Three posts on education

1) In the wake of India trying to welcome US-based universities to educate its future generations,
(http://chronicle.com/blogs/worldwise/how-loyal-are-overseas-branch-campuses-to-their-host-countries/32723?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en) here is a report on how loyal are overseas branch campuses are to their host countries? Some points are worth emphasizing:

"A couple of weeks ago, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business announced that it would leave Singapore and shift its Asian operation to Hong Kong. The reasoning seems to be strategic. Its contract with Singapore was concluding in 2015, and Hong Kong offers better access to the rapidly expanding Chinese market. Similarly, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas has signaled that it may be leaving Singapore after its last batch of students complete their study in 2015. In this case, the university couldn’t agree on the student subsidies paid by its host, the government-sponsored Singapore Institute of Technology. And, in the midst of its global expansion, New York University also recently revealed it was closing its Tisch campus on the island nation after it also failed to reach a new financial arrangement with the Singapore government.
...
Within a matter of a few months, three international branch campuses on one island signaled they would be closing or relocating because they didn’t like the financial deal provided by the government. This is virtually unthinkable back home. The University of Chicago is not tempted to relocate to Houston because of Governor Perry’s pitch that business is better in Texas. The University of Nevada at Las Vegas will not be leaving Nevada no matter how much it dislikes the financial arrangement it has with Nevada. And NYU would never have closed its New York campus, even if it didn’t get approval from the city for a controversial expansion in Greenwich Village.
...
International branch campuses, though, seem to have a more flexible sense of place. They are less like a university in a college town and more like a department store in a suburban mall. If the community declines or the market shifts, the university soldiers on; the store has a moving sale."

There you go, in simple English, overseas branches are BIG business ventures for a university. As long as the money cow can be milked, India will be a target for every university in the US and Europe. Which means, India will always be a target for these universities. Thus, it behooves the MHRD and GoI to not loose their senses (which they so far have not) in opening up the education sector. As much as future generations of Indians need to be educated, it is not like the overseas universities are being benevolent, they are just trying to take care of their own bottomline first and foremost. If any philanthropic act accrues in the process, while these universities would like to take credit, only the naive will bestow free credit to them.

 2) William Deresiewicz writes the following in his piece, "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" (http://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/#.Uhv4B5JQFgo):

"Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it."

That last line quite caricatures the US and west-based Indian-origin peoples who find fault with most things that is India today and in the past, on both sides of the divide: leftists as well as rightists. When one takes themselves out of India, they should tend to judge less and accepting (in a non-flippant yet resigned-to-fate yet observational sense) of every possible stupidity that India and Indians display. The ones who want change by sitting outside and by influencing the proceedings inside do end up being the proverbial cats that run after their own tail. Quite amusing to watch for a show, not quite funny to have as a pet.

In any case, while admittedly a looong piece, the author belabors and rambles about the simple point that no metric can capture it all. Yet, there has to be a metric, some metric, any metric to measure things, even if incompletely, even if imperfectly, even if idiotically. The criticism of existing measures is not the same as an alternate/candidate metric that will meet these virtues and more. It is just a destructive criticism of things that exist as not meeting the imaginary benchmarks set by the author. A more constructive and far more difficult criticism is to propose a candidate that could be tested for being a useful solution to the problem at hand.

Nepotism and elitism are not new phenomena that have come about with Ivy League universities or their poor Indian copycats. Nepotism has existed ever since man has, every set of peoples end up subdividing themselves till they feel comfortable as a unit. To deny that these do not exist is to whitewash history. Given that these two traits do exist, the current solution is the best till a new one comes up. And when a new better solution is up, people do switch on to that bandwagon till another one turns up. To deride the course of history in the hope of building a better h metric is one, to deride that to endlessly circle around the same point without solving the problem at hand is quite another.

3) Buttressing the above claim that nepotism and elitism exist even in the highest circles, here is a report on how four of the key ideas in Obama's plan to control college costs bear familiar fingerprints (http://chronicle.com/article/4-Key-Ideas-in-Obamas-Plan/141239/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en):

"The president's plan dovetails closely with the agendas of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has spent $472-million to remake college education in the United States, and of the Lumina Foundation, the largest private foundation devoted solely to higher education. Many features of the president's plan have been advocated, too, in the research and analysis of the New America Foundation's education-policy program." 

