Shoot The Messenger

BobLee
January17/ 2000

… Not since Tommy Kearns jumped center against Wilt Chamberlain in 1957 has UNC assigned a man to a specific task to which he was so obviously ill-suited.  Dickie Baddour is the designated frontman for the “raise student fees by $50” campaign … a nasty little “legacy” for Dickie to be sure.  Even the tax-increase loving N&O is roasting The Little Prince over this one.  Are the facts correct?  Of course not but, since it involves Dickie, who cares? … Right?

   UNC student fees (an odd catch-all designation to be sure) have been the lowest in the UNC system for quite some time.  Even with the increase being requested from $95 to $150 its at best a non-issue EXCEPT …  Any official dictum containing the words “Athletics Director Dickie Baddour said …” is going to get the inflated public scrutiny normally reserved for “Little Jessica Fell In The Well” or “New Info About Bush’s National Guard Service”.  Such has been the case.

   A $50 increase put into perspective is 3.5 large pizzas OR two tanks of gas in a PT Cruiser OR a 10 oz jar of face cream from Sephora’s. But, any hint at a fee and/or tuition increase at UNC has the same Pavlovian effect as a snowflake falling anywhere in the Triangle.  Instead of bread, milk, and AA batteries, Students flock to the nearest drug store and for Magic Markers and poster board.  It’s PROTEST TIME  … Yee Ha!  

   In the grand tradition of “that certain element” of UNC students through the ages; the indignant poster children go to marching and chanting in the designated marching and chanting zones around campus.  Experienced marchers and chanters know that satellite trucks carrying sound bite seeking infobabes prefer “the pit” next to the library so that where the primary action takes place.

   There is no such thing as “one protestor” in the pit.  Within 5 minutes of the first “NO FEE INCREASE – Dick Baddour Is The AntiChrist” poster there will be at least eight other unrelated and totally inane issues vying for the aforementioned infobabe’s attention.  These can range from “Pol Pot For Chancellor” to a Chick-Fil-A hating loonie in a chicken suit with a banner “Eat More Beef”.  At UNC its “feelings” that count.  Issues are secondary.   When Prince Tassel Loafer is involved feelings run pretty hot … Dickie regularly outpolls Mike Krzyzewski and Chuck Amato in Franklin Street “Shoot on Sight” surveys. … … “Stick” Williams and his UNC BOT pals staple  their ties to their desk blotters as those e-mail nasty grams start piling up again.

   The only specie less popular than Baddour on the UNC campus is “a Fat Cat”.  Unless the Fat Cat in question is your daddy, granddaddy, or Mamma’s current boyfriend who is Area VP for Sephora.  “Fat Cats” have only one purpose to a UNC student.  They take up seats in “the lower level” that by divine right should go to scroungy obscenity yelling message board howler monkeys.  The reason the obscenity yelling howler monkeys can’t have those prime seats is actually John Swofford’s doing but because “we like him” a bit of historical revisionism (ALWAYS a favorite UNC sport) blames it on Dickie.  Actually a combo of Dickie’s fault AND that old woman that Meezie can’t decide was a Negro-hating slave owner or just a kindly lady who rang a bell one day … and whose ancestors are rewriting their sizable trust fund.  Heads she’s a racist … Tails UNC get her family’s money.

Dickie, his keen PR instincts in high gear, puts on this sandwich board that says 

“I Am Dick Baddour. 

I Ran off Mack, I Hired Carl, I Fired Carl, 

I Didn’t hire Roy the first time, 

I Didn’t hire Beamer, I Hired Matt, I Fired Matt, 

I Lost “the bell” to Dook, 

I Didn’t Fire John, I Extended John, 

Maybe I caused the Hardesty Kid not to come here.  

I am not nearly as bad as folks say I am, heck, who could be!

Give me 50 more of your dollars.” 

In the Franklin Street Cirque Soleil somehow this makes sense.  

   As if this whole issue was not off the goofy-o-meter anyway … the reason Dickie needs this student bailout is because his Athletics Dept is running “in the red”.  That most unpleasant color is bad enough.  Dickie’s army of critics has always given him credit as “a dutiful bean counter”.  A bean counter running out of beans … not good! 

