The only real way to argue for an unnecessary, irrelevant, bankrupting, and bohemoth carbuncle right in the center of your campus is by way of recourse to the divine, and, in particular, to divine retribution. You need to scare people. If they don’t get going and get saved, there will be hell to pay. Without tithing hundreds of millions of dollars (many of them coming from students and taxpayers) toward a new football stadium, you will lose the battle with the devil (opposing teams).
There are of course many ways to argue against such a thing… And what Scathing Online Schoolmarm is going to do this morning is look at point/counterpoint, starting with the God Principle, and then moving on to a more secular stance.
Should Colorado State University build a new football stadium? (Note: There’s in fact no question about it. The stadium – at a school where vanishingly few students attend games despite a more than respectable winning average – will be built. So this post isn’t about urging people not to build the stadium. Although not officially announced, it’s a done deal. This is America.) SOS reviews the writing of Mark Knudson, an advocate, and Deborah Shulman, an opponent. Okay, first Knudson.
His title: PUT UP OR SHUT UP. [O come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my soul to rest!]
CSU athletic director Jack Graham had a vision — a shocking and inspiring vision — when he first took the gig, and he has done a magnificent job of describing that vision. We can now close our eyes (or look on our computer screens) and see the glistening new stadium, blending in as a centerpiece and invigorating the entire campus.
Like Jesus, AD Graham is a radical visionary whose glistening stadium on a hill we too can glimpse when we close our eyes. Also like Jesus, Coach McElwain is beginning to run out of patience with his wayward flock:
How much patience will McElwain be asked to have while he waits for something to actually get done on the vision?
And now the more fleshed out theology:
The issue isn’t whether or not the new stadium is needed. If you know anything about college athletics, you know how badly it is. You know it’s time for the tiny but vocal minority of under-educated opponents to punt.
If CSU wants to remain at all relevant in college sports — remember, there is at least some chance that college football and basketball players might start getting paid in the next few years — then this kind of upgrade is not only needed, it’s critical to simple survival.
If the stadium project doesn’t happen, then it’s just as likely CSU will end up in the lower level Big Sky Conference as it is they will never play in another New Mexico Bowl.
The small-thinking opponents of the stadium can keep talking about dressing up Hughes Stadium and trying to make it look big time, but it never will be. Talking about upgrades to Hughes Stadium is simply another way of saying “putting lipstick on a pig.” Nothing screams “Smallville” like a dirt parking lot — out in the middle of nowhere.
It is so abundantly obvious to sect adherents that a university with a low-attendance football stadium should pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a new one that no argument is needed. Either you see the vision or you don’t. But let me put it this way: Without this stadium, you will die (“survival”). After you die, you will be buried (“a dirt parking lot”) and then go to hell (“the lower level”).
Okay, counterpoint.
Headline: CSU Can’t Afford a New Football Stadium. Not at all catchy or scary. Nothing Sinners in the Hands of an Impatient God about it. SOS fears we are in for a sober, fact-based analysis.
She mentions “millions [in] deficit spending for football.” She reminds us that “faculty had been on a pay freeze for four years” back in 2012 when the AD spent millions and millions on ten football coaches.
More than half the athletic department revenue comes from student fees and university subsidy. The students, faculty and taxpayers pay for football.
In a nationwide trend and at CSU, attendance at football games has been declining. At CSU, athletic ticket sales are less than 8 percent of revenue. Profit or breaking even is an unrealistic goal since most Division 1 schools operate football programs at a considerable deficit and require university subsidy.
The $125 million stadium guesstimate doubled, yet the Board of Governors determined these donors need to raise just half the money, not including costs imposed on CSU and the city. City Councilman Wade Troxell estimated the stadium would impose up to $50 million in city infrastructure adaptations. Taxpayers will cover this cost.
Blah blah. Facts. It’s about vision, baby! Get out of Smallville! Think big!
Why have athletic donors been granted such power and leverage to dictate development of CSU and Fort Collins?
Cuz they got the vision!
July 13th, 2014 at 11:18AM
Mark Knudson should do less hero worshiping, and a lot more basic research. If he had, he would have known the fate of the University of Oregon’s Matt Knight Arena, another vision of former Pres David Frohnmayer and former AD Pat Kilkenny. They claimed that a 1/4 of a billion bball arena was essential to make U of O relevant in college basketball. While Frohnmayer was waving around a report indicating the tens of millions that the Arena would make with conventions and meetings, he kept hidden two other reports showing what he claimed was pure bullshit, because six years into this monstrosity, it’s losing money, nowhere near justifying the $235 million in public bonds required to fund the white elephant.
Look, Mark, what CSU’s AD is proposing ain’t a vision, it’s a hallucination, kind of like the ones you would experience in your state’s high deserts if you would be stupid enough to go out there without knowing what you’re doing. Both you and CSU are hallucinating, but unfortunately, it’s going to be the public/student body that’s going to pay. Someone is going to profit A LOT from your and the AD’s garbage, and that’s the reality of it all….