There you go, even the only superpower's policies get made in Seattle, Bay Area or Indianapolis. Thank god that the Obama administration did not source ideas from the Heritage Foundation.

Vishwaroopam, Thalaivaa, Madras Cafe, ...

(Or) Trends in Tamland....

The behavior of every political party on matters pertaining to Tamil identity (whatever that means) has been/is predictable to a large degree. What varies across party-lines are the nuances and fine-prints. This has been the case since competitive multi-party electoral reality with a reasonable representativeness became the norm in Tamland (circa early 40s). Any party that defies this natural dictum gets banished by the electorate, either slowly over time as happened with the Communist/socialist parties from the late-40s through the 60s, or in a jiffy as was the case with the Congress party in the 1957-67 phase. In this sense, Tamland is not unique, with similar trends identified and witnessed across India.

Given this background, what does one make of the Tamland pressure groups' clamor to ban the movie "Madras Cafe?" What does one make of the trends in Tamland, in general? Here is my take based on my understanding of history. There are four lines of thought that come to my mind from watching the trends in Tamland over the years.

1) Weakening hold of ADMK and DMK: Both ADMK and DMK have been around in Tamland for a long time to systematically master the full-circle art of propaganda and populism, short-term vs. long-term electoral strategizing trade-offs, victory followed by shoring up the support-cast, and resilience following defeat in electoral battles. In terms of leadership, both parties follow the classical Indian model of a tree hierarchy in contrast to the hub-and-spokes model that is common among the Communist outfits. While the tree hierarchy with an asymmetrical leader is advantageous in making quick business decisions (an obvious need for a well-oiled democracy), the hub-and-spokes hierarchy can be constrained by the ideological differences between the first-among-equals. On the other hand, the former hierarchy is more susceptible to a decapitating strike than the latter.

While Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi have been de facto bosses of Tamland (in turn), neither can boss around the boss of them all: time (the theists might prefer to substitute time with god, but Mr. Karunanidhi will prefer the irreverent rationalist idea called time to the reverent "venghaayam" of an idea called god, one might hope). It is amply clear that the hold of Karunanidhi, even on his own family, is not steady over the last decade, let alone on his party and the state. With two sons, a daughter and a couple of nephew's sons seeking to control the party, and a large clique from the families of the fellow travelers in the DMK saga seeking to align themselves with the most likely victor, DMK is passing through a stage where the post-Karunanidhi phase is assured to be a civil war. On the other hand, the multiple anti-corruption cases and the copious amounts of biriyani have had a lasting impact on the hold and health of Jayalalitha. With no second-rung in her party to pass the baton to, Jayalalitha is still confronting the ghosts of confessions from her partner-in-crime that seems endless. A capricious nature, that has resulted in a large number of sharks hurt by her past actions baying for her blood (as and when the opportunity may strike), means that the leader of the ADMK is a leader alright, but one who has to watch her back all the time.

2) Hedging the bets: In addition to the weakening hold of the ADMK and DMK on power politics, their hold on Tamil identity matters is also vanishing slowly, but steadily. Decades of brushing aside (see Footnote 1) the casteist-religious dynamic of Tamil society by the supposedly-unifying theme of a mythical Tamil identity is dying a slow and visible death. I personally do not find hiding behind the mythical Tamil identity a good or a stable long-term solution provided the real differences between different sets of peoples is held at the personal and family level, rather than induce a noxious circle of calumny and abuse at the societal level. But, I digress.

Overtly caste and religion-driven political outfits such as PMK, DMDK, KMK/KMP, MMK/TMMK have flowered aplenty in Tamland over the last three decades. While one could empathize with the Live and Let Live dictum that seems to twine through India, certain outfits present a good case for being banned outright or asap. Except for the common theme of "munnettram" (progress/progressive), "makkal" (people) and "kazhagam" (organization/group), none of these organizations have an ideology or a vision that is beyond the narrow and tunnel-visioned. As a result, these outfits have not burst across the seams except past their own unique support base. A case in point is PMK (the successor of the Commonweal and Toilers parties of the 50s) whose vote bank and vote share has stabilized at 5% and is primarily in the reckoning only in the Vanniyar-dominated North Tamil Nadu belt surrounding Madras city.

