It’s a pretty typical story, if you follow university sports the way UD does. Gruesomely-run state with way-past-dire economy features large public university run by jocksniffers. Pointless, cost-overrun new stadium, overpaid coaches, secret deals, academic mission shot to hell, blahblah.
But sometimes things get so shameless, so squalid, that a certain perverted integrity emerges. The people who run Rutgers will run it into the ground, and damned if anyone’s going to stop them.
It’s unseemly at best that as the Rutgers University Board of Governors was approving tuition and fee hikes this week, school officials were also exulting over a pair of large donations that will pay for a nearly $5 million luxury lounge for the new football stadium.
We know all the excuses. It’s free money. The wealthy donors — two of them — wanted the money used for this specific purpose. They have the right to attach whatever strings they want. And of course the lounge will be really nice and fancy and be a helpful recruiting tool for a program that aspires to greater glory, and since it’s all private money, who cares?
But here’s how officials could have — should have — responded to the donors. They should have graciously explained that given the current economic conditions and pressures it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to accept that much money for such a frivolous project. To pursue the lounge, some of the donated money would have to redirected to another worthy cause, either in academics or even to some of the more neglected sports. Some funds could even have gone to restoring the lost sports programs that a coalition of supporters is still fighting to bring back.
And if the donors refused, school officials could have politely declined the offer and moved on. Because that luxury lounge is hardly an urgent need, or a need at all.
… Let’s remember that the $100 [million]-plus expansion of the football stadium was a boondoggle from the beginning. After the football team threw together a couple of successful seasons officials started bending over backwards trying to grow the program. The expansion project was only part of it. The school also threw silly money at head football coach Greg Schiano, including secret, lucrative provisions that eventually prompted investigations and an overhaul of the entire athletic department…