The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved a proposal for a new football stadium at the University of North Texas that is expected to be completed for the 2011 season…

“If you look at America’s great universities, you’ll see that they all have the three A’s in common: great academics, great arts and great athletics,” said UNT president Gretchen M. Bataille in a release.

… what with that Knight Commission report and all… But UD thinks it’s time to ground the discussion in actual ongoing cases. The case method, if you will.

Let’s begin with this question: Does Mike Locksley, University of New Mexico football coach, make too much?

Well, before we reveal his salary, let’s consider what he’s contributed to UNM so far this year.

1.) The team’s record: 0 – 6. He’s in his first year, and has lost every game he has coached.

2.) He has an EEOC complaint against him for firing an administrative assistant because, he told her, he wanted a younger woman to “entice recruits.”

3.) He has a history of violent behavior, and has most recently beaten up one of his assistant coaches.

So… what seems a reasonable salary for this man?

Did you say $750,000 a year?

Bingo.

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It’s impossible to put a price tag on the pride students and faculty must feel to be part of the UNM community.

And it ain’t bad at all.

You might recall that a few weeks ago University of California at Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling on the federal government to provide direct support — meaning taxpayer dollars — to select public universities. Birgeneau decried decades of “material and progressive disinvestment by states in higher education,” despite, as I pointed out, no such disinvestment actually occurring.

Well now we know where much of the precious investment in Cal was going — to subsidize sports. According to Inside Higher Ed, over just the past few years Berkeley has provided tens-of-millions of dollars in subsidies and loan forgiveness to its sports programs, which are supposed to be self-supporting.

Now, the whole college athletics undertaking is one that deserves lots of scrutiny for its subsidies and excesses. Cal is certainly not alone in this. But for Birgeneau to take to the pages of the Washington Post, cry poverty, and call for the nation’s taxpayers to foot his school’s bills while he quietly pushes millions of dollars to water polo, rugby, golf, and sundry other sports? That takes a lot of gall. Of course, rent-seeking gall is not in short supply when it comes to higher education.

Thankfully, at least this time it looks like the arrogant aggressiveness is going to backfire. Birgeneau is scrambling, and seems doomed to be thrown for a loss.

Neal McCluskey

… UD thought she’d pay a visit to the Godzillatron, the immense screen many university football stadiums have recently had installed. These things — more commonly called Adzillatrons, because the main thing they do is show advertisements — cost millions. But a peek at this University of Texas opinion piece tells you that this outlay is only the beginning:

… Part of the excitement that allows fans to interact more with the team and the game is the animations and videos that are played on the jumbotron. [Oh right. Lots of people call it a jumbotron.] In this department, we are way past due for a major facelift.

To start, the video that is played directly before the team enters the field is nothing more than juvenile…

Fans pay a lot of money, travel long distances and sometimes sit through unbearable heat to watch their Longhorns play football. The least the athletic department could do is make the entertainment aside from the game as excellent as the team…

While I still go absolutely nuts when the video is played, it could be more professionally done….

More professional Adzillatron animations — your university athletics fee, and your parents’ taxes, at work.

… debate the merits of big time university football.

Problem: Finding someone to take the pro position.

[Professor Thomas] Palaima first wanted to argue against athletics, but he agreed to argue for it, said Madison Searle, a coordinator for the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan, which hosted the event. “It’s very hard to find a full-time professor who’s behind athletics,” he said.

Here’s a faculty resolution on athletics. Read the whole thing.

Highlights:

Only one-third of Cal’s men’s basketball players and one-half of the football players graduate, and Cal’s football graduation rate is near the bottom of the Pac-10 Conference.

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Although it is widely believed that the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA) earns a profit for the Berkeley campus, its financial statements reveal that
it significantly outspends its revenues every year, depleting precious campus resources.

For the most recent 5-year period for which the DIA has released detailed data (2003-08) its cost to campus has been at least $10 million every year except for 2007-08 for which the cost was $7.4 million.

Current estimates for the most recent fiscal year (2008-09) indicate that the cost to the campus is expected to be a record high of approximately $13.5 million and is expected to be even higher for the current fiscal year (2009-10).

The DIA has cost the campus approximately $160 million since 1991.

The DIA is authorized to operate as an Auxiliary Enterprise on a financially self-supporting basis.

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The faculty recommend that

All funding of Intercollegiate Athletics from campus subsidies and the use of student registration fees cease immediately (or as soon as possible to the extent permitted by existing contract constraints).

The DIA cease annual deficit spending and the Berkeley campus not permit Intercollegiate Athletics to spend beyond its actual annual direct revenues.

