Fitz's Harvard Degree

[N.Y. Orangeman]

Football has always been, and probably always will be, a primarily blue collar game for both the participants as well as the fans (pansy indoor corporate boxes aside). Lets face it, you aren't going to find too many doctors, lawyers, or CEOs face down in their own vomit at the Ralph on any given Sunday. Chris brown epitomizes that and is acknowledging, in his own way, that there is room in football for someone with more than a "paper or plastic" level IQ ... just as long as he doesn't act superior to the others.

 

 

So this is the standard now? In any event, I couldn't disagree with you more, by the way, especially if you include CFB.

[Bills99999]

While Ivy League football players are in college, they tend to downplay the fact they are football players while in class by not wearing clothing that denotes they are football players. They do this so professors will not pre-judge them as football admissions. Of course, the professor would have to be an idiot not to figure out that the bulky guys with the protruding foreheads and bruises hanging out together in the back of the room are not football players.

 

Same thing goes when they get out into the working world. They may have the Ivy degree hanging on their office wall, but they like to downplay their football history

 

Its not that Ivy football players are stupid, but the overwhelming majority were admitted ahead of more academically qualified applicants. They use what is called the "Academic Index"

 

http://www.collegeconfidential.com/academic_index.htm

 

Then again, football players in most BCS programs ARE idiots. Just look at Cam Newtons painted laptop and listen to Michael Vick try to express "hisself"

Edited December 21, 2010 by Bills99999

[yungmack]

Football has always been, and probably always will be, a primarily blue collar game for both the participants as well as the fans (pansy indoor corporate boxes aside).

Um, actually football was once the sport of the elite (as was boxing). The original great football teams were the Ivy League. It was the SEC of its day, with Yale and Harvard being the Florida and Alabama of its time. One of the reasons so many colleges began adding football was the perception that this gave them the cachet of being a Great University just like Harvard.

[Bills99999]

Geddy Lee was a playwright as well?

 

youtube.com/watch?v=A18oZixDRk0

 

 

This guy is a big Rush fan

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOYZa16BmJA

 

Do you really think that Stevie Johnson gives a rats ass about how much smarter Fitzpatrick is than him?

 

NO player in ANY nfl locker room gives a rats ass about his Harvard degree. In fact, If Fitzpatrick were to talk act superior in any way to the other players he'd lose the locker room. You'd eventually have guys more interested in knocking him off his arrogant high horse than winning a game. That's easy to do in the NFL. They can make him look real good and they can make him look reeeeaaaallll bad.

 

If you want to act cerebral, then go be a baseball player. I'm betting that NFL locker rooms don't take a shine to the cerebral types. They're more impressed if you can smash a beer can on your face.

 

 

They may act like they are not impressed, but I'll bet he's the first one they go to when they want to know how to spell something when they are Twittering, or Tweetering or whatever you call it

 

If he went to Cornell he went to Cornell. It doesn't matter what Department he was admitted to. If the school offers that program they see value in it. Because it's not something you might consider the "school of engineering" does not mean it wasn't a rigorous program. I'm sure it was. Ivy League schools don't trade in half-assed programs. No matter what the field of study. It would be bad for their brand and that brand is extremely important to all of the Ivies.

 

That being said attendance at Harvard does not necessarily make Fitz any more intelligent than the next guy or girl. There are all types of ways for people to learn and gain knowledge. I find, in my experience, that folks who don't have an Ivy League degree make a bigger deal out of it than the actual graduates of Ivy League institutions.

 

 

The advantage of the Cornell Ag school is that you pay SUNY tuition. Some with the Hotel School

 

That is why other Ivy people tease them by calling it "SUNY Ithaca"

[Hplarrm]

I have family members that are alumni and that wasn't a slam on Cornell at all, but rather on Olbermann, who wasn't admitted to the private prestigious Ivy League Cornell that has very strict admissions standards, yet he tries to act as if he is.

