The first two legal forward passes in American football—probably the play that separates the North American version of the sport from the various forms of rugby football—were thrown by the SLU football team 100 years ago. Somewhat ironically, these days SLU is better known for its success in association football (soccer) and its long-running rugby club team than for college football, which was ended here in the middle of the last century during a period of budget cutbacks.

I really didn’t want this blog to become a bastion of academic navel-gazing, but there’s good linkworthy stuff here and there—a few of these are a little old, since I’ve been lazy in clearing out my Google Reader feeds:

• Stephen Karlson reacts to various and sundry articles on such things as public universities attempting to compete for good students with the Harvards of the world, rising standards at California’s community colleges, and reviving intercollegiate football as a carrot for getting male students in the door. One wonders if anyone at SLU (birthplace of the forward pass, running 57–43 in favor of the ladies at last count) looking at the last one…
• Tyler Cowen and Alan Wolfe (via Margaret Soltan) review Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?: Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education.
• Richard Vedder says too many kids go to college.
• Finally, the Dean Dad looks at department cutbacks at Florida.