Why Do I Even Bother?

[filkertom]

See, I look at this story about the upcoming renovation of Michigan Stadium -- which I live a quarter-mile from -- and I think: "Isn't there something better that a college can be doing with $226 million? Like, oh, something to do with actual education?"

Must... have... mock... gladiatorial... games....

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Bread and circuses, don't you know. Bread and circuses...

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

Max-i-mus! Max-i-mus! Max-i-mus! Max-i-mus!

[barbara-the-w.livejournal.com]

good ol' Juvenal

[gan-chan.livejournal.com]

In my weaker moments I wish they would become real gladiatorial games, and thin the herd a little bit...

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when Eastern Washington University trashed everything they could in order to buy their way into a higher football league. They kept shouting "Student Morale" as they cut funding for everything students cared about (like copy machines) and gave it all to elitist jocks, which nobody but the elitist jocks cared about. Morale hit an all time low, new students went elsewhere, the football team came in last for six years straight (I don't know what happened after that) and EWU is _still_ considered barely accredited, but the administration keeps insisting that the money wasted was important to improve the school image.

Although, the students did learn an important lesson: Sometimes people in charge are really stupid and should not be tolerated.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

What's better for education than money?

More money.

For someplace like Michigan, football is big money. Huge money. This may not be mere spending for gladitorial games, it may be an investment in the school's future.

So long as it isn't illegal, unethical, or morally reprehensible, I'm not going to quibble over how they get their endowments. If it means the school will have more money later, I say good for them.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

Guys: For all its faults, UM's Athletic Department is self-supporting.

To the best of my knowledge, they aren't taking funds away from other activities to upgrade the stadium; they're using a combination of Athletic Department funds and money raised from donors specifically for the project.

And if you're worried that this might be keeping them from other building projects on campus, all I can say is that you clearly haven't been here recently. As a friend says, they should just roof the whole city over and admit it's an arcology.

Current and upcoming UM building projects that I know of: Biomedical Research Center (huge), Cardiovascular Center (big), upcoming new Children's Hospital (truly immense -- as big as the Hospital), expansion of Kellogg Eye Center (big), School of Public Policy (big), new dorm to replace Frieze Building, renovation of LSA Building, teardown of virtually the entire Business School to replace it with a bigger and better one (huge), whatever the hell they're doing on North Campus (huge), whatever they built across from the MLB (big)... and all of those except Kellogg, the Children's Hospital, and the new dorm are going on RIGHT NOW.

The only controversial thing about this stadium is that they're adding box seats, which stinks in the nostrils of UM's tradition of relative egalitarianism in the Stadium. Believe it or not, they've got faculty protesting it. But the cost? Taken in context, it isn't interfering with anything else.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I know all about the other construction -- it's been blocking ever-damn-thing down that way for awhile now. huskiebear works smack in the middle of it, and the parking situation has been dreadful for two years. I just have this weird notion as the U-M Athletic Department being a part of, y'know, The University Of Michigan. It ain't the buildings, or the building: it's the education.

Last year, tuition was raised yet again (http://ipumich.temppublish.com/cgi-bin/pr.cgi?/~urecord/0405/July25_05/00.shtml). They worry about state budget cuts. Meanwhile, the stadium renovates, expands, and waves its dick puts in more seats so that it can keep its record attendances. If they've got a quarter of a billion to spend to put in suites and seats, they can unload some bucks for, y'know, the actual university.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's true in this case, but often alumni donations are earmarked for particular causes and *cannot* be diverted. So if an alumnus gives a lot of money earmarked for the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, UIUC can't use it to remove the asbestos in Lincoln Hall, say. Which means that sometimes when there are large amounts of money going toward athletics, it's not purely the fault of the university.

[rook543.livejournal.com]

And a football brogram program the size and stature of UofM's defintely has a huge number of Alumni and "Friends of the Program" (People who while not alums are major financial supporters of it).

[louisadkins.livejournal.com]

Remember, though, that if they don't hold games the population might revolt. Wait, that was Centurion: Defender of Rome. Oops...

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

Mencken, in his essay "The Striated Muscle Fetish," said that 'way too many college administrators shared the mentality of their students, and that "the average college-age boy would far rather be heavyweight champion of the world than Einstein."

My GF says I quote Mencken an awful lot. My response is that a lot of what he wrote back in the 1920s and 1930s sticks like an arrow to this day---and that the time for her to worry is when I start quoting Ambrose Bierce or Philip (_A Generation of Vipers_) Wylie.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

Throughout the history of Michigan Stadium, attendees paid a flat rate to get in, and got a flat seat to sit on. There was some variance due to relative location to the fifty-yard line, but no real significant difference in price from one end to the other.

This changed two years ago. The sports department joined the rest of the college football world, and started requiring substantial donations to get on the season ticket list. Like, $10K per ticket substantial donations. But you still got the same seat, even though you paid thousands of dollars more. Is that fair? Hard to say. In any case, those guys who are paying thousands of dollars started insisting that they get something extra for all those extra dollars. The solution at present is that they're building skyboxes, and more toilets. (I expect some of those new toilets to only be available to the folks who paid the extra money.)

