All Things Collegiate
First up, MSU alumnus Ki-El's thoughts on yesterday's commentary on the Year of Arts and Culture. This is exactly the kind of debate I've always dreamed The Secret Base could stimulate!

Mike,

I was going to post this in the comment section of your bloggy blog, but after I started typing I realized it would never fit the space provided. So do with it as you will. I've heard two separate explanations as to the origins of MSU's Spartan moniker which may shed a little light on your quandary.

1 – As you may or may not know (I'm assuming you do, but just in case), State's initial team name was The Aggies, a rather bland name created in support of the school's original mandate as an agricultural land grant institution. When the decision was made in the '20s to update the team name in accordance with the school's expanded mandate as a more complete educational institution, a letter from an alumni
comparing a recent heartbreaking defeat of the Aggies football squad to the Spartans at Thermopylae landed on the University president's desk. Apparently, the team had been playing the then powerhouse of college football and lost in overtime, but said powerhouse (who knows what teams were good in the '20s? Could've been Harvard for all I know) was so wore down from their win that the next week they lost a major game and their shot at the title. The president, digging on the story, offered the name to the team and it stuck. My brother told me this story years ago when we were both reading Frank Miller's 300 as a mini series, but I can't say for sure if it's true. Brian was a student at Western at the time, so this wasn't any kind of "rah rah" team spirit speech – just something he's heard somewhere. Maybe next time we talk, I'll ask if he remembers where he heard it.

2 – Wikipedia's much less romantic take on the Spartan name comes from a supposed comparison made between land grant colleges and the Spartan method of education by Rep. Justin Morrill (the man who pressed Congress to approve the land grant system). I'm not sure exactly what aspect of Spartan culture this is in reference to (sadly, my knowledge of the specifics of the ancient world is pretty inadequate), but the end result was the same – MSU's name comes from historical reference to the warriors of Sparta.

Now, in either event, you must be wondering how exactly this applies to the issue of such "soldier-fanatics" relating to let alone supporting the arts. To my mind, both possible explanations for the Spartan name serve up their own reasons for why MSU's current "Year of Arts and Culture" makes perfect sense in the larger scheme of things.

1 – In regards to the Thermopylae tale, that specific group of 300 Spartans fought and died in support of the Athenians out of necessity. With the entirety of Greek civilization in peril, the often opposing city-states set aside their differences for a greater good (yes, there's more to it, but that's the gist, in any case). Transpose this alliance to modern day life at MSU, and there are a few direct parallels one can infer. If we consider the athletes of the college to represent the Spartans in this instance (and for the sake of extending the metaphor, let's say that the often underdog football team represents the 300 of Thermopylae) and consider the many arts students and faculty aided by "Year of Arts and Culture" to be the Athenians, then the issue becomes less about drawing inspiration as you put it and more about working within a set of real circumstances. The university as an institution provides the athletes with their means of competing (or the Spartans their means of doing battle) and the athletes in turn support the higher learning functions of the school financially (literally buying the cultured Athenians the time they need to complete their own goals). And just as the original Spartans and Athenians doubtlessly looked upon each other with a fair amount of scorn, so too do the competing factions of almost any university let alone MSU look at each other with the occasional eye of derision. Speaking as someone who played football for six years, I can attest
that virtually any football team in America is going to have at least a handful of complete fucking meatheads, and most of the Arts students at State view many of the athletes in that way (however unfair it may be to many of them). Conversely, I'm sure most of the football players on campus catch an occasional glimpse of the kinds of kids I shared classes with outside the Peanut Barrel on Grand River smoking cloves
and think "Faggots!" or some other such meatheaded thought. It's the way of the world.

2 – If we take Morrill's supposed comment on the land grant university's connection to Spartan society at face value, an equal number of modern parallels can be drawn which are entirely valid in the face of our Thermopylae example and even complementary to it. Again, I lay no claim to expansive knowledge of Spartan society, but I think it's fair to assume that the ruling warrior class provided for a certain amount of educational opportunities for its society's members on top of the general security the big pointy swords and brush-headed helmets allowed for. Similarly, the defining characteristic of the land grant university has always been providing an institution that serves the local community with a variety of educational opportunities they would be without (sure, most of the land grant college's started
only as agricultural schools, but what the fuck else were the people of 1862 supposed to do with a shit load of free government acreage?). That history of educational opportunity for the general public is still very much alive at MSU, and it's one of the reasons I'm most proud to call myself a State graduate. Doubtlessly, U of M has a
higher reputation amongst academic circles and other high brow areas of American society in terms of its most famous programs and institutions, but State graduates a higher number of students in general and Michigan residents specifically each year. I'm not trying to start a pissing match on the pros and cons of either university;
I'm just saying that the higher educational opportunities afforded to Michigan residents through MSU is a feather in school's cap. I was also struck while an undergrad by the fact that many of MSU's most acclaimed schools and programs had a specific focus on more practical fields of work as opposed to somewhat more insular academic-minded areas of study (for example: secondary education, music therapy,
hospitality business and even packaging, which was something I never even considered being a field of study before I made it to college). Just as the Spartans allowed for their own people to be educated above other cultures, America's support of public universities like MSU allow for a whole swath of citizens to get college degrees, raising the education level of the middle class generation after generation.

