search of Mar-a-Lago isnt likely to either. Trump is much too slippery to ever let the cost of his malevolent actions come due at his own expense.

No, this ones on us. Regardless of our political affiliation, we must withhold our support from any person who would presume to abuse and traumatize our country the way Trump did. If we dont put a stop to someone as deeply disturbed and dangerous as the former president, we are the problem and fundamentally saying, Thank you, Trump, may we have another. And, this time, we might not recover.

Thurman is a psychologist and author of The Lies We Believe.

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Thank you, Donald Trump, may we have another? - New York Daily News