EUGENE, Ore. — The Football Performance Center at the University of Oregon features rugs woven by hand in Nepal, couches made in Italy and Brazilian hardwood underfoot in the weight room that is so dense, designers of this opulent palace believe it will not burn. This is Oregon football. There is a barbershop with utensils from Milan. And a duck pond. And a locker room that can be accessed by biometric thumbprints. And chairs upholstered with the same material found in a Ferrari’s interior. And walls covered in football leather. Nike football leather, naturally. The Football Performance Center, which was unveiled publicly this week, is as much country club as football facility, potentially mistaken for a day spa, or an art gallery, or a sports history museum, or a spaceship…. It is, more than anything, a testament to college football’s arms race, to the billions of dollars at stake and to the lengths that universities will go to field elite football programs.
I should probably start by declaring my allegiance so y’all can go ahead and accuse of going easy of the subject of this rant. I’m a HUGE fan of the University of Oregon football team. No, I didn’t go to school in Eugene, but I love the Ducks. When I first moved out here, the football programs at both Oregon and Oregon State were running jokes (their 0-0 tie in 1983 is still referred to here as the Toilet Bowl). That said, even I can’t begin to find anything resembling justification for Oregon’s new pigskin Taj Mahal. The photos alone leave me wondering how the priorities of an educational institution have could taken a back seat to the interests of their football team. I realize that Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, was the benefactor behind the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex. It’s his money, so he gets to decide to what it goes to. Knight’s also donated a significant sum of money to Stanford’s business school, so it’s not as if he’s all and only about the Ducks’ football program. Nonetheless, when the football program is ensconced in luxury that would be the envy of most NFL teams, I have to wonder how the university’s priorities became so thoroughly inverted.
The Ducks may prove to be a BCS championship-caliber team this fall; they’re #3 in most preseason polls. When last I checked, though, the University of Oregon is supposed to be an institution of higher education with a football team, not a football team with a university attached to it. Why are millions upon millions spent to pamper football players and coaches when educational programs struggle for funding adequate for educating students? As far as I know, Oregon doesn’t have a bachelor’s or graduate program in football…yet resources are lavished upon the team while educational programs continue to go begging.
There’s no denying that the football program is a cash cow, but I can’t help but wonder how much, if any, of that money benefits the educational mission of the university. If nothing else, the message sent by the opulence of the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex has to make a reasonable person wonder where the University of Oregon’s priorities lie. The university may have aspirations of being a world-class educational institution, but there’s a lot to be said for putting their money where their aspirations are. You can tell a lot about a university’s priorities by where the money goes. In the case of the University of Oregon, you’ll be able to see their priorities on display on autumn Saturday afternoons.
The University of Oregon isn’t the first example of an educational institution placing football above education (see Allen ISD in Texas), but it’s certainly leading what’s becoming a very disturbing and unfortunate parade of misplaced emphasis. Or am I just misunderstanding the mission of an educational institution?
If this isn’t an example of backasswards priorities, I don’t know what would be.
