…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.

A university’s real mission, which ought to make everything else pale by comparison, involves the education of young people and the advancement of knowledge. It is not to play football on television.

From an editorial about the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the News and Observer.

… Miami gets a bad rap as a university with no money. If that’s what you truly believe, take some time to go walk around the downtown medical campus. Start exploring and you’ll never feel like UM has a lack of funds ever again. The money is absolutely there; the only question is the willingness to spend it on athletics.

… PLEASE STOP thinking or insinuating that [President] Donna Shalala and [athletic director] Kirby [Hocutt] don’t want to win, or that they’d prefer to have a bunch of Rhodes Scholars who lose four or five games per year. That sentiment is beyond ridiculous. Both the president and athletic director want to win badly, but obviously want to do so the right way – with players going to class and not revisiting UM’s “Thug U” days.

When I think back to great UM teams, I don’t remember a bunch of guys getting arrested or failing out of school. Sure, there were some rough around the edges guys, but in all reality, no more than any other school.

Words of wisdom from one of America’s stupidest schools.

Bully. Lunatic. Madman. Fool.

“Bo has a lot of passion for his football team.”

American universities seem to like having a special place on campus for dunces and suckers, a kind of reverse-world Center for Excellence, and that place is always the football program. The overpaid coach; the losing team; the fucked up budget; the students who don’t show up even when the games are free.

The University of Akron is a case in point. Its October 23 football game in its new $61.6 million stadium attracted 756 students.

That’s bad news for an athletic department responsible for about two-thirds of the $3.15 million annual debt payment for the stadium…

It’s not just for classes anymore!

Your university’s games are increasingly available live, and online.

Recent studies show that students who watch football and basketball games online do just as well as, or better than, students who watch face-to-face. On every parameter – excitement, inebriation, school pride – results suggest that, as with their education, students lose nothing in quality — and indeed maybe gain in quality — by watching games online.

There’s every reason why, in a trend parallel to the onlining of American university education, we should be seeing an onlining of university sports. Universities will save hundreds of millions of dollars in stadiums, tailgate cleanups, etc. And – most importantly – students who are too shy to paint their faces and cheer in public will finally be able to take part in this campus experience.