I am forever grateful to L.S.U. for the opportunities given to me and countless other rural children, many of us the first in our families to attend college or graduate. Yet, 35 years after leaving campus, I worry that football success has obscured L.S.U.’s escalating academic ambition and its struggle to maintain excellence over the past three years in the face of about $50 million in state appropriation cuts and the loss of a tenth of its faculty…. “If we sent the football team out with only 10 players, how would people feel?” said John M. Hamilton, L.S.U.’s executive vice chancellor and provost.
I lived in Texas for 10 years, so I think I know of which I speak when I bring up backasswards priorities. The Allen Independent School District, for example, managed to pass a $60 million bond measure for a new football stadium…while being forced to cut teaching positions due to a budget shortfall. I understand- sort of- that the bond measure put money into a different pot than what the schools themselves are funded out of. Still, what does it say about your priorities when you have plenty of money to build a $60 million jock palace that really only gets used a few nights a year while you’re simultaneously laying teachers off?
What sort of message are you sending when football is hels up as a higher priority than the education of children? Yeah, I get that it’s Texas and high school football is king. Hell, without Texas high school football, there’d be no “Friday Night Lights“…right? I’ve seen the beast up close, and too many Texans do tend to lose all perspective when it comes to high school football. That being said, though, there’s absolutely no excuse- none- for shortchanging education in order to fund a football program.
I don’t mean to single out Allen ISD for ridicule…actually, yes I do. They actually roundly deserve the ridicule accruing to them, but Allen ISD is hardly the only example of out-of-whack priorities when it comes to edumication vis a vis athletics. There are examples of this sort of silliness and excess all over Texas- from El Paso to Texarkana, and from Lubbock to Lamarque. Misplaced priorities are not the sole purview and property of Texas, however. In fact, one need not look very far to the east to see how backasswards priorities writ large can do so serious damage.
[B]udget cuts are not the football team’s fault. L.S.U. has one of the few self-sustaining athletic departments. It does not use state tax dollars or student fees. Instead, the athletic department contributes 5 percent of its budget to the university annually — about $4.25 million at this point — and has spent millions to help finance a band hall and business school.
Football does not appear to provide an open window but rather a closed shade, reinforcing L.S.U.’s athletic standing while secluding its academic reputation, however inadvertently. In my travels, I cannot remember a single person outside of Louisiana knowing or mentioning that L.S.U. aspires to be as competitive in the classroom as on the football field. That is regretful.
One need travel no farther than Baton Rouge, LA, to find another (and much larger) example of what happens when an educational institution bases it’s sense of self-worth on the successful (or lack thereof) of the fortunes of its football team.
[T]here is a bread-and-circuses aspect about football that detracts from more urgent concerns at L.S.U. The faculty has gone three years without raises. State budget cuts have sliced through fat into muscle. An outcry would ensue if the football team was underfinanced. But gutting of the foreign language department generates only a comparative whisper.
“In many ways, I greatly admire Les Miles as a coach,” said Professor [J. Gerald] Kennedy, a football season-ticket holder. “But it’s just discouraging that so many people in the state don’t see beyond the football team.”
I love football, but I find myself wondering about the future of this country when education takes a back seat to sports. When the result of an athletic contest is considered of greater import than accomplishments in research and in the classroom, it would seem the train’s jumped the rails. I’m all for excellence and striving to be the best in all aspects of life…but why in so many schools (LSU just happens to be the example du jour) does that striving begin and end with sports? Sure, I realize that no one tailgates and pays $150 to see a biology professor give a lecture on photosynthesis…but that’s exactly the sort of thing we should be celebrating. Great research and scholarship are what will in the long run make this world a better place to be. Beating Alabama accomplishes nothing save for LSU alumni a reason to thump their chests.
Major college sports have become a cash cow for many major colleges and universities. LSU’s athletic program is largely self-sufficient, due primarily to revenue generated by the Tigers’ football team. The University of Texas’ football program funds an athletic department whose profit margins would be the envy of most Fortune 500 companies. Yet, when faculty members forego raises and funding for research dries up…all while football-related spending and profiting continue unabated, it’s time to recognize that the problem is misplaced priority.
There’s a very good chance that LSU’s football team will win a national championship in a few weeks. That’s a wonderful thing if you’re a Tigers fan…but it also obscures the reality that Louisiana State UNIVERSITY is first and foremost an institution of higher education that happens to have a very successful football team. The problem is that LSU alumni and fans view the institution as a football team that just happens to have a university attached to it. The truly sad thing is that national championships ultimately change nothing in our world. Real and lasting change is brought about by what happens in the classroom and the research lab. It’s too bad that sports fans have lost sight of what should be an immutable and undeniable truth.
