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Football! All for Football!

In the span of a few weeks, my university announced completing a new $2 million giant scoreboard for the basketball arena replacing four small but perfectly functioning scoreboards, finished a new $6 million “academic center” ostensibly to provide athletes (but no non-athletes) a luxurious place to study but importantly also to host game day alcohol-driven hospitality for gung-ho athletic boosters, many of whom probably have no idea where the school library is. It also paid Howard University $350,000 so it could beat them (barely) in football, enhancing the probability of becoming “bowl eligible,” giving it the right to play, at some meaningful additional cost, some other second tier team in some obscure location in early January before perhaps 10,000 fans. Simultaneously, students were sweltering in the largest classroom building on campus because the undoubtedly ancient air conditioning decided to temporarily die.

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

Sing it, brother.

Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be
Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into your hands
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into your hands

For it’s only in my team that I am free
For it’s only in my team that I am free

Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be
Football, all for Football
All I am and have and ever hope to be

Margaret Soltan, September 17, 2018 7:53PM
Posted in: sport

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2 Responses to “Football! All for Football!”

  1. dmf Says:

    it’s an open question at many state schools about what the public values about universities, for many I imagine that attending sports is their only obvious connection to the ‘goods’ being produced.
    Don’t think we ever put it to a vote when many public schools shifted from wealth extraction (Ag/Tech/Mining/etc) to liberal arts.

  2. Stephen Karlson Says:

    Take a few words out of that song here and there and it fits the meter of the (Northern Illinois) Huskie Fight Song, which is on point to Richard Vedder’s observation (he’s emeritus out of another Mid-American football power) about selling wins to power conference teams, as well as on point to deferred maintenance and broken heating and chilling equipment in the classrooms. Sad!

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