 

My understanding is that Olbermann was admitted to the agricultural school of Cornell, which is not exactly the school of engineering, and has much more leniant admission standards. I don't claim to understand exactly how the two schools are separated, but I think it's like having played for the Cincinatti Swords farm team while claiming to have been a player for the Sabres 1975 Stanley Cup team.

 

Anyway, Fitz does not come of as some pompous blueblood Bostonian with a Hav-ahd Diploma who would shove it in your face. He seems to be well liked and respected by his teammates, and shows it by throwing his body in harms way as a blocker to help gain a few extra yards. He is a blue collar kind of guy who just happens to be pretty damn smart and got the education to go along with it.

The thing that amuses me most about some taking this as an opportunity to launch their attack on Olbermann using the seeming anti-intellectual comments of Chris Brown being based in some left-wing egalitarianism when my sense is not only do such stupid anti-intellectualism stem from the left but also from the right. A big part of the whole Sarah Palin shtick seems to be this earthy Momma Grizzly thing that passes over intellectual analysis of complex issues (and doing complex things like reading the paper) and instead simply reacts.

 

Whether its the left or the right these appear to be folks who are simply insecure about anything different than they are.

 

Fitzy being one of the guys probably strikes Brown as being most important because it is simply a declaration of Fitzy not being intellectually different.

[Tom]

Wow!! Talk about over-reading. Relax sensitive Sally

+1

[fairweather fan]

Where Harvard excels is, due to being the first institution of higher learning in the Colonies, it developed a reputation which drew the cream of the academic crop for more than two hundred years, and due to the amount of money it has invested from donations, it can hire (like the Yankees) the most valuable teachers from law, business, and liberal arts backgrounds. But a scientist or an engineer will accept a scholarship frm M.I.T. before he or she would accept one from Harvard, because that is where science and engineering is taught by the best.

 

 

I worked with Harvard grads and undergrads, and once you get into the school, the academic rigor seems less than I experienced at a Roman Catholic institution 45 years ago. Harvard graduates are people, people with all of the faults and good attributes of others, but, for the most part, better academic backgrounds which for the most part they received at private prep schools. The "Ivy League" designation is the name of the football conference, which was carried over to the colleges after the football league was named.

 

A captain that I served with in Vietnam who had a Harvard undergraduate degree was a prime !@#$, who treated Blacks and Hispanics as if he were a graduate of Alabama in that period (where the Governor stood in the doorway in a symbolic stand against the integration of Alabama University.)

 

I worked with a Harvard undergraduate who had a nervous breakdown, and I went to various prisons in Massachusetts to bail him out, as he became violent, especially toward women. He called me from a psychiatric institution one day, but I was not at home, so my young daughter told the babysitter not to accept the phone charges. He commited suicide within five minutes of the call.

 

A member of my family by marriage graduated from Duke, and Harvard Medical School, but I have never held his degrees against him. Interestingly enough, Tom Brady, a graduate of Michigan, which is considered an academic powerhouse, worked as hard at academics as he did at athletics, and expects to go into politics when he retires from football.

 

I believe that the reason that Cornell Agricultural students pay less tuition is because the school was funded with Federal land grant monies, the same source of monies that funded all of the "Big Ten" schools, who all started as agricultural colleges.

[Bills99999]

Where Harvard excels is, due to being the first institution of higher learning in the Colonies, it developed a reputation which drew the cream of the academic crop for more than two hundred years, and due to the amount of money it has invested from donations, it can hire (like the Yankees) the most valuable teachers from law, business, and liberal arts backgrounds. But a scientist or an engineer will accept a scholarship frm M.I.T. before he or she would accept one from Harvard, because that is where science and engineering is taught by the best.

 

 

I worked with Harvard grads and undergrads, and once you get into the school, the academic rigor seems less than I experienced at a Roman Catholic institution 45 years ago. Harvard graduates are people, people with all of the faults and good attributes of others, but, for the most part, better academic backgrounds which for the most part they received at private prep schools. The "Ivy League" designation is the name of the football conference, which was carried over to the colleges after the football league was named.

