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‘The arguments I always hear from the sports nuts is, athletics (football) pays for itself, therefore insane multi- million dollar coaches salaries are perfectly fine, yet now that a program has gone badly underwater, students and their fees are covering the shortfall, not massive reductions in coaching salaries and program expenses.’

My headline comes from the comments section of an article about Washington State University’s projected (2022) athletics deficit of $102.7 million.

Ho hum.

Naturally, our attention at University Diaries has been riveted to WSU for years, and you can read why here – it’s a link to all of my posts about the dump.

WSU has been in profound athletics deficit for fucking ever, since it boasts a kind of Platonic perfection of sordid greedy litigious coaches, significant numbers of criminally violent players, corrupt administration, students who mostly don’t give a shit and don’t go to games and instead bitch about how their tuition increases go to the most disgusting man in the world (except for his revered Donald Trump), Mike Leach…

So blah bletch projectile vomit gag cough dry heave spew

It’s our beloved alma mater the one and only WSU

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

UD thanks Seelye.

Margaret Soltan, July 27, 2020 9:41AM
Posted in: sport

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4 Responses to “‘The arguments I always hear from the sports nuts is, athletics (football) pays for itself, therefore insane multi- million dollar coaches salaries are perfectly fine, yet now that a program has gone badly underwater, students and their fees are covering the shortfall, not massive reductions in coaching salaries and program expenses.’”

  1. Bill R Says:
    July 27th, 2020 at 12:16PM

    It’s not as simple as all that. At big football schools, alumni and other giving strongly related to how well the team does.

    Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose Auburn announced they were reducing their football program to an intramural league and were going to devote the money saved to, I don’t know, “Critical Race Theory and Modern Feminist Alignments in Interpretive Dance Theory”. Would donations to Auburn go…

    1) Up
    2) Down

  2. UD Says:
    July 27th, 2020 at 1:08PM

    Bill R: I don’t claim it’s simple – my list of school-destroying elements in the WSU debacle isn’t meant to be complete. There are many aspects to the destruction of a school via its sports program. And there are many ways – short of the disaster WSU’s heading into – to do serious damage to a school’s intellectual integrity via sports.

    Now Auburn’s situation actually IS simple. It’s rolling in money from football because ain’t much else Auburn people care about – which is reflected in the school’s ranking and its truly singular long history of appalling academic scandals – scandals that would have embarrassed/shaken up real universities.

    https://www.margaretsoltan.com/?s=auburn

    So no denying what you point out – if Auburn announced it was taking seriously ANY intellectual pursuit at any cost to its sports program, blood would flow in the streets of Lee County.

    Also no denying what is indeed a very simple point – Auburn ain’t ANY kind of university.

  3. Total Says:
    July 27th, 2020 at 5:22PM

    Suppose Auburn

    An argument that applies to the outlier, eg LeBron James, is not an argument that applies to many other organizations or people.

    This Is also known as the ‘Well, Bill Gates Is Still a Billionaire, So the Coronavirus Economic Crash Can’t Have Been Too Bad’ argument.

  4. charlie Says:
    July 29th, 2020 at 5:29PM

    @Bill, the United States has approximately 4,300 degree granting unis/colleges. Less than a hundred belong to P5 conferences, which comprise the highest level college teams. Most unis do NOT have a big time sports program, or, in many cases, an athletic program of any kind. The notion of sports being a vital vehicle of donor/alumni money makes no sense when one bothers to look at the numbers. Unis are far more dependent on tuition and taxpayer subsidization than donors to keep the doors open.

    But, as in the case of Wazzu, the evidence supports the conclusion that aspirational athletics programs are destroying the academic side. Excellent example is the University of California system. Out of ten campuses, only three have a football team, and two are P5s. UC Davis is in a lower tier conference. A lack of big time sports hasn’t hindered the non sports campuses. But the flagship, UC Berkeley, is hemorrhaging money because of their incredibly stupid financing deal to renovate their football stadium. The details are sordid and arcane, but Deadspin has done a very good job of summarizing the details. The result is one of the finest public universities is forced to compromise their academic mission. UC functionaries used the same arguments you’re quoting to justify something that never made any sense. The current economic collapse is destroying the facade of college athletics being an integral element of a university academic mission…

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