Inappropriate Spending Wipes Out Books

Alas, we need to chart a new course.

Vanderbilt blew up its athletic department. You know what that's called? A nice start.

Eastern Tennessee State University dropped its football program. So have Boston University, Morris Brown and Cal State Northridge. If you visit those campuses, you'll find scholarly and blissful students going to science classes and sock hops!

I don't expect you to disband the football and basketball programs tomorrow, though that's the goal. At the moment I'd like to talk about the American Journalism Review, the media journal run by the University of Maryland Foundation.

I recently read that AJR might have to cease publishing -- it's $200,000 in the red. Two hundred grand? That's three days of meals for the football team. Can't someone step up here? If the football team gets, say, an extra quarter-million dollars a year in funding, maybe it goes from 7-4 to 8-3. What's that, the difference between the Meineke Car Care Bowl and the Roady's Humanitarian Bowl? But if AJR gets that same quarter-million dollars, it can actually impact the quality of information that flows through the veins of our fledgling democracy.

I'm going to throw in the first $1,000 to get AJR back on its feet. I'm asking some fellow Terps to follow my lead.

P.S. Beat Wake!

Ask The Slouch

Q. Yo, Slouch, Colt Brennan? Does Hawaii even play its games in pads? (David Dunn; Pittsburgh)

A. Yo, buddy, the Player of Destiny -- wrapping up a 12-day, 8,600-mile road trip -- completed 26 of 32 passes for 298 yards in Hawaii's 49-14 win over UNLV. Brennan's now completed 103 of 133 passes this season. He is Jackson Pollock with a better arm.

Q. Did anyone really believe Bill Belichick would be penalized severely by the NFL? Isn't he exempt under the Patriot Act? (Bob Jacobs; Oregon, Wis.)

A. FYI: I have sent Belichick's "apology" to a lab for testing; results are pending.

Q. Do you know if O.J. did it? (Marc Burke; Bartlett, Tenn.)

A. I doubt a crime occurred in that hotel room, but I saw him take a knife and two dinner rolls from the Palace Station buffet.

Q. Is it true that the University of Texas football playbook begins, "You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney"? (Preston Ivens; Sugar Land, Tex.)

A. Pay the man, Shirley.

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