 

A captain that I served with in Vietnam who had a Harvard undergraduate degree was a prime !@#$, who treated Blacks and Hispanics as if he were a graduate of Alabama in that period (where the Governor stood in the doorway in a symbolic stand against the integration of Alabama University.)

 

I worked with a Harvard undergraduate who had a nervous breakdown, and I went to various prisons in Massachusetts to bail him out, as he became violent, especially toward women. He called me from a psychiatric institution one day, but I was not at home, so my young daughter told the babysitter not to accept the phone charges. He commited suicide within five minutes of the call.

 

A member of my family by marriage graduated from Duke, and Harvard Medical School, but I have never held his degrees against him. Interestingly enough, Tom Brady, a graduate of Michigan, which is considered an academic powerhouse, worked as hard at academics as he did at athletics, and expects to go into politics when he retires from football.

 

I believe that the reason that Cornell Agricultural students pay less tuition is because the school was funded with Federal land grant monies, the same source of monies that funded all of the "Big Ten" schools, who all started as agricultural colleges.

 

 

Ivy League schools do not award scholarships based on merit, only financial need.

 

The Ivy schools have really thrown money around for the lower and even the middle class in the past 10 years so a family of 4 making less than 75,000 pays ZERO.

[Green Lightning]

+1. He shouldn't rub it in anyone's face, because on the field no one cares if you're from Coe College or a Rhodes Scholar (well, except if you're that kid from Florida State...). But there's a world of difference between condescension and pride. Nothing wrong with expressing the latter for such a fine achievement.

 

Well said!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Here is what Chris Brown says in a recent report about Fitz:

 

"Perhaps most important is even though Fitzpatrick comes with a Harvard pedigree, he doesn’t wear it like a badge of superiority."

 

Just curious: why is this what is "most important?" Why is it more important than any other qualities? Why isn't it ok for him to be proud of his degree?

 

What bothers me is that this country is so bloody egalitarian and anti-intellectual that we don't appreciate anyone's intellectual achievements. God forbid Fitz should let it be known that he has a Harvard degree (as if that is something he should strut around with for the rest of his life anyhow). No, he must act like a normal dummy because that is what is important. Getting along with the guys. Being one of the crowd.

 

Stupid.

 

There's an Ivy League joke: "You can always tell a Harvard man" "Yeah, but you can't tell him much!"

It's funny because there's that element of truth to it.

Fitz isn't like that, is all I think Chris Brown is saying.

[Tolstoy]

There's an Ivy League joke: "You can always tell a Harvard man" "Yeah, but you can't tell him much!"

It's funny because there's that element of truth to it.

Fitz isn't like that, is all I think Chris Brown is saying.

 

 

Right--I get that part. As the initial poster on this one, I just want to say that what bothered me were two things:

 

(1) The claim that "what is most important" in the football locker room is that a player does not flaunt his academic achievements. He can flaunt other achievements, such as athletic achievements. He can wear his football achievements as a "badge of superiority" (this happens in every locker room), but God forbid he should seem in any way SMARTER than his mates.

 

(2) The implicit assumption that having gone to Harvard does make you superior! In a strange and ironic twist, Chris Brown's remark about this shows that he at least does think that having gone to Harvard makes you superior, otherwise he wouldn't have even mentioned it as even worthy of a "badge of superiority." Who really cares where Fitx went to school? Maybe its just me, but I could really care less where you got your B.A. If you studied hard and got your B.A from Canisius or UB, you get just as much respect from me.

[Mr. WEO]

The most difficult part of obtaining a Harvard degree (or other Ivy degree) is getting in. After that, you will almost certainly graduate--with honors.

 

In 1996, 82% of all Harvard seniors graduated with honors. 91% did in 2001. In 2001 50% off all grades were A's. At Princeton in 1996, 42% of all undergraduate grades were A's. Only 12% of all grades were below B.

