Inside Higher Education provides a plot summary of the time-honored tale of a giant sports program swaggering a campus and sucking all the money out of it.
“O giant,” say the professors. “Don’t kill us.”
“Ho, ho,” says the giant. “I won’t. By the hair on my chinny chin chin I’ll balance my budget. Sit down in my chair and watch my self-sustainability increase.”
The professors don’t want to sit in the giant’ s chair, but they do not want to make him angry.
Ten years pass.
“O giant,” say the professors. “Your subsidy has increased to 35 million dollars.”
“ROAR,” says the giant, showing his teeth. “The coach was getting picked off by SMU. We had to increase his salary to ten million dollars a year. We haven’t resolved the lawsuit the last coach brought against us, and that costs five million dollars a year. The teams aren’t doing well this year and no one’s buying tickets … You do the math.”