… Bracing for a $15 million deficit, the university released $14.8 million in budget cuts for Fiscal Year 2012[.] $5.4 million came from academics and academic support, while $136,000 came from athletics.

Since then, Southern Miss also has announced a $35,000 salary increase for head football coach Larry Fedora from $650,000 to $685,000 yearly.

Meanwhile, 29 faculty members stand to lose their jobs next year…

Hattiesburg American

My alma mater, the University of Memphis, paid its coach Larry Porter about $750,000 for one win – one.

David Hampton, Mississippi Clarion Ledger

… as only the most bourbon-soaked university in the world can do it.

Notice that degeneracy levels at the University of Kentucky have gotten to the point where no one talks anymore about problems or investigations or commissions; the liquored up folk of Lexington have become, as it were, mere visuals for the rest of us. People with cameras follow local sports heroes around and wait for the good stuff.

He’s the economics professor who last summer insistently pointed out that, despite lies from the administration about it, MSU’s new stadium was hemorrhaging money. Continues to hemorrhage money.

Olsen took a lot of grief for this, but he continues swinging, especially in light of a state audit that reveals just how corruptly MSU has been run.

Now that MSU has a new president (wouldn’t want the old president in place anymore, to be held accountable for having fucked up the school), and a new, damning audit, the school tries to figure out what to do…

While MSU dithers, old Reed pops up again.

… Missouri State needs to find ways to better fund and operate the facility, said [the new president], who has formed a task force to look into this matter.

Olsen, who last year disputed a university claim that the arena was paying for itself, questioned the makeup of the committee, saying it consists of people who were part of the problem.

Olsen wants the university to be honest with JQH’s accounting.

As MSU digs deeper and deeper holes, Reed Olsen will be there, trying to tell it what to do to get out of the holes. MSU will certainly not listen.

An economics professor at Rutgers writes one of those opinion pieces in the local paper that generate volcanic fury on the part of local football fans and…

But wait. Scroll down to the comment thread for the piece! Maybe there’s hope.

Excerpts:

[T]he football program has been a bust: 59 wins and 62 losses since the hiring of the current multimillion-dollar coach.

… [B]etween 2004 and 2009, the last year for which records are available, the university poured a total of $32.3 million in student fees and $75.8 million in direct institutional support into the athletic program. As of 2008-09, student fees and direct support — in other words, subsidies — provided more than 40 percent of the total cost of the program.

… Two years ago, the university committed itself to yet another stadium renovation and expansion, spending $102 million to increase the football stadium’s capacity. Another $12.5 million went for renovation and expansion of the building that houses the football program. The stadium rarely sells out, raising serious questions about how the university will be able to pay for it.

If that’s what your school always has been (see Auburn University), no sweat. But say you’re the University of Michigan, a school that has a distinguished past. What do people know about you now?

They know that your football coach is a strange and desperate man who gets way too choked up on the rubber chicken circuit.

They know that your athlete-mad professors get all expense paid junkets to the big games, even though those same professors are supposed to be policing the program.

In January 2009, the full faculty senate voted 19-11 to approve a resolution calling for the free trips to end.

President Mary Sue Coleman to the faculty senate: Fuck you!

*******************************************

These and many more embarrassments have made the University of Michigan look like Gary, Indiana — a kooky, corrupt, dot on the map.

…party pooper.

UD‘s blogpal, Gregg Easterbrook (he of the famed Christmas Letter), takes a wide-angle look at university athletics.

Some excerpts:

[N]early all universities lose money on sports. Recently the NCAA reported that only 14 Football Bowl Subdivision programs clear a profit, while no college or university in the United States has an athletic department that is financially self-sustaining. Nobody in FBS — not Alabama, not Auburn, not Oklahoma, nobody — has an athletic department that pays its own way.

At many colleges and universities, athletic programs cannibalize donations that might have gone to education.

[H]igh coaches’ salaries don’t even result in programs that make money, the way high coaches’ salaries in the NFL result, at least, in profit.

[I]n football, Ohio State has a 1-to-5 ratio of staff to students: while in English, the staff-to-student ratio is 1-to-280. Divide the latter by the former. In staffing terms, Ohio State treats football as 56 times more important than it does English.

The Columbia football coaching staff has 14 people, including a chaired coach — the Patricia and Shepard Alexander Head Coach of Football. Not the football coach, the Head Coach of Football.

It is difficult to believe Auburn really needs an athletic director, an executive associate athletic director, five senior associate athletic directors, four associate athletic directors and a guy with the title senior associate athletic director & CFO.

Well. Auburn. Reason not the need. I got nowhere else to go!

‘A plasma-screen sports infrastructure and a covered-wagon academic budget.’

Oklahoma is a very backward state.

The OU Board of Regents approved raises for all nine assistant football coaches Oct. 28. …Kevin Wilson and Brent Venables received a $45,000 raise, increasing their salaries to $440,000 and $430,000 respectively.

Less than two weeks later, during his State of the University address to the Faculty Senate on Monday, OU President David Boren warned … department heads to prepare for a 5-percent budget cut…

[T]his situation highlights the strange reality that football coaches making six figures a year can get a pay raise during a time when the already-weak state budget is experiencing a $400 million shortfall …

Strange brew, OU. Killing what’s inside of you.

Ah, the good old days.

… everyone – but everyone – hates the idea of changing local laws to close the bars at midnight.

In an editorial, Southern Miss students make the argument:

There is no reason to believe that closing bars at midnight instead of 2 a.m. will curtail violence. In fact, the effect could be worse for public safety.

The extra two hours gives people who may consume alcoholic beverages earlier in the night time to sober up. But many people who drink will not stop at 10 p.m.; for many, that’s the time they start. Closing at midnight will only mean that there will be more impaired drivers on the road at a time when traffic is already heavier.

UD isn’t sure why the students don’t take the obvious next step: Why close the bars of Hattiesburg at all? If it’s safer for them to stay open until 2, it’s even safer for them never to close.

An ESPN writer goes on to share further thoughts.

[W]hy are so many schools spending so much on facilities anyway? Why are we paying coaches millions and millions when their not-so-distant predecessors earned far less? Who is benefiting from the self-driven rise in costs? And how? We’re still playing the same schools. The players still are not paid (wink, wink). The concession stands still charge way too much for a soda.

How is all this money making any part of the college sports experience better?

If we were talking about professional sports it would be one thing. Pro salaries may be obscene, but teams spend their own money. But we’re often talking about public money in collegiate sports. As that NCAA report reveals, even when the athletic department is supposedly self-funded, programs still needed a median of $10 million in institutional subsidies to cover their costs last year.

Andy Hutchins congratulates the University of New Mexico.

… Mike Leach.

A perfect match.