University Diaries » Wyoming: Tossing Millions at Trivialities

This local editorial says all the right things about the budget-stressed state of Wyoming giving millions to university football and slashing millions from public education. (See this post for details.)

We don’t believe for one moment that this money is going to improve UW’s chances of having a winning football team – which really is the goal behind this. At best, it keeps pace with other schools in the Mountain West Conference. And it does nothing to ease the impacts of UW’s bigger problems: Quality athletes are not going to play in Laramie, at least not consistently, when they have options with better amenities and climates.

This is a myth, a dream, that UW’s athletics department and its supporters peddle. It is time to move on to a smaller conference and perhaps even a different division – at least in football.

True, there is some value in seeing athletics as the “front porch” of the university. But in times of fiscal crisis, it is unwise to toss millions at trivialities when cuts are being made that hurt the public schools, and UW’s academic programs, and the state’s poor.

The editorial board even tries to make the argument that sports are less serious than study.

Athletics are an extravagance; academics are not.

*****************

Wyoming is just like Oklahoma, where the University of Oklahoma’s president is yet again explaining to stupid us (“the public misunderstands”) that we shouldn’t even ask the question posed in this Tulsa World headline:

HOW DO [OU’S FOOTBALL AND BASKETBALL COACHES] MAKE $8 MILLION AT A SCHOOL FACING A $20 MILLION BUDGET CUT?

We shouldn’t even ask this, because the money’s not coming from the state and hell that’s how people spend their money in Oklahoma! They don’t give a shit about whatever else the university does. What else does UO do? Don’t ask! Don’t even ask!

Boren misunderstands that the real question isn’t about state or non-state funds. Oklahoma and Wyoming are two of our most happily and severely concussed states. They don’t cotton much, round them parts, to thinking.

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