SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

YOUR EDUCATION DOLLARS AT WORK – FROM LEGAL INSURRECTION:  It looks like not all colleges are worried about finances due to the pandemic. Do you think this was just an impulse purchase?  The College Fix reports:  Rutgers University’s football team may be on a three game losing streak, but its players can sleep easy thanks to a $12,400 napping machine.  At the onset of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Rutgers declared a fiscal emergency and aimed to reduce the budgetary shortfall. The Athletics Department, though, continued spending money largely uninterrupted — purchasing everything from a $12,400 power nap machine, to $470 laser pointers for the football coaches, to a car service for a single track athlete totaling $4,400.

The napZZZ Sport Pod “features a spacious interior with the ability to fully recline,” according to the company’s website. The public New Jersey university said it bypassed the bidding process because napZZZ is the only company that manufactures a sleeping pod for 7-foot tall, 250-pound athletes.  It’s not just sleepy athletes who will benefit from the athletic department’s spending habits — students who want to browse Instagram instead of watching Rutgers get blown-out can get on the WiFi inside the football stadium.  The paper identified other expenditures such as “$385,914 paid in May to SHI International Corp., the corporate sponsor of Rutgers football, to install wifi service in the student section of SHI stadium,” “$2,500 paid to K Sound LLC on Oct. 13, 2020 for generating fake crowd noise for a football team practice” and almost “$4,400 on June 14 for car service for a lone track athlete.”  Look, you gotta have fake crowd noise during practice.  How else can you play the game?  And maybe they can use the fake crowd noise to drown out the anti-American professors.  Sometimes colleges come up with useful stuff.

October 14, 2021