Thursday 25 March 2010

And the winner is......

A freeze in season ticket prices!  Wow!  After five years when the average season ticket price has risen 51% (or 37% above the rate of inflation)!  I think we can safely conclude from this “news” that a) the Glazers are terrified of the green and gold movement and a possible boycott of season tickets and b) that they are so desperate to get their hands on United’s cash that despite their fear they can’t countenance any more “generous” price move (such as the cuts in season ticket prices for next season seen at the Bucs).

On to more important things, like analysing Joel Glazer’s qualifications (sic) for running our club.  A big thank you to Ian Patterson, Jacopo Belbo and “DW” for between them providing some very high quality evidence about Joel’s time at The American University in the late 1980s.  Sadly I’m going to have award each of them a t-shirt for their efforts (I'll be in touch gentlemen), but this blog is all about being fair and honest.

This is the course that Messrs Patterson and Belbo both discovered from the 1988-89 American University Course Catalog (there are actually several Interdisciplinary majors in the Course Catalog, but “DW” found evidence Joel graduated from The School of Public Affairs so it is pretty certain that “CLEG” is the one):


For those of you (like me until I looked it up) not well versed in US “grade-point averages”, an admission requirement of 2.00 is a “C” grade (the American University has now raised this requirement to 2.50 for students wanting to do the course today).  “CLEG” is as Jacopo Belbo rightly said, “…a little of this, a little of that, ease by major.”  As you can see it includes such rigorous academic subjects as “Public Speaking” (not something he has had much call upon since the family bought United) and “Civil Rights and Liberties” (I doubt “Can you seize a banner from peaceful protesters inside a football ground?” was covered).  I'd use the very American phrase "Mickey Mouse" to describe the degree myself.

So we can now safely strike off “genius” from the list of possible reasons to want this man to chair our club, having already dismissed “successful business man” (see First Allied Corporation), “track record running a sporting organisation” (see these comments from Buc’s fans post Joel’s latest interview), “philanthropist” (see ticket prices, management fees, consultancy fee, personal loans and dividends) and “United fan” (ha bloody ha).  Of course he’s only “a phone call away” if David Gill needs a decision on something so that’s OK.

LUHG