Being survivalists, they have forged ties with the DMK and ADMK in turn and then, going alone with bridges burned on both sides. The ADMK and DMK have found these petty parties to be "useful idiots" in hedging their bets on their loosening hold on different segments of Tamland society. But more importantly, when in union with either ADMK or DMK, these petty parties have punched above their weight by acts of connivance using the weight of the two dominant political parties. When on their own, they have acted as a nuisance to the common man with the opposition party remaining silent on their tantrums while the ruling party tries to put down the fire using its resources. As much as one would like to see the negative side of these outfits, I would see the positive in how they expose the self-contradictory nature of Tamil society, especially as championed by the DMK and ADMK (in turn) and also by these petty outfits.

3) Calculus of power vacuum: While the power vacuum in ADMK and DMK and their constant self-doubts has given space to petty outfits, this vacuum has not been filled by the more than life presence of the Congress or the BJP, both entrenched in their own tales of self-pity and paranoia. Gone are the days when a tall leader like Kamaraj walked the length and breadth of the state. Even a poor shadow of Kamaraj like G. K. Mooppanaar could induce more life into the Tamland Congress party than the stale breath that emanates from Sathyamurthi Bhavan these days. That said, even the very name Sathyamurthi Bhavan is emblematic of the disconnect the Congress party has with the demographic of Tamland. A Brahmin and the political guru of Kamaraj sure has good claims to having the TNCC headquarters named after him, but Kamaraj is "Guruvai minjina sishyan" by any yardstick. The Congress party would have bitten dust in the 1957 elections (instead of in 1967) had it not been for Kamaraj forcibly taking over the reins of the party from Rajaji, the support that move got from Periyar in the form of non-Brahminical camaraderie, and in turn, Kamaraj's decency in co-opting C. Subramaniam (Rajaji's nominee for the leader of the party) and M. Bhakthavatsalam in the Cabinet -- both Brahmins and tall leaders in their own mold. Like in Invictus, Kamaraj delayed the inevitable, only to be undone by the surge of father time and the impending demographic bulge against the fortunes of an anachronistic party whose shelf-life had long expired.

Beaten back by the language blues, one would have hoped that the Congress party would have learned its lessons in re-selling itself as the panacea to the hopelessness of the Tamland electorate oscillating between the vagaries of the two *MKs. Not to be, the constant family-centric policies of the Congress party has meant that tall leaders like Marshal Nesamoni Ponniah (who led the efforts in joining the southern Tamil-speaking districts of the Travancore province with Tamland in the state reorganization efforts of the mid-50s), P. Subbarayan (who started off by opposing the Panagal Raja faction of the Justice Party, but later moved closer to Rajaji, CS and Bhakthavatsalam), etc., have been shunted to the back pages of Tamland Congress history. Why, even the Congress (I) vs. Congress (O) split (following the takeover of the party by Indira Gandhi) has not healed in the party with the abuses meted out to Kamaraj by the Gandhi family loyalists still a constant reminder to the Kamaraj loyalists of what the party looks like and will look like. In contrast to being the refuge of the non-casteist with a national vision beyond the petty, TNCC has been at the forefront of inter-caste feuds like the Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar-Emmanuel Sekaran fight, Muthuralaminga Thevar-Shanmuga Rajeswara Sethupathi (deceased Raja of Ramnad and one of the champions of the Justice Party before shifting loyalties to the Congress) fight, Kula kalvithh thhittam and non-repeal of the Criminal Tribes Act during the Rajaji regime, and so on. While these are old stories, the scars remain as constant reminders, especially in rural Tamland where blood flows more eloquently than Cauvery.