   One of the delicious conundrums in all this involves paying for “scholarships” for student-athletes.  I prefer the term “salary cap management”.  Did you know that if John or Ol’ Roy “signs” a kid from Rock Hill SC “the University” will charge the Athletic Dept $10,000/year MORE than if he “signs” a kid who lives just a mile away across the state line in Pineville NC … in-state vs out-of-state tuition difference.  Do the recruitniks know that?  Nah, who cares anyway?  Its not like its real money, right?  It’s those darn stingy “Fat Cats”.  The Fat Cat coffers aren’t growing as fast as UNC coaches are signing out-of-state “nickel backs” and “power forwards”.  

***

   Again … “perspective” … Bunting signs 4 “nickel backs” from out-of-state costing the Ath Dept an extra $10,000 per x 4 = $40,000/year … which happens to be the same amount “the financially strapped University” is now paying multi-millionaire John Edwards to operate his 2008 Campaign soap box out of the UNC Law School.  It gets better.  

Dickie is squeezing nickles from the students to pay his bills to “the University” so “the financially strapped University” can piss away $40,000 to multi-millionaire John Edwards. 

 so Edwards 

CAN FIGHT POVERTY!

 

   If every UNC student simply adopts a Franklin Street homeless guy buying him a peppermint mocha latte grande every day for two weeks wouldn’t it streamline the whole process? 

and Dickie can go back to editing his memoirs 

“Why Mack Left – What I Knew and Who Knew I Knew It”.

***

   The infamous “Dickie fee” will still have the woeful UNC students paying half what students at other UNC campuses currently pay in “student fees”.  The concept of a fee increase is a sane logical progression except in the “topsy turvy fantasy world of Chapel Hill”.

Raise the freakin’ “fee” to $500, UNC will still be 

one of THE best “bargains” anywhere in America.

   If Raymond Felton, Mia Hamm, or Saint Michael had fronted this fee increase, kids would be hocking their ipods to ante up and adding a 15% tip. Dickie Baddour is simply not the spokesperson you want for … well, for much of anything these days.

   At UNC, socialist pinko faculty squirrels making $75,000 to teach two classes/week resent  coaches making $600,000 to coach 11 games/year or $1,600,000 to coach 30 games/year.  Students, of course, resent everything because “resenting” is what students have always done.  Alumni resent coaches who lose games and faculty squirrels who advocate the overthrow of America. An awful lot of “resenting” goes on around that Old Well.

   The crusading truth-seekers at The Old Reliable (N&O) who according to Wuff lore “all went to UNC J-school” are having a ball with this.  Frame the issue as “yet another burden placed in the backpacks of poor starving college students” and conveniently drop in phrases like “new multi-million dollars headquarters” and “the salary of the top executive is …” and you spike sales of pitchforks and torches at Orange County Lowes stores who coincidentally are major advertisers in “The Old Reliable”.

Now if we can just figure a way to link Halliburton into this …

Five Undeniable Truths

  1. Big Time College Sports Is An Out-of-Control Virtue Devouring Beast
  2. It Gets Cold In The Winter
  3. Smoking Cigarettes Is Bad For You
  4. You Lose Weight Thru Diet, Exercise, and Magic Pills From GNC 
  5. Oprah, not Dick Baddour, is The AntiChrist

>>><<<

Swagger’s Stumper

What business enabled George and Weezie to 

“move on up”?

>>><<<

   Blade = Wesley Snipes = Willie Mays Hayes … “Hit like Mays, Run like Hayes”

   NASCAR had a great start for 2005 w/ the Daytona 500.  Gordon vs Dale Jr is Red Sox v Yankees for ratings.

   UNC’s infamous Three Amigos have apparently permanently adiosed except of course in endless Lupine regurgitation.  Over at “The Murphy” The Turk keeps cleaning out lockers as various wayward wuffies are departing too.   As has been the case for decades, the respective “bad boy” rap sheets run neck and neck. … sigh!

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