University administrations are all in prairie dog mode. They are all run by fat unneeded administrative fat cats, charging wayyyyy tooooo much money, are all frightened of a bubble burst in higher ed that will cost an unknown number of institutions.
In situations like that, it is ripe for scapegoating a single institution that gets in the news for the wrong reasons.
Outside of the cream of the crop, large institutions in higher education are also tenuously tied to "reputation".
A couple bad runs, and you go from, say the University of Florida's current reputation (which is pretty good as the SEC schools go) to, say, the Mississippi schools which are basically second-rate Cal State schools academically being propped up by football money.
And then you might get dumped from your conference.
