The University of Oregon has opened a mockery of disinterested academic pursuits in the form of a “football complex.” If it wasn’t clear that football is the primary interest of certain academic institutions, it should be now. Greg Bishop for The New York Times writes about it in “Oregon Embraces ‘University of Nike’ Image.” A brief excerpt:
The Football Performance Center, which was unveiled publicly this week, is as much country club as football facility, potentially mistaken for a day spa, or an art gallery, or a sports history museum, or a spaceship — and is luxurious enough to make N.F.L. teams jealous. It is, more than anything, a testament to college football’s arms race, to the billions of dollars at stake and to the lengths that universities will go to field elite football programs.
And in related news, Alissa Quart reports for The Nation about the “neurohumanities,” in “Adventures in Neurohumanities.” We’re done for.
The Hyperarchival Parallax 