the prorector classes: prorectors as failed-pro joke-credential ballast
all but one of the prorectors are low-level touring professionals, with low-level professional tennis players in general being not exactly the most candent stars in the intellectual Orion. [...] most of the prorectors are (also like low-level tennis pros as a genus) kind of bats, and their classes are usually fascinating the way plane-crash footage is fascinating.
Context
The athletic factory's downstream product on display: the prorectors are "low-level touring professionals," teaching once-a-week joke-classes "mostly for certification reasons," their tennis careers washed out and their seminars "fascinating the way plane-crash footage is fascinating." They are what the plateaux-and-carrot machine produces when a body doesn't reach the Show — cautionary figures on the payroll, the academy's own graduates recycled as purgatorial ballast. The kids clamor for their bats classes precisely to watch, at close range, the shape of not-quite-making-it.