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Sunday, December 11, 2005

MEANIES BEATING UP
ON FOOTBALL ALL OVER




At Missouri State...


Recently, Missouri State proposed cutting men’s tennis, women’s tennis and mens track and field and cross country.

…Here’s the harsh reality. Football is the main drag on the athletic program at Missouri State. Football is a financial drag at nearly every university that isn’t NCAA Division I. Operation of the football program at Missouri State currently exceeds $1 million annually.

And yet officials at Missouri State continue to coddle the program as though it is still a newborn, afraid that a fall will mean certain death to the university.

According to University President Michael Nietzel, the proposed cuts will save the university $350,000 a year. Which is about $650,000 less than cutting the football program would save.

One of the main reasons given for not cutting the football program by university officials has been that in doing so, the university would lose face recognition amongst the community and prospective students. Somehow, students make their decision to attend Missouri State based on the fact that MSU has a mediocre football program in place.

Let’s assume just for a moment this is true. These students arrive on campus as freshman all fired up about the MSU football team. With the football season set to begin the same time as the new school year, students rush to the box office to pick up their free tickets.

Then what? They forget to make the five minute walk from the dorms to Plaster Stadium?

Students don’t make the decision to attend Missouri State based on its football program any more than students who enroll at St. Louis University choose to go there because of its football program.

I know this because I was one of the few dozen who actually attended the football games when I was student at MSU. With the exception of homecoming, there may have been more students present at the Evangel football game that was played at Plaster than any of the Bears games.

MSU football isn’t a fledgling program that needs to be given time and resources to succeed. It has been in place at Missouri State for nearly 100 years. It is a program that has become a financial drain to the university, the athletic department and most of all, the student body. One of the main concerns when I attended MSU was always rising tuition. In the end, it is the students who foot the bill for a program that is $1 million in the red. A program they obviously do not want or need.

According to Nietzel, the recommendation to eliminate the tennis and track teams came after subjecting the 21 university athletic programs to four guiding principals: 1) ability to compete; 2) academic record of student-athletes; 3) record of integration into campus and university culture; and 4) ability to live within its budget and be as financially independent as possible.

And my response to this is that the university obviously only subjected 20 of its athletic programs to this “test.” I don’t know the numbers, but I am certain that the football program doesn’t have the best academic record among its 21 sports. It obviously has the worst budget and its ability to compete speaks for itself. In my mind, No. 3 is nothing more than a bunch of gobbly-gook that can be interpreted to say whatever you want it to say. You can’t convince me that the tennis team is failing to integrate with university culture.

I’m not proposing that football be cut. But, I don’t think you fix the problems in the football program by eliminating tennis and track. Football should be the sport receiving serious scrutiny from the administration. Not the tennis, track and cross country programs.

Nobody expects those programs to be in the black. But, at a university the size of Missouri State in a city the size of Springfield, they should expect the football program to do better than be $1 million in the red.






...and at the University of Colorado...


Relax, Buffs fans. Sure, Nobel Prize-winning faculty members may come and go, promised state support may be redirected to build roads, and financial aid for academically gifted students may continue to be scarce, but your tailgate parties are secure.

"I want it to be clear that I'm going to bring a great football coach to this university," University of Colorado-Boulder athletic director Mike Bohn said last week.

Boy, that's a relief.

But seriously, here's what I wish Bohn or CU president Hank Brown or somebody - anybody - would have had the guts to say instead:

"CU is going to create a new paradigm for athletics in this country. The way we have managed our football and basketball programs in the past is no longer appropriate for a distinguished institution of higher learning. It demeans all of us.

"CU was not founded 129 years ago to generate profits for the sportswear, liquor and entertainment industries. Our mission, purely, simply and proudly, is to create and disseminate knowledge.

"In the past decade, we have sacrificed our credibility in pursuit of a questionable and elusive goal: victory in a bowl game named after a tortilla chip.

"We no longer will hold the taxpayers of this state hostage to outrageous coaching contracts that make a mockery of accountability. We no longer will exploit young people who can't succeed in our classrooms by indenturing them to years in a football or basketball program that has little chance of providing them with a decent future. We no longer will accept the kinds of compromises of our values of honesty and decency required to keep the slush funds, the recruits and the endorsement contracts coming here.

"We remain committed to high-quality amateur athletics for our students. If the football industry or the owners of professional basketball teams require minor-league programs, they are free to create these enterprises without the support of our taxpayers, our students and our donors. Any use of University of Colorado facilities, logos, marketing or public-relations services will be prohibited without full compensation. Thank you.

"Now, have I told you about the program we are launching with contributions from multimillionaire Gary Barnett to attract more faculty members from the National Academy of Sciences?"

OK, call me a dreamer - it would be a refreshing change from what football fans usually call me - but I'm not the only one. For years, James J. Duderstadt, former president of the Rose Bowl-winning University of Michigan, has been advocating just such changes.

The NCAA, university presidents and other insiders, he says, don't have the "capacity, the will or the appetite to lead a true reform movement in college sports."

What's needed, Duderstadt said in an e-mail exchange last week, is a kind of Sarbanes-Oxley law to reform corrupt athletics the same way corruption in the securities industry is being addressed.

We should start, he said, by eliminating the tax loopholes that prop up the sports industry, such as seat taxes and deductions for sky boxes. The public should demand full disclosure of the real costs of big-time sports, including the academic performance of all athletes, the rate of sports injuries, and the financial interests of coaches, athletic directors and all those involved in the programs.

Further, university presidents and governing boards should be held accountable for rules violations instead of letting a revolving cast of coaches for whom winning is the only thing take the fall.

"Ironically, at a time when higher education has never been more important to our nation ... confidence in the university has been badly damaged by the corruption of big-time college sports," Duderstadt said. Until universities confront this pig in the parlor, "they will be unable to earn the public trust."

Forget the myth that football pumps millions into university budgets every year. Even if it were true, it wouldn't matter. As the tattered reputation of CU demonstrates, football - and our obsession with it - has cost us dearly.