UD will let the citizens of Minnesota do the talking on the subject of their big beautiful new university football stadium and its money problems.
They express themselves on the comment thread of a recent Pioneer Press article. That’s one of the citizens up there, in my headline.
First you need to know the latest on the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, the cost-overrun, unnecessary stadium that was going to bring in all sorts of revenue for the university.
For those who don’t click to the article, the deal is that because they can’t serve booze, the university’s not selling its luxury boxes.
You will need a few drinks after a couple seasons of watching the Gophers play football. Heck who am I kidding? You need to be smashed right now just to stand em.
[The team it’s all for, the Gophers, suck.]
Does it hurt not to drink for a couple of hours? Poor little football jocks can’t have a beer whaaaa whaaaa whaaaa.
[This guy doesn’t understand that the luxury boxes are bought by corporations plying potential clients with alcohol. No ply, no play.]
So … seats aren’t selling, the place is hemorrhaging taxpayer money and bleeding whatever educational mission might be left at the university.
It’s not so much that drunks must have their football. If it’s going to pay for itself, football must have its drunks.
Excerpts from a Minnesota Public Radio conversation about this:
Murray Sperber: The breathalyzer’s a good idea…. [The stadium will have mandatory breathalyzer tests at the gate for students who have been drunk at games before… What? Why the tests and security cameras everywhere etc. etc. if the stadium will be alcohol free? Are you really asking that question??? LOL.] I’ve been appalled by the behavior of young drunk male students… It’s dangerous… I’ve never understood why universities don’t control tailgating… It’s on their land… Part of the reason is they don’t want to piss off alumni… Many of these people tailgating and drinking are not in fact alumni; they’re local fans of the team… The schools can’t unburden themselves from bigtime university sports and the various myths that say they’re helping the university.
Toben Nelson: Division I football games are drinking events… Alumni are a major barrier to making any serious changes to alcohol policy on campus…
August 16th, 2009 at 1:47PM
Wow, my university made your site twice in one day and on different topics!
Is that some kind of record, UD?
And at our place the administration brags about "ambitious aspirations to be one of the top three public universities in the world [sic]."
I don’t know what it is going to take to get us back on track. As my J-school colleague, Gary Schwitzer, wrote on his blog Health Care News:
"The Star Tribune has posted as a pdf file the entire 142-page document that Senator Charles Grassley sent to UMN President Robert Bruininks on the matter, so you can read all the details yourself."
"You might find it interesting to read a comment that Dr. Polly wrote on this blog back in January, when I wrote about another conflict of interest story. Polly wrote:"
"Please Mr. Schwitzer, pursue the whole story and not just the attention grabbing, tabloid headlines. People deserve to know the whole truth, ever (sic) if it sells less well than tabloid journalism."
And so it goes…
August 17th, 2009 at 8:07AM
[…] a reader, sends UD a letter he wrote that details the University of Minnesota football stadium fiasco. (Here are all UD’s posts about TCF Bank Stadium. If you’ve got the stomach.) […]