Time to drink your gin-and-tonic-ah

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)

They stick out in DC as badly as Adder would in Paris.

Has, you mean.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Adder

You need to stop saying it this way. The academic side, in particular at public institutions, is not typically generating revenue in excess of its costs (i.e., tuition doesn't cover costs). State funds might be being spent on athletics, but that isn't the same as academics subsidizing athletics.

I'm saying it this way for a reason. At Berkeley there is money allocated for academics, and separate money allocated for athletics. The faculty has been giving money from the academic budget to the athletic program, and has continued doing this for whatever reasons at a time when it has been forced to make academic cuts. In a very real sense, athletics cannot pay for themselves, and are taking money from academics, rather than the converse.

eta: Quoting from someone on the Berkeley faculty, omitting his links:

The athletic program is a running sore of waste and misplaced priorities. To be fair, a lot of harsh and completely unfair things have been said about Cal football, and I want to recognize that football teaches the sportsmanship of fair competition against worthy opponents [we won our first two games by 52-13 and 59-7] and steady, consistent performance when the going gets tough (from a lofty #6 ranking, we lost to unranked Oregon last week 42-3). And our scholar-athletes are just that: our football coach, the highest-paid civil servant in California, gets more than half of his players to graduate in six years (53%) and there’s one Pac-10 team that’s worse, so there. Many men’s basketball players graduate, too, almost a third, actually. OK, sarcasm aside: big-time intercollegiate athletics (which is mostly football and basketball) has nothing to do with the core or even peripheral purposes of a university. Exercise, sports, and conditioning for all students are important; watching a football team in a seat or in front of television set is irrelevant, not our concern. Anyway, the Bay Area has two perfectly adequate professional fooball teams for people who want to watch minds being damaged rather than improved.

Nevertheless, the campus illegally gives intercollegiate athletics about $10m per year (intercollegiate athletics is required to be self-supporting), about half of what the faculty is giving back in furloughs, and it is building a $100m conditioning center (remember the tree-sitters? the trees were the least of it) for the exclusive use of about 500 athletes, or about $10,000 per year each. The excuse for this has long been that a winning football team brings net wealth to the university generally, but my colleague Brian Barsky has looked into this and found that the evidence points the other way: college sports supporters give to competitive athletics, period, and a IA program is a cost-center except at schools with minimal academic pretensions. One might ask, so what if it does make money? We could probably make a fortune with a modeling agency renting out good-looking undergraduates who got a custom-greased ride through their academics and beauty scholarships instead of pay; would that make it a good idea? It’s about as mission-relevant as our football program.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking any of this has anything to do with students playing sports. Those 500-odd favored “scholar-athletes” are a coddled and isolated minority among 25000 (for example, they get first dibs at course enrollments while ordinary students can’t get into required courses for their majors) with segregated dorms, free hotel rooms the night before home games (really!), and an exclusive tutoring service. Sports and exercise for everyone else is what you can grab in decaying, overcrowded facilities, sharing in the devastating funding cuts that are tearing enormous holes in our main business (we had a Vice-Provost for Teaching until this year, but no more). I know an athletic scholarship is “the only way some of these kids can go to college,” but how many scholarships could we give to real scholars if these miseducated alumni gave to the university instead of a proprietary semi-pro sports business? And isn’t there a difference between “being physically present in proximity to a college” and “going to college?”

Now we do have other auxiliary enterprises that could be called entertainment, and a comparison is instructive. Cal Performances, for example, an internationally-ranked first-class no-compromise presenter which brings world-class art to campus; and a lively, innovative art museum/film archive that hasn’t been able to raise enough money for a building that won’t fall down on its visitors and the art in the next earthquake. There is no academic department of passing, dribbling, coping with brain damage, play-calling, or tackling; not even sports management. But we teach art history, music, dance, art practice, and drama. The arts are at the core of a great university’s mission, intercollegiate sports are not, and every single concert at Cal Performances is a better concert than any Cal football game is a football game: it’s Red Sox-Yankees playoff level stuff, every night.

[notcasesensitive]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

no one is talking about anything that will "fix" all the injustice, and frankly some of the crueler crap I've seen is at the smaller schools that make no money from their programs, but con kids into going there.

the EA Sports game and the jersies I mention are not merely a lack of compensation for playing, which one could argue should be spread around. If that was what was sought to be fixed you could simply raise ticket prices and then you'd have a pool of bucks big enough to fix a lot of people up.

the stuff we're talking about is exploting the IP rights of a few people. why must that be shared across all schools for it to be fair? I get comp for playing should be paid equally (I don't think there should be comp for playing, but if there were) but the IP issue is really different. the D-3 kid is playing, but he ain't on a video game, and likely there are not a million copies of his jersey in the stands.

I think I like the idea of paying kids some portion* of jersey proceeds upon graduation. No pay if you leave early or otherwise fail to graduate. Allows the kids to weigh future value of their merch against other financial options. And pays back those guys who were great college ball players but who for whatever reason don't make it to/in the NBA.

*Probably not a huge percentage, but enough for it to be some sort of after-college bonus.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I think there is a different dynamic here.

The only people likely to care intensely about whether Harvard beats Yale are graduates of Harvard and Yale (and Hank, of course). (Maybe this is less true now that Ashley Judd goes to Harvard games). But all of Massachusetts can cheer on UMass and all of Connecticut can cheer on UConn. Public and Private schools have completely different markets for their athletics.

Doubtless there is some of that, but of course most people in Massachusetts don't care about UMass athletics. A small number of people care a lot, though, and legislators don't want to piss them off. Moreover, most Duke fans don't go to Duke, so the key difference is that UMass gets its funding from the legislature and Duke doesn't.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by notcasesensitive

Georgetown basketball has (or at least used to have) a much larger fan base than just Georgetown students and alumni. I'm just sayin'.

Yes, and there are other exceptions to the rule - Notre Dame, for example. And there are good reasons for each exception. In general, I think schools need pretty big "markets" of one sort or another to have a Division 1 team. And the schools that can find those markets most easily are public - but there are a few privates that can, too.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by PresentTense Pirate Penske

Leave Slave out of [Paigow's vagina].

Too late for that!!!

[PresentTense Pirate Penske]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Too late for that!!!

Slave had sex with Paigow!?!?!

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Fugee

Most American tourists go for the white athletic shoe look.

Maybe that's true, but I'm probably mostly correct when I say that nobody here but Adder wears white sneakers while abroad.

Plus, all that cushioning in those Mephistos would destroy my gate*.

*pimpin' aint easy.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally Posted by pretty little flower

too late for that!!! :p

zing!

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Moreover, most Duke fans don't go to Duke

Wait, there are people with no affiliation with Duke that have any non-negative feelings for Duke?


Really?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

Plus, all that cushioning in those Mephistos would destroy my gate*.

*pimpin' aint easy.

The cushioning stays in the shoes; it does not go in the hoes.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

The cushioning stays in the shoes; it does not go in the hoes.

Nice eye rhyme!

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Cletus Miller

Wait, there are people with no affiliation with Duke that have any non-negative feelings for Duke?


Really?

I concur. Although the majority of Notre Dame fans did not go to ND, and people hate ND as much as a they hate Duke.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

Nice eye rhyme!

flower is too nice,
the mean that drove us is gone?
rose thorns have worn smooth?

[Cletus Miller]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

I concur. Although the majority of Notre Dame fans did not go to ND, and people hate ND as much as a they hate Duke.

But that's mostly about papists and anti-Irish bigots.

Isn't it?