aggienaut | 13 of 30 - Echidna Hype II (Reply)

A brief explanation: I wrote this in fall 2002 as UC Davis moved into "Division 1" of intercollegiate athletics. It appeared in the last issue of the Chosen Echidna, but I don't believe I've posted it in this livejournal yet.

Go D3!!

   "UC Davis continues its winning streak by defeating Saddleback Community College 205-0." This and many similar headlines could be appearing on newspapers near you if UC Davis successfully moves down to Division Three athletics.
   Athletics officials explain that the fundamental benefit is name recognition. The large number of community colleges and other institutions with feeble D3 athletics programs would give us a much larger array of schools to compete with. This in turn would increase our name recognition and reputation over a much larger area. It would also have a great impact on increasing the number of applicants to UC Davis, as community college students are much more likely to subsequently attend Davis than say, San Diego State students. "Why would we want to compete against a D2 or D1 school anyway? They clearly won't be inspired to transfer to UC Davis from such an experience. Heck, we might even be defeated and bring shame upon our descendants for generations to come," explains one athletics official. "We shouldn't chance it, we should compete against Division Three schools where we know we can win and inspire our competitors with fear and inadequacy."    Initially the change to Division Three was to be paid for by the Administration, as has been done at other schools, but an overeager ASUCD senator apparently took the initiative in offering to have the students pay. "Yea, we were going to pay for it all, but one of the ASUCD senators took it upon himself to campaign for students to fund it, and we sure as heck weren't about to stop him," concedes an administration representative "no, we're not really sure why he's doing this. It crossed our minds that he may be trying really, really hard to suck up to us, but we're more of the opinion that he's just permanently delirious."
   If approved, the D3 initiative will bring along with it several buildings which have absolutely no relation to D3, and several ASUCD senate candidates who intend to ride the wave of support for it into office. Political science majors will all attest however that these kind of unrelated connections are to be expected in any healthy political environment. "Its like those sucker fish, echeneididae, that attach to whales and sharks; they are completely expected and normal." At a cost of $1,372.98 per student per year, in addition to the various chosen echeneididae¹, the costs will overwhelmingly be used for giving full scholarships to jocks. Much like the aforementioned sucker-fish, this also apparently is in keeping with natural laws of the universe, as the athletics official explained: "these students are unfairly discriminated against because the skills they happen to have don't correspond to uses in the real world, therefore it is only right, fitting and ethical that we offset this terrible situation by having other students pay more so that the athletes don't have to pay."
   As the official summarized, "We need to stop slogging around with equal schools we have nothing to gain from competing against, and completely throw out this idea of competing against superior schools, let us bring ourselves glory: its time; think D3."

¹"the Chosen Echeneididae" was the title of a previous issue of the Chosen Echidna.