Today I did a presentation in one of my classes about why over-funded athletics programs should be removed from universities or at the very least, significantly scaled down. They have simply gotten too carried away with their spending and are guzzling university funding at an enormous rate. It’s really sad in my opinion because they are detracting from the academics at universities. No wonder the American education system is pumping out so many stupid people.
In my presentation, I included a comic graph that really shows the skewed priorities that football coaches have when it comes to salaries. Some of the specific examples of coaches I listed were hired with contracts worth $6-$12 million which is absolutely outrageous. After all, the whole purpose of the university is educate and not to pay coaches absurd amounts of money.
One of my favorite quotes that I found is from an article I read in The New York Times Magazine online and goes as such:
Dollars are directed from general funds and wrestled from donors, and what does not go into cherry-wood lockers, plush carpets and million-dollar weight rooms ends up in the pockets of coaches, the most exalted of whom now make upward of $2 million a year.
It’s true too! Not only are coaches making insane amounts of money, but athletic departments are spending huge amounts of money on other projects, most of the pointless and stupid. An example of that would be the University of Michigan. They spent $18 million in upgrading their stadium. One of the “highlights” of the renovations were 10-foot high lyrics to their football team’s fight song. That’s an appalling waste of money! It could go to something like classroom renovation and modernization. That funding could be used to upgrade computers around the campus or add more computers or do a huge number of other things like research grants.
The scary part is that, for most universities, most of this funding comes from student tuition rather than the revenues generated by ticket sales or merchandise sales. Universities also use their football team as a reason to raise tuition if the football team performs well, which is really ridiculous when you consider that the football team’s performance has absolutely nothing to do with how well the university is ranked academically and has no effect on the kind of education most students will get. The only effect it has is negative — it diverts funding that could go for academic purposes.
Another great quote I found that I intend to leave off on, is one from James J. Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan. The quote comes from his book, Intercollegiate Athletics and the American University: A University President’s Perspective and goes as such:
The damage done to students participating in [sports] programs, not to mention the university itself, has become simply too great. It is time that we decoupled football and basketball from the world of big-time show business, and reconnected these programs, their coaches, and their student-athletes to the educational mission of the university….[otherwise] they are not worth continuing….it might be far better for our institutions, our students, and our nation if we were to phase them out in favor of flag football and intramural basketball. (214)
