"What Does Bernie Machen Actually Do?"

From Alligator.org:

We're confused What does Bernie Machen actually do?

It must be great to be UF President Bernie Machen. No, not because of the motorcycle - it's hard to feel the wind rushing through your hair when you're bald. We're talking about hiring and firing university administrators. That sounds like fun.

Let's say you screw up. Big time. You're in Idaho, fly-fishing, without a care in the world and then - bam! - all of a sudden, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is drowning in debt. You can hop the next flight to Gainesville and fix UF's biggest college. But why?

It's so much easier to let CLAS Dean Neil Sullivan sort things out - or not sort things out, as the case may be. And when he botches the job, when CLAS keeps overspending, year after year, all you have to do is fire him. Your hands are clean.

Pretty cool, huh? But it gets better.

To make sure something like the CLAS meltdown doesn't happen again, you can hire new administrators to do your job for you - a senior vice president for administrative affairs to handle day-to-day operations, and a chief financial officer to keep an eye on the bottom line.

Now you can kick back and relax. That's right - it's nothing but Minesweeper and Spider Solitaire until quitting time. But you still have to put in appearances at fundraising dinners, building groundbreakings and conferences. It's tough to get out of those.

Unless - yes, of course! You can hire look-alikes, skilled impersonators to stand in for you at public events. Just like Saddam Hussein! That's using your noggin.

Then again, you could just do your job.

Kidding, kidding! We had you going for a second, didn't we? Why work up a sweat when you can delegate every responsibility, every shred of accountability, every tough question to a subordinate? Ah, to be Bernie Machen - what a life that would be.