I expect that the behind-the-scenes turmoil in the alumni is even worse, to judge by my parents', in-laws, and their friends' reactions. That is, folks who had been attending games every Saturday since 1950-something now have their Saturdays free. They're not happy. It's a calculated risk on the sports department's part (that is, will the increased revenue from some elite members offset the lost revenue from a larger number of middle-class members? What if that second group decides to send their kids to MSU?) It will be a long time before we know how this all shakes out.

I'm just glad that I got to take Kevin to a game two years ago, before the renovations started. (He's the one in the family most incensed, too. "It was perfect!" says he.)

[scott644.livejournal.com]

Is their sports program self-supporting? I live about a mile or so away from UK, and their sports program pays for every bit of what they receive on that level out of its own pocket, making it difficult to complain about them taking educational funds away from the system. It's something I rather like, and I hope that's what's actually going on with Michigan Stadium.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is really and truly self-supporting, which takes the sting out of projects like these - at least they're not taking money away from educational programs.

But as a former student, a local resident, and now a University employee, I think there should be an even higher standard: The athletics department shouldn't just be self-supporting, it should give back to the core educational system. If nothing else, the Athletics programs could pay fees for the use of the University's name and related images (although the famed "Block M" is already the property of the Athletics Department, not the University).

With tuition rates at the U continuing to climb, we're getting away from our role as a public college. I'm proud of the fact that we do offer some of the best educational programs in the world, but our position as a State University mandates that we make those incredible education opportunities available to the people of the State of Michigan.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Pretty much my point exactly. Everybody else is hurting, while the Athletics Dept. (and very specifically the football and men's basketball departments) are hunky-dory.

How very... Republican.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

If they were a completely private organization, I'd say more power to them. They've got a popular product and they're making money from it. But they're not. They are a branch of an organization that is itself a branch of the state legislature.

What they almost have is a model for other public infrastructures and organizations. They run themselves like a successful non-profit: as though they were an independent business, with their goal being to break even at the end of each year with a little bit extra left over for reinvestment. There are some other public areas that could benefit from that example. The Detroit Water Board/Water & Sewerage Departments, for example, are supposed to be run this way but have become bogged down in internal and inter-city politics.

I'm not a hardcore Libertarian but I think they have some points. Government does have a few things to learn from business - long-term, successful businesses, at least - and it also needs to understand the thinking process of businessmen better in order to motivate the private sector into maintaining the public good.

[scott644.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it's self-supporting. I wouldn't be so eager to make it give money back to the school, by the way. Once you do that you start tying the school's income to the sports program's success, and that's a slippery slope we're all better off without. Far better I think for the sports program to sink or swim on its own, and not be dragging the academic program with it. Too bad too, because if it weren't for that conflict of interest I think we'd have a nifty potential revenue source for the schools.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

Then make it a flat annual fee, not tied to the revinue of the Athletics Department. A singular fee to cover right to use the school's name and images, the right to represent the school in NCAA events, and the department's privledges of special access to the student body.

Or instead of the money going directly to the school, have it paid into an independently administrated scholarship fund.

[scott644.livejournal.com]

Nice ideas. The first is invalid however as the sports program, while self-supporting, is still a part of the school and thus entitled to said use. The second has real merit, although the argument could be made they already do that by providing for their own scholarships (thus freeing the academic side of the school from providing them).

[rook543.livejournal.com]

I know that several of my teachers in high school were UofM grads who were on the football team and got there by football scholarships.
President Gerald Ford was the Center for the Wolverines in the 1932 and 1933 seasons (both of which were undefeated seasons) and his number (#48) has been retired. He was offered contracts with the Lions and Packersm but turned them down to attend law school (Yale).

[daundelyon.livejournal.com]

So this is in addition to what's already being done? I was in the Big House last month for my sister's graduation, and it was already a disaster area.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

When's the last time you saw Gatorade sponsor a lecture on tachyon particles?

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Ssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh... nobody's supposed to know about the tachyons that go into Gatorade. How do you think they get it to glow so weirdly under various types of light? :-) :-)

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

The athletic department of the University of Michigan is completely independent of the academic part of the University of Michigan. The only formal connection is that both the President of the University and the Athletic Director report to the Regents. It is a separate business, and has almost nothing to do with academics.

Now, that said, I have a standing offer to the President of the University of Michigan (in effect since 1973, the year after I graduated): each year, for every 1/2 game under .500 the Michigan team ends in the regular football season, I shall donate to the President's academic fund US$50.

Technically, I have never had to pay up, as Michigan has never had a losing football season since then. One year they were at exactly .500, and I sent the President US$25 because they lost the bowl game they went to(!).

Trivia question: when was the last year Michigan had a losing regular football season?

On the other hand, if they're going to spend all that money on another tier of seats and corpse boxes, I'd really like them to host more games like Slippery Rock vs. Shippensburg State on off Saturdays.

[rook543.livejournal.com]

I think that was 1967