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“September 2008, Big 12 board meeting in Grapevine, Texas, which abuts Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Cost: $10,300 on a university plane, plus $128 in landing fees. A first-class ticket would have been about $850.”

The University of Kansas, one of America’s most notorious sports factories, shows you how it’s done. Pay your athletics director millions and millions and millions of dollars, and on top of that, encourage him to take private planes everywhere at a cost of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It’s not about ego or waste. “That’s just the price of doing business,” explains the AD. True. KU is in the business of delivering quality sports to its campus, and to the nation. Price is no object.

Margaret Soltan, August 15, 2010 6:44AM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to ““September 2008, Big 12 board meeting in Grapevine, Texas, which abuts Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Cost: $10,300 on a university plane, plus $128 in landing fees. A first-class ticket would have been about $850.””

  1. Dave Stone Says:

    In vague terms, both Lew and I are employees of the State of Kansas, so I have some thoughts. On the one hand, Lew makes $4.4 million a year, or $85,000 a week. Presuming he puts in 40 hours a week, his time costs the University of Kansas $2000 an hour. Driving three hours someplace and three hours back means he’s paid $12000 while listening to Rick Pitino’s inspirational books on his car’s CD player. From the university’s point-of-view, it might then be worth it to have him doing productive things for five hours and on a private plane for one.

    Of course, that’s all based on the assumption that Lew Perkins is worth $4.4 million a year. Since he’s being hastily shoved out the door at KU, it seems KU’s own administration doesn’t think so.

    Here’s the other thing. Kansas State University and the University of Kansas suffer from bad airport connections. It’s 45 minutes from Lawrence to the Kansas City airport, which isn’t a great one anyway. Manhattan used to have it worse–two hours to Kansas City or Wichita. Things have improved with regular jet service from Manhattan to Dallas (plus free parking), but the point is that those who can fly by private plane on somebody’s else dime, and like the ego stroke it provides, have an additional reason to do so from the pain-in-the-ass factor of just getting to the airport.

  2. Dave Stone Says:

    Oh, and I have to include this bit from Sports Illustrated:

    “In 2004, the NCAA outlawed the use of private jets in shuttling recruits to campus. That restriction hurt some schools more than others. Since then, the Wildcats have flown prospects into Kansas City, then driven them the 132 miles to Manhattan, past endless fields of sorghum and soy beans and amber waves of grain, a journey during which many a blue-chipper from urban parts of say, Florida or Texas, has undoubtedly mused to himself, Man, this place is out in the sticks!”

  3. Bill Gleason Says:

    Hey, our football coach used a helicopter last year for some local recruiting.

    That has, fortunately, stopped after the outcry.

  4. University Diaries » WAAAAAHOOOOOO Says:

    […] need only revisit the recent private plane scandal at the University of Kansas, or consider how universities compensate coaches these days, to shoot […]

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