In contrast to the Congress, the BJP and its unilateral focus on Hindutva in a state that needs no preaching on its Hindu credentials (with a deep sense of piety despite the enormous stresses induced on such a piety by the rationalist movement) has led to it being a non-starter everywhere except in polarized constituencies with a demographic shift. A constant stand-in-your-face assertion of the BJP will bring it not many new voters in Tamland till the demographic shifts visibly --- a good 40 to 50 years away, based on my biased estimates. In short, the BJP is hobbled by an inability to understand the linguistic ideals of the state, its moorings in Maharashtra and North India coupled with its hopelessness to tailor itself to the needs of a state that is as unique as can be, and a constant with-us-or-against-us catcall that is decided by voters conveniently looking past it, and so on. Thus, for the Congress party to become a force to be reckoned with again, it needs to look past La Familia. For the BJP to become relevant, it needs to win Tamil orators, rhetoricians and cultural stalwarts who can connect with what drives the state and what matters to the state. Fat chance either of these trends are happening in the near future.

4) Aggressive manipulation: A visible power vacuum that is not filled by the national parties is ripe for being taken by the contender(s). Whatever drives the current cultural and political space of the Tamils will be used aggressively by the petty outfits to space themselves as the champions of Tamil identity. This is the precise space that has led to the constant attempts at hero-izing (see Footnote 2) Prabhakaran, Veerappan, and the murderers of Rajiv Gandhi. Not to mention inter-state water disputes like Cauvery and Mullaipperiyar. Of course, while the latter issues need two to tango, the former are primarily a power vacuum where the national parties have been hopelessly beaten at the propaganda game by the petty outfits and the regional parties are dancing to the tune of these outfits which enjoy the first-mover effect.

In this game, no-namers like Seeman and Pazha Nedumaran as well as spent-forces like Vai Ko are all only emulating the grandiose sound-and-fury of the early DMK propagandists with no significant effect in power politics or real power. Where the DMK propagandists succeeded in co-opting the newly educated student population of the 50s and 60s, the current propagandists will find it more difficult (in addition to the difficulties of displacing the incumbents) due to the presence of social media and constant in-your-face non-stop debating on TV. While the current student population (beyond a microscopic minority) are not vulnerable to becoming anti-national by these acts, the rebellious streak that led to the isolation of the Congress party from the state will see no abating, let alone rollback.

Overall, the Tamil identity supporters are wielding a double-edged sword (and would end up hurting their own cause) by picking an axe-to-grind at every eventuality. It is easy to ride the Tamil Tiger, but difficult to dis-mount as the DMK will be able to regale from its tales of woe that was the late 70s through the late 80s. Sooner than later, the petty forces will face a growing backlash from the sensible set of peoples in the state (a good majority) who will add the propagandists to the list of equally execrable parties in the state. No, Rajnikanth cannot help the state as his cigarette fight with Ramadoss was a stalemate because of financial issues beyond his control. And he is picking no fight for he has a better movie to be released any time soon.

Till that eventuality kicks in, the order of business in the state is going to be one of self-censoring. Any movie with a political bent and self-introspection on the course of the more recent Tamil history will have to be shelved if business is what matters. Even caste re-renderings of history like Ponnar Sankar will have to be shelved (as witnessed by the fate of Meendezhum Pandiyar Varalaaru). For folks who had witnessed the plethora of Kattabomman Transport Corporation and Thevar Transport Corporation from the crazy days of 90s, this is de javu all over again. Course correction to be euphemistic, but clear in terms of what to do for those in the entertainment business. The coming years will see a long laundry list of masala madness that was commonplace in the 80s and 90s. The mythical villain will no longer be Pakistani or spouting political Islam, lest it hurt the sensibilities of Muslims. Every non-Hindu will be a good guy/girl, and all the bad guys/girls will be Hindus (as was the case in the secular Dasavatharam as against the non-secular Vishwaroopam). Nor will it be a woman (no matter how thin and fragile and Ramya Krishnan or Kanthimathi look-a-like), or a fluent Tamil spouting man with a coolers (no matter how cool he may be otherwise), or a man with a karakuli cap and a beaten down voice (no matter how stylistically he can whip a sattai).

He might speak Singhalese, Chinese, Malay, or English. For Indians, that is good too, as the Mount Road paramatmas will be challenged on their worldviews. Do not worry about what the villain utters, for it will be type-scripted into Tamil. That is the only predictable thing these days. That can be bested only if a Tamil dialogue is also type-scripted into Tamil. That could also happen...