[The commissioner of the Big Ten conference] warned of the risks involved in reducing [athletics] spending. Doing so is likely to raise the ire of donors, university trustees and members of the public. “It is a contact sport,” Delany said. “I’ve found it much easier to generate revenue than to cut costs. I’m being honest with you.”

And that’s how you make the world safe for Bobby Lowder.

… what’s a university to do?

Central Florida wrestles with this.

Details here.

In this video, Goldy Gopher from the University of Minnesota prays with a player from an opposing team.

… Instead of compromising (to put it very mildly) academic integrity, we should just dispense with the requirement — often, the pretense — of the “student athlete.” … If [players] think they have a shot at the big leagues (which, incidentally, ought to subsidize college sports as their farm system), then let the kids work full time as paid athletes and perfect their craft.

A local sports columnist, reflecting on the Florida State University fiasco, comes up with a solution that makes even pretend schools like FSU nervous: Throw the whole college meme out and turn your school into a farm system for the big leagues.

Having removed the education thing, you go hat in hand to the NFL and the NBA and explain that your facilities can now train their guys free and clear.

Another day, another arrest, and so it goes in a suddenly troubled West Virginia University football program.

Two days after defensive tackle Scooter Berry was arrested and charged with a pair of misdemeanors after an early morning downtown run-in with police, reserve safety Courtney Stuart was arrested on a fugitive warrant from Arizona relating to a 2007 burglary…

From the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Kentuckians will probably never really understand what inspired University of Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart to hire Billy Gillispie as the men’s basketball coach. But we do know what it cost to undo that decision: about $3.25 million in go-away money that includes $265,000 to cover the former coach’s legal bills. Throw in about $4.7 million more in paychecks for two uninspiring seasons, and Courier-Journal sports columnist Rick Bozich estimates that Mr. Gillispie earned about $192,500 per win.

… [T]his bungled episode cost $8 million or more. That’s a lot of money, and whatever the source, it is not now available for other, better purposes. In a poor state beset by economic problems, wasting resources on that scale is appalling…

A letter to the campus paper, the Daily Lobo, from an emeritus professor brings us up to date on this perennial class act.

The TV ads featuring Lobo Louie and his Lobo floozy accurately convey the tackiness of the partnership between the University of New Mexico Athletics Department and the Route 66 Casino Hotel. How did an institution of higher learning end up with the gaming industry as a roommate?

Sadly, these organizations have become soul mates. Intercollegiate athletics in America today has a bad case of gambling addiction. I do not refer to fans wagering on games. I refer to institutions that throw good money after bad in hopes of hitting that elusive jackpot — a championship.

Few, if any, NCAA Division I athletics programs cover their costs, especially if indirect subsidies for physical plant and utilities are factored in. Yet programs and their boosters insist on spending more and more for coaches’ compensation, sumptuous facilities and player recruitment. They say they want to “reach the next level.” Their behavior resembles that of a problem gambler who, in placing ever-higher stakes to recoup his losses, succeeds only in reaching the next level of penury.

Just as the family of a problem gambler suffers from the diversion of limited resources away from essential needs, so the academic communities of Division I universities suffer from the diversion of limited resources away from their basic educational mission.

Teaching, learning and research are starved as money is lavished on games.

Viewed from this perspective, Louie and the floozy are perfect for each other…

He sounds embarrassed, doesn’t he? But when it comes to tacky and the University of New Mexico under President David Schmidly, there’s so much more. Here’s a start.

Susan Moeller, a finance professor at Eastern Michigan University, spoke at a recent trustees’ meeting and told them that the school’s a mess academically and gives most of its money to a losing football team.

“We’re down to 57 percent regular faculty, and the other 43 percent are lecturers and part time. Searches are being held back, and I’m unhappy that they spend so much money on athletics and not academics. It’s important that we have full time faculty.”

… “Over the last few years, the budget for academics was cut by four million dollars,” she said. “They need new programming. They redid the football stadium before they redid the academic buildings. … The football coach makes more than the president.”

EMU’s president responds: “We had no increases in athletics budget this year aside from necessary pay raises.”

Necessary pay raises. Wonder what they are. I mean, universities all over the country are doing furloughs, salary reductions… What are the necessary raises at EMU?

UD’s guessing those are the raises that raise the football coach’s salary yet HIGHER than the president’s — or else…

You know…

Or else the coach will do what all peeved university football coaches do when the university peeves them: Sue, sue, sue, sue, sue.

Easy.

Be the University of New Mexico.

Background on Locksley here.