How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
Last Sunday, I turned on my phone in the morning to numerous alerts and text messages. Bad news about my alma mater and our football coach.
A few hours after Michigan State beat Richmond, a USA Today story reported on an investigation by the university towards Coach Mel Tucker. A woman named Brenda Tracy accused Tucker of harassment. To make matters worse, the accuser Tracy, is a rape victim. She was hired by the university as a consultant to speak on behalf of victim’s rights. The irony is thick, the whole affair messy and icky.
Tucker is now serving an unpaid suspension while the school unravels the procedural matters of its investigation. A hearing is scheduled for October to litigate Tucker’s actions but he’s toast as coach. All that’s left are the lawyers working through how big a check he’ll receive on the way out the door (likely much less than the $80M left on his contract).
I’m writing about this because by the time it’s read by Six subscribers, I’ll have visited East Lansing, MI, home of the university, and left town. I’m making the drive east this weekend to see friends, visit some old (hardly any left)––and new (they’re mostly all new)––establishments and attend our football game against Washington. For various reasons, I have not been back on campus in four years.
With the backdrop being what it is, our disgraced football coach sent home for alleged sexual misconduct, a thought crossed my mind, one that I know happens to so many of us with lifelong allegiances and affinities: what’s an appropriate response in these circumstances? How do we compartmentalize celebratory fandom with moral objection?
Like with so many existential dilemmas, both emotions are suitable and applicable.
Michigan State is a massive university, employing thousands. Tucker is just one of those employees. If an assistant professor in the humanities department has phone sex with someone other than his wife, the larger school community won’t care. But when the second-most famous (men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo is more well-known) and highest paid employee engages in questionable behavior, it has a outsized reverberating impact.
We are still talking about the actions of one person, in this case, Tucker. His behavior should not reflect on the university as a whole.
(The response by Tucker’s bosses to the incident is another matter. Corporations, colleges and large organizations in general mess up crisis management all the time, and MSU dropped the ball with Tucker. But that’s another essay for another day.)
Harken back to what happened this summer with Northwestern and its football coach, Pat Fitzgerald. If a Northwestern alum, how do you amend emotions? It’s complicated; that situation more so as Fitz was an alum of the school, won a lot of games and became the school’s proudest advocate.
Coping with the question of permissiveness towards an artist or public figure that’s made poor choices is not new. The Romans likely had to contend with the knowledge many of their emperors were bastards. But that was life or death.
We choose to be fans. And we can say no to writing that check the next time the alumni association comes calling. Affinity is inherently personal and individuals should decide what’s acceptable and what’s a bridge too far to cross.
I do know this––the games, and the large gatherings that come with them, are liberating. The connective vitality, the conjoining adrenaline between fans and our athletic teams is why we as humans long for shared experiences. Regardless of what happens within the university, I know I will feel a visceral esprit de corps inside the stadium. That’s real. That’s what I’ll hold on to.
So I think it’s acceptable to be disgruntled.
But it’s healthier to remain a fan.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. It’s Good To Be A Criminal In Chicago.
If growing up in the city with designs on being a career criminal, the environment has never been more appealing. According to this comprehensive piece via Wirepoints, “More than 68,000 major crimes were reported in Chicago last year. Only 3,228 of them resulted in arrests.” Reporters poured through data—looking back over two decades—from the Chicago City Data Portal. The meta data is stunningly decayed: the arrest rate for criminal sexual assault is 3 percent. Same for motor vehicle thefts. Burglaries were at 4 percent and robberies, 5 percent. Thieving is now a thriving profession in Chicago and other major cities.
2. America’s Surprising Partisan Divide On Life Expectancy.
This is a fascinating quantitative piece via Politico on the relationship between geography and health in America. According to the writer, who analyzes and explains life expectancy data in a way that’s both captivating and kind of horrifying, the gaps between regions—between the Yankee Northeast, say, and the Deep South—are so large that “it’s as if we are living in different countries. Because in a very real historical and political sense, we are.”
3. Having Nun Of It.
From Slate, a tale of mutiny in a Texas convent. Get this: ten cloistered nuns are suing a bishop over a supposed confession their prioress made while she was on seizure medication to a consensual sexual encounter with a priest. The ensuing bishop's investigation turned ugly as allegations involving sex, drugs and excommunication were made. Amid the squabble, the nuns defied Pope Francis and began celebrating Mass in Latin! Enjoy this one.
4. The Half-Hidden Meaning of Margaritaville.
I couldn’t let another Six pass without an article on the late, great Jimmy Buffett. The icon of musical good vibes died a few weeks ago at the age of 76. I don’t know any legacy artist more beloved than Buffett, who wrote and sang songs that magically elicited feelings of both nostalgia and festivity in the listener. This essay is from writer Steve Inskeep, who pens how “some Buffett songs offer escapism in the sense that his characters seem to be escaping from something, not always successfully.” It was a good life all the way, indeed Mr. Buffett. He will be missed but the music lives on.
5. The Worst Baseball Teams Money Can Buy.
In professional baseball, with no salary cap, one particularly reliable way to get a pretty good team is to spend ungodly amounts of money, outspending smaller and more frugal teams for top talent, cost be damned. It’s not a perfect way—owners can overspend on busts—but it’s one of the more direct ways. That is, until this year. The Messenger offers this insightful statistic: the correlation between a team’s payroll percentile and the team’s win percentage is down to 0.197 in 2023. That’s an all-time low among seasons since the 1994 strike. For perspective, as recently as 2016 that correlation was much larger, at 0.797. Big spenders like the Cardinals, Mets, Angels, Padres and Yankees have been unable to translate spending into a winning seasons.
Now that “You Tube Creator” has become more ubiquitous in our culture––and normalized as a career––it’s safe to compare participants with those in other professions. We measure success by the fundamentals––hard word, diligence to tasks and a healthy dose of resourcefulness. I had never heard of Fred Beyer until this week. Now he’s thing on You Tube after a Fashion Week prank in NYC. The trash bag/shower camp runway ensemble was an amusing idea and he pulled it off. Nicely done, Fred. You’ve gained a follower and thousands more.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.