Problems with football--both college and NFL

It simply baffles me that we are unable to do anything about the ultra-wasteful NCAA football, despite any number of reports and analyses that detail how much it screws up higher education and, more importantly, the life of the typical students who are increasingly finding it difficult to stay financially afloat.

Last night, PBS' "Need to Know" had a pretty good segment on NCAA football, by focusing its lens on Ohio University. 

In New York, the governor is proposing a 10 percent reduction in funding to higher education. In Michigan, it’s 15 percent. And in California, almost 16 percent. Last month, the president of the University of Nevada Las Vegas announced that the school may end up in the academic equivalent of bankruptcy. Tenured faculty could lose jobs, and entire departments may be closed.

But on many campuses, spending on intercollegiate athletics is growing, even though most sports programs run up millions of dollars a year in annual deficits. That means that while public universities are cutting in classrooms, your tuition dollars — and maybe even your tax dollars — are subsidizing big-time college sports.

It is depressing that we can have any number of such reports, but NCAA sports, especially football, apparently has even better a teflon coating that Reagan had during his presidency.  Simply depressing.

It is atrocious that faculty in higher education overtly, and covertly, encourage and support, and quite maniacally, college sports.  I fault even more the liberal faculty who waste not a second in complaining about fat cats in the corporate world and even in college administration and rally up students in these causes.  Quite a contrast it is when it comes to NCAA football and sports--not only do they rarely critique them, they are big time fans to boot (pun intended!)  And then their misguided defense of sports as an avenue to providing access to higher education for the poor and minority students.  Gimme a break!

As I have blogged before, even the small little university where I work is not exempt from wasteful spending on football. Of course, the "radical" faculty and their union has not bothered even to whimper about this.

One of the many reasons why higher education is academically adrift!

As if this sucking of blood money from students and taxpayers is not enough, the NFL goes even further.  Let us leave it to Reason to explain how the NFL owners, players, and the feds are all taking us for a very expensive ride:



I feel terrible for the youth in this country who don't realize how much they are being screwed :(