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“What [Colorado State University] needed, [CSU’s president] said, was a new way of looking at college athletics, someone who realized the athletic program serves an important role as the window many first look through before discovering the school’s outstanding academic programs. It requires someone who can find a way to generate the revenue needed to wean the athletic department off the $14.5 million annual subsidy it now receives from student fees and the university’s general fund.”

Yet another Pravda (this one The Coloradan) pumps out propaganda about a university’s athletic program. What a wonderful world it will be when the Colorado State University football team makes us an intellectually great, financially profitable institution! Comrade Jack (the article refers to the latest AD by his first name – ‘Under Jack’s Watch’ – because he is your friend, your buddy, one of you…) and his vast new $250 million stadium (that’s the cost estimate — we know how that goes) and plentiful new administrative assistants will make everything better. Although our attendance figures are pretty pathetic, he will make them perfect by increasing the number of available seats and raising ticket prices. He will bring a “new way of looking at college athletics,” in which athletics is the front porch of the university (you’ve never heard that one before!) and the AD spends the university’s money like a drunken sailor (also unprecedented!).

Margaret Soltan, June 16, 2013 4:47AM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to ““What [Colorado State University] needed, [CSU’s president] said, was a new way of looking at college athletics, someone who realized the athletic program serves an important role as the window many first look through before discovering the school’s outstanding academic programs. It requires someone who can find a way to generate the revenue needed to wean the athletic department off the $14.5 million annual subsidy it now receives from student fees and the university’s general fund.””

  1. JND Says:

    “DiStefano said CU is seeking ‘a dynamic leader’ who ‘can focus on our key goals of fundraising, building a dynamic organization and creating long-term stability in the athletics mission.'”

    He actually said that? Nothing about academics? Or education? Or service to the people of Colorado?

  2. Pete C Says:

    I’ve always thought the analogy between the spending habits of an athletic director and a drunken sailor is not quite apt. After all, a sailor eventually runs out of money.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Pete: Yes – and when the incontinent sailor is dismissed from the navy, he doesn’t get a four million dollar buyout.

  4. charlie Says:

    Let me see if I get this right. CSU, and other unis, are saying that we need more money for athletics, even at a time when graduates are going broke trying to pay back loans, if they can find job, faculty pay is falling, departments are closing or shrinking, and state funding for k-12 and unis is drying up. The logic being, if we pay more for athletics, even if it comes out of the academic side, it’ll work because, eventually, money will come trickling back down to academics, in the by and by.

    This crap was promulgated back in the 80’s, the Reagan administration being the shills that promoted the scam. And idiotic USAAmericans bought it, as they did offshoring heavy industry and massive deregulation, because it will all come flowing back and make us richer and more prosperous than before. Currently, it’s the uni admins turn to try to run the game on the children of the fools who got reamed back in the day.

    I guess the administrators had to wait a generation to run that pigeon drop scheme again. Can’t fleece the marks too often…

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