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This is a GUEST POST by Nick Strohl,  a doctoral student in History and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I had the pleasure of engaging Nick in my higher education policy class last semester, where he was a complete star. His areas of study include the history of education, American intellectual and cultural history, and higher education. His current research focus is the history of American higher education during the interwar years. Much of this post centers on discussion of these two recent books: Taylor Branch, 2011,  TheCartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent Fall of the NCAA.   Brian M.  Ingrassia,  2012,  The Rise of Gridiron University: Higher Education’s Uneasy Alliancewith Big-Time Football.   If you look closely at images of the recently-removed Joe Paterno statue outside of Beaver Stadium on the Penn State campus, you can make out the familiar Nike Swoosh on the uniforms of the four anonymous players who follo...

If there's one thing Wisconsin seems to agree on, it's the Badgers. Even if you never attended or even cared to attend UW-Madison, you're most likely a fan. Why? Honestly, I won't pretend to know--college football's never been my thing. But I do think it's cool that people throughout the state seem to feel they have a little bit of Madison they're connected to. Football-- Bucky-- makes that happen. As my late colleague and friend Doug Toma wrote in Football U , "football humanizes seemingly impersonal large universities for external audiences." But a few recent incidents regarding UW football seem to have affected UW Madison's activities and image in ways that deserve some scrutiny. First, last Thursday afternoon (on the eve of the first day of classes), Madison faculty and staff were urged to abandon their offices early and clear out of campus so that the crowds could take over for the season opener against UNLV. Many campus administrative ...