 

There's no doubt that these schools have the most competitive admissions process, but once you get in, you're likely to graduate with honors. Grade inflations has been a major prop of their brand since the 60's.

Edited December 22, 2010 by Mr. WEO

[1billsfan]

Right--I get that part. As the initial poster on this one, I just want to say that what bothered me were two things:

 

(1) The claim that "what is most important" in the football locker room is that a player does not flaunt his academic achievements. He can flaunt other achievements, such as athletic achievements. He can wear his football achievements as a "badge of superiority" (this happens in every locker room), but God forbid he should seem in any way SMARTER than his mates.

 

(2) The implicit assumption that having gone to Harvard does make you superior! In a strange and ironic twist, Chris Brown's remark about this shows that he at least does think that having gone to Harvard makes you superior, otherwise he wouldn't have even mentioned it as even worthy of a "badge of superiority." Who really cares where Fitx went to school? Maybe its just me, but I could really care less where you got your B.A. If you studied hard and got your B.A from Canisius or UB, you get just as much respect from me.

 

 

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. "What's most important" is just a phrase dude. It's not meant to be taken literally. In this case, it means his not being an arrogant ivy league a-hole greatly helps his leadership by not alienating his teammates who majored in liberal arts while attending some football factory school down south.

[Tolstoy]

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. "What's most important" is just a phrase dude. It's not meant to be taken literally. In this case, it means his not being an arrogant ivy league a-hole greatly helps his leadership by not alienating his teammates who majored in liberal arts while attending some football factory school down south.

 

 

Hold on a minute, "dude." Back up. Did you just associate "majoring in liberal arts" with a "football factory school education"????? I'm not sure where you are coming from here, but a degree in literature, theology, or philosophy, to me, is an intellectual achievement. I will not stoop to denigrating other disciplines, but anyone who studies the seminal ideas of our intellectual tradition, and who learns to think, read, write, and speak, as required for a degree in the liberal arts, is an educated person of the highest order.

 

Any idea why they are called "Liberal" arts????? Go read Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University, or Joseph Pieper's Leisure: the Basis of Culture, and then we will talk. You just picked fight with the wrong "dude."

Edited December 22, 2010 by Tolstoy

[1billsfan]

Hold on a minute, "dude." Back up. Did you just associate "majoring in liberal arts" with a "football factory school education"????? I'm not sure where you are coming from here, but a degree in literature, theology, or philosophy, to me, is an intellectual achievement. I will not stoop to denigrating other disciplines, but anyone who studies the seminal ideas of our intellectual tradition, and who learns to think, read, write, and speak, as required for a degree in the liberal arts, is an educated person of the highest order.

 

Any idea why they are called "Liberal" arts????? Go read Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University, or Joseph Pieper's Leisure: the Basis of Culture, and then we will talk. You just picked fight with the wrong "dude."

 

 

 

Dude, seriously?

[allenwebb]

I'm a Harvard grad (class of '91, much older than Fitz), and wanted to add a couple of things on this thread.

 

First, I think some on this board are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Fitz's comments on the topic seem pretty balanced and, frankly, are consistent with the attitudes of many Harvard grads in many professions. Everyone hates the know it all Harvard a-hole, and most Harvard grads don't want to be that guy/gal. So it's pretty common for alums to simply not say much of anything about where they went to college and, if asked, to mention it and quickly move on. That doesn't mean they aren't proud of their school or are anti-intellectual or anything else. Nor do I think it's a bad reflection on our society to say that it hates a know-it-all a-hole. You can be smart or an a-hole, or smart and not an a-hole; the latter is better!

