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Ok, I must admit that on the surface, losing baseball doesn't appear to be a big loss. Although I'll miss my annual trek with my wife to Canal Park to see the Zips and Ken+ play for charity. But it's embarrassing when every other large school, and even some of the smallest, still have baseball. It also helps to create major news stories that give the impression that my alma mater is "failing" in some way to support a very common collegiate sport. And if Title IX didn't exist, would we be cutting Softball too?

That is substantially poor news. Was a great resource.

I disagree. Just because there a tough decisions to be made, does not mean that those decisions that are being made aren't up for criticism. The PD reported the baseball's budget for one season was $700,000. The cost of refurbishing the presidential mansion was upwards of $835,000. Why is cutting baseball a prudent, needed decision, while refurbishing the presidential mansion is a prudent investment in the university? Why is eliminating faculty positions (which is being done because they're not replacing retirees, which is a lot with changes to STRS, where younger replacements would start at a lower paygrade) a needed tough decision, but absolutely no changes to administration? Why are changes to faculty healthcare policies prudent, but not to administrative? These are just a couple examples that wouldn't necessarily account for $60million...but labeling things as "tough decisions" that needed to be done, absolutely does not exclude them from criticism. You're right, we don't have all the facts...another criticism that can be leveled against the administration. If you're going to parade transparency, you better damn well live up to it.

I did. Maybe someone can explain because that seems like the suggestion being made to me.

Once again we need to separate hindsight from insight. You will find very little record of criticism of UA's building plan prior to 2007. Why? Because December 2007 is the month that the Great Recession began. Prior to that the economy was booming and larger debt loads were manageable and even recommended by financial experts. Prior to that is when one of the biggest complaints about UA was that it lacked modern infrastructure and the kind of pleasant campus environment that attracted students to other schools. Prior to that most agreed with Dr. Proenza and the BoT that modernizing UA's facilities was a sound investment on the road to making Hilltop High into a great university. There is some irony in the fact that complaints can be found on these forums about one of UA's few remaining inadequate facilities, the JAR, alongside complaints that some of the current financial shortfall is due to "overbuilding." But that's just part of human nature. We all want more and no one wants to pay for it. We all want our leaders to make tough decisions and then we assume when something goes wrong it's all their fault and castigate them whether or not we have all the facts available to make that judgment. Truth be told, none of us is in a position to know how much of today's problems are due to bad judgment by those in charge or unforeseen circumstances such as the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.