Just where do the pesky buggers go?
Well, whether it’s OSU, or any seriously sporty American university, it’s about lawsuits. (Can you imagine how many University of Miami tuition dollars are going to lawyers and public relations people and penalties and all?) The stinkier the program, the higher the cost of covering the stinkiness, or, when the smell escapes, trying to pay your way out of the malodor-closet.
Ever since Brother Tressel had his cover blown, OSU has been spending mightily along these lines. Among their many outlays: Dealing with an ESPN public records lawsuit.
ESPN stated in the lawsuit that producers at the sporting news network had made several public records requests for all emails sent or received by President E. Gordon Gee, athletic director Gene Smith, compliance officer Doug Archie and former head coach Jim Tressel, that included the keyword “Sarniak.”
Ted Sarniak is a businessman in Jeanette, Pa., closely associated with former OSU quarterback Terrelle Pryor.
… In addition to documents containing the word “Sarniak,” ESPN also requested several documents without success. ESPN said some of their requests were wrongfully denied for being overly broad.
And OSU said… and then ESPN said… For every “said,” add ten thousand or so dollars.
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:04AM
OSU has, I believe, the broadest athletics program of any public university, which must be very expensive. The football portion, however, is notably profitable, so it’s not clear that tuition dollars are involved here.
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:47AM
Does the athletics department overhead include an aliquot part of the university’s legal department? Because a university includes all sorts of shared inputs, the fact that the football program covers its avoidable cost does not of itself falsify UD’s claim about tuition dollars.