 

Second, no disrespect to my alma mater, but becoming an NFL quarterback after playing at Harvard is a much more impressive accomplishment in my book than graduating from Harvard. Harvard isn't all that tough a school. Getting in is extraordinarily difficult, but once you're there, you can skate by if you want with a "gentleman's C" (no doubt a B minus these days with grade inflation!). Excelling at something at Harvard is what's impressive because in just about every area other than sports (academics, music, the school newspaper, otehr clubs) you're playing with/competing with some of the most impressive kids of your generation. That's the best thing about Harvard--it takes people who have been really successful, and throws them in together in a way that helps everyone who wants to push themselves to heights they didn't know existed. This is the case except for most sports (crew, squash, and sometimes hockey the big exceptions), where everyone knows they are playing for the love of the game, and where the competition--both internally, and with other Ivy League schools, is far, far, far from world class. All that makes Fitz's NFL achievement to me absolutely mind bogglingly impressive. I guarantee you he was getting zero encouragement from his non-football friends at school to pursue the NFL. Even his teammates probably thought he was nuts. He was a strong Ivy League quarterback, but that's rarely gotten anyone into the NFL. So the guy has got to have a great reservoir of internal commitment and self-confidence to have even tried. I suspect those traits are part of what makes him an effective leader.

 

Although I live in Seattle now, I'm a Rochester native and have been a die-hard Bills fan since I started watching football. What a pleasure it is to see my home town and my undergraduate roots coming together. I never would have thought it possible!

 

Go Bills!

Edited December 22, 2010 by allenwebb

[Bills99999]

Right--I get that part. As the initial poster on this one, I just want to say that what bothered me were two things:

 

(1) The claim that "what is most important" in the football locker room is that a player does not flaunt his academic achievements. He can flaunt other achievements, such as athletic achievements. He can wear his football achievements as a "badge of superiority" (this happens in every locker room), but God forbid he should seem in any way SMARTER than his mates.

 

(2) The implicit assumption that having gone to Harvard does make you superior! In a strange and ironic twist, Chris Brown's remark about this shows that he at least does think that having gone to Harvard makes you superior, otherwise he wouldn't have even mentioned it as even worthy of a "badge of superiority." Who really cares where Fitx went to school? Maybe its just me, but I could really care less where you got your B.A. If you studied hard and got your B.A from Canisius or UB, you get just as much respect from me.

 

 

Would you also include ITT, ECPI, DeVry, and Phoenix Online?

[machinegun12]

Hold on a minute, "dude." Back up. Did you just associate "majoring in liberal arts" with a "football factory school education"????? I'm not sure where you are coming from here, but a degree in literature, theology, or philosophy, to me, is an intellectual achievement. I will not stoop to denigrating other disciplines, but anyone who studies the seminal ideas of our intellectual tradition, and who learns to think, read, write, and speak, as required for a degree in the liberal arts, is an educated person of the highest order.

 

Any idea why they are called "Liberal" arts????? Go read Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University, or Joseph Pieper's Leisure: the Basis of Culture, and then we will talk. You just picked fight with the wrong "dude."

Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison, probably. You're gonna be convinced of that til next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital forming effects of military mobilization.

 

Your response: Well, as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social...

 

Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County" ,page 98, right? Yeah, I read that, too. Were you gonna plagarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend, you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don't do this...and two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an f*$@!ng education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.-Will Hunting.

 

You kinda sound like the dork at the bar Tolstoy.

Edited December 22, 2010 by machinegun12

[machinegun12]

I, for one, think Fitzpatrick should walk into the huddle with a bowtie and pocket protector hanging off his jersey and some really thick coca-cola bottle glasses under his helmet and correct everyone's English when they're talking smack on the field.

[Tolstoy]

Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison, probably. You're gonna be convinced of that til next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital forming effects of military mobilization.

 

Your response: Well, as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social...

 

Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County" ,page 98, right? Yeah, I read that, too. Were you gonna plagarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend, you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don't do this...and two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an f*$@!ng education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.-Will Hunting.

 

You kinda sound like the dork at the bar Tolstoy.

 

Not quite sure I understand your response. But that is ok.