Footnote 1: Tamil society was never a non-casteist non-religion driven society rife with rationalism and intellectual discourses. Just as every part of India witnessed backlashes against organized religion and societal order at different points in time, Tamil society saw a big backlash against the entrenched Brahmins in the civil society, education and governmental spheres from the early 20s through the 60s. When the dust settled down, one set of entrenched were replaced with another and things continued onwards until the left-behinds protested in the 80s demanding another cut in the reservation system that is now aped across India (putting the legislation behind judicial scrutiny and upping the ante all the way to affording reservation benefits to around 90% of the state's population). With essentially the entire state not wanting the cart brought down lest it hurt them, the fistfights spread to sectors that are the biggest money-spinners: engineering/medical colleges, entertainment business and support-cast, infrastructure business, real estate, etc.

Footnote 2: One should thank the stars that "Auto" Sankar is not valorized today and noone has dug up the Aalavandhar murder case to bat for Tamil heroes laid low by Kerala business-couple!! While the attempts at valorizing the LTTE have a pan-Tamland impact, the "rebellion" by PMANE at Idinthakarai cannot transcend from being petty developmental green-nik issues to being a Tamil issue.

Impressions from the sport arena

It has been a looong looong time since my last post. And life has indeed changed in the meanwhile, whatever that is supposed to mean. No, not the change Modi-ji wished. Hopefully, I can squeeze in life into the blog more frequently than the last few months.

It is more than a truism that Indian sport succeeds whenever it does, despite best efforts by its benefactors to help it --- efforts that eventually destroy any success story. One tricky compromise in robust-ifying whatever success stories that exist in India is to spin-off excellence centers in different sports to different regions across India. Much like the Kota, Ramaiah, Super-30 type non-franchised efforts, sports excellence is indeed best achieved by regional centers where the best-of-the-best across India hope to sharpen their wits and trade-craft.

Unbeknownst to us, this is indeed happening today. The latest exhibit in this list is the badminton capital that has flowered over the last few years in Hyderabad despite the chaos that rules the streets on its future trajectory. A similar path was realized for squash in Madras, tennis in Madras, Calcutta and of late in Bangalore, shooting in Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, wrestling in the various akharas in and around Delhi, boxing in Bhiwani, and so on. That said, much of shooting's success is top-down as has always been the sport. Without the support-cast of the Army and the maharajas of the yester-era, and the neo-maharajas of this era, shooting would have been a dead sport in India, as would be golf.

Unfortunately, reverse to this trend is the trajectory of the various hockey academies and excellence centers in Punjab, Coorg, Jharkhand, Orissa and Manipur. While we lack enough astroturfs on a per-capita basis, destroying the existing structures due to poor maintenance is even more sacrilegious. As much as middle-class India gangs up on the hockey structure for its dismal performance over the decades, much of this venom has never been directed at the bureaucrats, government officials and stadia custodians who put stumbling blocks beyond imagination in ensuring the wrecking of existing infrastructure. Even the much hallowed structures at the SAI center in Bangalore have been wrecked by ineptitude and shoddy maintenance somuchso that the training Indian team has to shift camps elsewhere (to the NIS camp in Patiala).

India departs for the Asia Cup in Ipoh, the home of the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup, with the winner goes-to-the-World-Cup-eventuality, provided that the winner is one of Pakistan, India, or Malaysia. Malaysia will qualify from the event as the 5th best team from Hockey World League if South Korea wins it  --- since Korea have already qualified based on their 4th finish at that event and the good fortune bestowed on them by the Argentines at the Pan-Am cup. With either India or Pakistan guaranteed to miss the boat to the World Cup for the first time, here is to hoping that it is Pakistan that misses the boat. All that of course depends on the semi-final line-up and how the young team performs on that day. I would nt be too hopeless with the much dissed Shri MK Kaushik at the helm, but stranger things have happened in Indian hockey than I can say.

I have not turned on to watch the chess pages over the last few months. And I firmly believe that radio silence from the Anand camp is a much better way to prepare for the showdown with Carlsen than to tip-toe around with selective leaks. Of course, I do not know if leaks have happened as my receiver has shut down anyway.

