keep the home fires burning

[intertribal]

It's budget cutting time at the university, and while majors, faculty positions, staff positions, departments, and structures are being eliminated, the coach of the men's basketball team - which hovers somewhere between "appalling" and "merely embarrassing" in league play - has received a $100,000 raise to a salary of $900,000 each year.  Nebraska actually does a little better than most universities in this regard, because the athletic department supposedly doesn't receive university subsidies and never ends up "in the red," because wealthy Nebraskans have their priorities straight.  But, substitute Nebraska for almost any other NCAA-member school and you've got essentially a money drain that's untouchable. 

My mother was complaining about this disparity and I said, "Well, you know what the athletic department is, right?  It's the Department of Defense."

The analogies are actually kind of fun.  We've got this department that supposedly generates enough revenue to make up that spending - tickets and merchandise, war - but maybe doesn't, and it's built on the backs of young men (and some young women) and fancy gear and armor, and fuck those young men and women when they leave the department.  If they're not strong enough, then they're on their own.  Oh, and the department's got a lot of cheering, waving fans. 

Comments

[brendandetzner.livejournal.com]

There's a section in Tom Wolfe's book "I Am Charlotte Simmons" where a college administrator sits in his office and tries to figure out why exactly it is that they bother having an athletic department at all, in light of all the work it takes to keep it running and the relatively meager payoff. He ultimately admits to himself that he doesn't know why they do it, but that there is some kind of psychological block preventing them from seriously consider getting rid of the sports team. It gets echoed later in the novel by a lecturing neuroscientist who talks about how infrequently human beings actually make rational decisions, and how much of what people do is driven by instinct. Neither character quite comes out and says it, but the implication is that the community keeps paying for the damn basketball court because there's something in their collective brains that doesn't feel safe unless there's an organized group of big strong boys in uniforms around, irregardless of whether there's anything useful for them to do. Fun stuff.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I'm not sure I buy it completely, but there's definitely some psychological block preventing elimination of sports teams. Here it would have to do with history and the Nebraskan way of life and the fact that the one football team is the only thing besides weather that ties the state together.

[lilpocketninja.livejournal.com]

This is so sadly accurate. My school (Mississippi State University) makes more than it spends, but it still spends $4 million worth of student fees and I'd rather not have that built into my tuition. -.- Much like I'd rather not have war built into my taxes!

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yep, exactly. But that's "unpatriotic," in both cases.