Word: mania
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...Muppet Mania...
Writer Jack Skow started out thinking the story was simple enough. "Then," he says, "I found myself feeling as if I were trying to stop 4,000 Ping Pong balls from rolling off a table." Trying to pin down the mystique of Muppet mania, Skow first tried to attack the question scientifically, only to throw up his hands cheerfully in the end. Says he: "The trick in writing the story was to analyze the magic without destroying...
...just want to be out there," explains Lisa. Grins 16-year-old Robin Coburn, a tall, willowy junior who has already made the line: "It's just a big deal. And your names are announced at the games." On those Friday nights every autumn, high school football mania sweeps across Texas, consuming everything in its path. But unlike Northern fans, Texans never streak for the restrooms and hot-dog stands at halftime. They stay to see the marching band and, especially, to watch the high-strutting twirlers showing off flash, skill and baby fat in their tight, sequined costumes...
Such maneuvering is a bit out of character for a school that talks football like the Ivy League but plays it like the Southwest Conference. (Penn State is, in fact, an independent.) Football has never been a mania at Penn State. Long before the N.C.A.A. this year clamped a 30-player annual limit on new recruits and a ceiling of 95 football scholarships overall, Paterno rarely recruited more than 25 players a year. By comparison, Oklahoma bestowed 40 to 50 scholarships a year before the new limits were imposed. Players point proudly to the absence of a jock aristocracy...
While a clearer job description may help to forestall illusions on the part of Harvard's junior faculty, honesty about the University's limitations does not solve the more fundamental problems of the job market, the publication mania and the resulting laissez-faire attitude toward undergraduate education. Although few would advocate that the University turn away from its search for the best and the brightest, some believe Harvard's educational reputation demands a reassessment of these anomalies. At least one junior faculty member, however, doubts Harvard's willingness to face this challenge. He says, "To change the situation, you need...