… about brainless but brawny University of Oregon.
… At the University of Oregon, academics has taken a backseat to athletics. Despite the generosity of Nike founder Phil Knight, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the school, Oregon has gone on such an athletics building spree that it has had to postpone a long-term project to renovate student housing. That’s because the university has hit its debt limit of $200 million.
“We literally can’t go out and ask for more bonding authority for the academic side of the campus,” said Nathan Tublitz, an Oregon biology professor and the co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a reform group that’s often critical of the culture of college athletics. “The mission of the university is to educate students and perform cutting-edge research,” said Prof. Tublitz. “To be spending so much money on an auxiliary enterprise is not only scandalous, it’s criminal.”…