OK, so after that long rambly bit, one other important factor to keep in mind while looking at Year of Arts and Culture are the specific motivating factors behind recent changes in MSU's handling of arts education. When I was an undergrad, I was a student in the College of Arts & Letters, a unit of the university under whose banner rested
English, Theatre, Music, History, Religious Studies and a few other smaller disciplines. Furthermore, I lived for two years in the Mason-Abbot dorms as a member of the Residential Option in Arts & Letters (ROIAL), which was a program intended to draw together a bunch of arts students who wouldn't get lost in the shuffle of such a big school. By my senior year, MSU had a new president in the form of Lou Anna Simon, a career educator who admitted to a meeting of Arts & Letters faculty and students that she "didn't get" what people in the humanities do. Over the past few years, Simon has been restructuring Arts & Letters to be a residential college in the mold of MSU's well-respected James Madison College, and generally, I'm all for that
approach as it pretty much takes the tenants of the ROIAL program and applies them to every student studying the arts at MSU. On the other hand, Simon is kind of an idiot, so I've been watching what she's done to the arts programs there with a cautious eye.

This year (I believe) marked the first year that the College of Arts & Letters was replaced by the newly residential College of Arts & Humanities. Amongst the changes made to MSU's previous method of organizing curriculum were the dismantling of ROIAL (I'm still pretty bummed I missed the farewell party earlier this summer), the spinning of the Music department into its own college (which will eventually be
supported by a new building) and the moving of history into the College of Social Sciences. Some of these changes I'm for, some I'm against, and some I haven't made up my mind on. In any event, I'm generally for the overriding reasoning behind all the changes which is to make the arts curriculum at State see more students, more money and more recognition. I can only assume that this Year of Arts and Culture is the university's way of supporting the new initiative both financially (you'll notice on that page that they're supporting both the music college and the arts college) and socially (trying to gain credit for being cutting edge thinkers in their approach to academics or some such ridiculous thing). All the while, the Spartan athletic
program (regardless of the winning or losing percentages of most of its teams) rakes in money hand over fist for the general fund while the university as a whole supports the broadest and most comprehensive reach possible.

So no, I don't think that MSU's current celebration is at odds with its mascot.

Curious to hear your thoughts,

- Kiel

St. Charlie
This is the core of my problem with Charlie Weis: the members of the Irish Nation, most of them bright, pleasant, and erudite people, have in him an inexplicable and groundless faith that borders on the idolatrous. And note in what I say next that I am not endorsing Ty Willingham as a head football coach nor his tenure as head coach at Notre Dame, but in his first season at Notre Dame, using players largely recruited by his predecessor Bob Davie, Willingham lead the vile Fighting Irish to an 8-0 start; at this point, he was under contract for five or six seasons and his contract was not renegotiated to boost Willingham's salary. In Weis's first season at Notre Dame, using players largely recruited by his predecessor Ty Willingham, he lead the vile Fighting Irish to a 5-2 start; at this point, he was under contract for six years, but his contract was renegotiated to extend his tenure and boost his salary.

From what source does this faith in Weis emanate? To hear Notre Dame fans, one would think that Bill Belichick (head coach), Tom Brady (quarterback), Deion Branch (wide receiver), and Tedy Bruschi (linebacker) had absolutely nothing to do with New England's three Super Bowl triumphs, that each had been solely engineered by Weis (offensive coordinator). Weis was a tremendously important part of the Patriots' success, but he was only one part of a very complex recipe. So, after he had signed his name to a contract, why was it necessary to renegotiate his contract midway through a season? Fear that he might bolt for an NFL head coaching job? That could only be true if Weis's word (his signature on a contract and his statements to the media) was meaningless. But the necessity of the contract extension is secondary. The real question is, based upon what criteria was renegotiation even considered? Up to that point in his first year, Weis had not performed as well as the reviled Willingham! What was Weis's record as a head coach in college before coming to Notre Dame? He doesn't have one. What was Weis's record as a head coach in the NFL before coming to Notre Dame? He doesn't have one. So, with no credentials as a head coach in over fifteen years, and even that was at the high school level; with no experience as a college recruiter; with many other people with whom he had to share credit for the potency of New England's offense; and with a 5-2 record that at Michigan at least would have had a coach in hot water, based upon WHAT EXACTLY was St. Charlie offered a new, higher paying, and longer lasting contract midway through his first season?

I should also add that I believe Notre Dame's invitation to and sound defeat in two consecutive BCS Bowl games stands as yet another indictment of the BCS as a pinheaded and deeply flawed system. One last shot at the vile Fighting Irish of the University of Notre Dame and then I'll be a paragon of sympathy and goodwill until after bowl bids are announced in early December: they are 0-4, the first 0-4 start in school history, and stand an excellent chance of being ineligible for post-season play. They and their boorish head coach are irrelevant.