Doping for the tiniest of edges is a universal phenomenon in sport today (recent showcases being A-Rod and Miguel Tejada) and nothing exemplifies India's rampant doping than the athletes and weightlifters. There is a common understanding that Indian athletes dope beyond imagination at home and that explains why their personal bests are often seen at home than in world-class events where they come a-cropper and go much worser than their personal bests. The just concluded World athletics championship adds more fuel to this fire, where with the exception of Vikas Gowda, it has been a rather similar story. The women's relay team, which won the other gold at the Asian event at Pune a month back with a 3:32.26 timing (Vikas got the first gold), ended the heat with 3:38.81 --- unexplainable unless one athlete lost her footing or got tripped. (I have not watched the video, so my guess is as good as yours).

That said, coming as she is from her recent ban, how Ashwini Akkunji could make it to the 1600 relay team, even if she was the 5th/6th runner, is beyond me. She has not run any competitive event for two years and is the talent-pool in relay so shallow? But this is India, where nepotism is better seen than voiced. As much as she was the shining symbol of a rising second-tier India, as are/were the cricketers from unknown places, her symbol had vanished along with the entire septet of relay runners when they were all caught for doping (for exactly the same stanozolol and epimethandiol combination). The technicality under which Manjit Kaur was banned for refusing to give her sample for testing does not allow her to escape the doping accusation, as this is an arena where you are guilty till you exonerate yourself. I would go one step further and annul the Commonwealth games gold voluntarily as there is a big question mark on that record, especially with the whole team getting caught. But this is again India, where sports wins are important in getting police and government jobs as well as promotions, which explains the rampant doping in who-dares-win that is India.

There is really not much to report from the football field, as we notched up a good 3-zip loss to Tajikistan and  thus remain stable in the FIFA rankings, wallowing amidst the shambles that is world football. At the very least, we stay above other subcontinental teams rather than dive to the bottom of the pits. Ditto for the tennis arena, I have stopped following the craziness that was Davis Cup with the boycott led by Somdev & co, which really achieved nothing except set back the DC moorings by a couple of years. We lost the first round encounter of Group-I Asia Oceania, which automatically forced us to fight to stay back in the same group for the remaining part of the year, forget the world group playoff that was possible with a full-fledged team. The backtracking by Somdev & co and the subsequent calling off of the boycott in the playoff match (against Indonesia) with essentially nothing new given by AITA in writing or deeds only goes to show how strategically stupid Indians are. And how callous middle-class India is in questioning the stars and prima donnas about their actions and strategies.

To round a full-story, Indian hockey is strategically stupid and intellectually inept. It is not necessary to win all games to rise up in the FIH standings. It is important to win the meaningful games instead of appearing crestfallen and dejected by failure. Winning a bronze medal show-off followed by a hardly fought semifinal loss is more important than walking dead in the playoff game. It helps you gain valuable FIH points and every point counts. You rise up in the Asian league and get the opportunities that you would have missed, by making the boat for the Champions Trophy and so on. Success is not just talent, success is also opportunity to get better by experience. There is no longer a nature or nurture question anymore, it is nature, nurture and knowledge. This lesson is clearly seen in the fortunes of the English and Kiwi hockey teams, poor ones by any standard metric in hockey: lore, myth or reality, but not so poor as seen from the FIH rankings.

As for doping, I wish the Indian hockey players get a new drug supplement that will open up their heads to strategizing better and implementing that on the field, in action and results. That wish beckons the question: is there hope for hockey in India? As a dyed-in-the-wool optimist, I remain hopeful with the caveat that "hopeful" is often a hopeful word for the hopeless. As someone who cannot change the tomorrow, I am not sure if it is worth changing the yesterday that presents itself as today.

Let us move on, anyway. Till sooner than later....

PS: It turns out that the Don Driver and Greg Jennings hit-out against the other A-Rod are for real and that makes some story for the naive. As for me, this is the bastion of uber-elitemen. During their heydays, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman had few nice words for MJ, the friend. The Sampras v. Agassi, Connors v. McEnroe, Billie Jean King v. Chris Evert spats are legendary of course. Hope the cheeseheads roll the tide back for one more season and it is nonsensical to see dreams killed half-way, we will see.