College Football; Public Universities Spend Millions on New Stadiums, Despite Slim Chance for Payoff

[Z.I.P.]

I found this article by the International Business Times to be quite well considered, and thorough. And it mentions the UA and it's facility.

http://www.ibtimes.com/college-football-public-universities-spend-millions-stadiums-despite-slim-chance-2258669

[LosAngelesZipFan]

It's a bummer that UA is now a proof-point in articles like this-- the faux fiscal crisis coverage makes us a really easy example when in actuality the stadium was really not designed and built in an overly extravagant way.  In fact, at $60 million and 30K seats, it was built at an institutionally appropriate scale and at a point when something had to happen given the condition of the Rubber Bowl.  Unlike CSU, we didn't walk away from a suitable but less than ideal facility in hopes of greater glory and betting big on enhanced revenue.  

Which is not to diminish the point of the article-- spending on facilities, sports and otherwise, is on an out of control spiral that is needlessly jacking up the cost of a degree and in the end hurting society by making it harder and costlier to get a degree.  However, I don't think UA's re-build over the last decade was overblown or extravagant-- it was a corrective from decades of little to no capital investment.  The real issue is that Akron is a moderately sized area supporting 2 large public universities, both competing at the same level for nearly all of the same attention and resources.  

Edited January 31, 2016 by LosAngelesZipFan

[Balsy]

The madness that is College Football at Universities in the United States continues.  $1 million for research into the facility and as much as $126 million for the new stadium.  BoT and schools need to wake up, IMO.  Places of Higher Education should be about, first and foremost, education. 

 

http://collegefootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/02/08/temple-trustees-vote-to-pursue-new-on-campus-football-stadium/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=college-football

[UAZipster0305]

Especially in large cities, building college-specific stadiums make little sense to me. Share one with the local NFL team if possible. So what there are potentially busy weekends at the stadium with games on back-to-back days? 90% of the year the stadiums sit empty and unused anyhow.

 

$120 million dollars would perpetually fund 30-60 endowed professorships...how's that for perspective?

[zippy5]

There are 120+ D-1A teams and 31 NFL stadiums. Probably half of the stadiums aren't in a college town, I'm not really sure there are many more possibilities for sharing a stadium than are already utilized in Pittsburgh, Miami and Philly.

[K92]

Temple is just trying to strike while the iron is hot.  They had nice home crowds in the lower 30K's for the most part along 2 60K+ games vs. Penn State & Notre Dame.  The tide is high for the Owls.  No better time than right now to get that stadium built.  It's too bad they don't have finishing the 2015 season as a ranked team for another piece of positive press to help their stadium aspirations, but the Toledo beatdown in the bowl game prevented that.

[kreed5120]

The athletic arm race just in general is out of control. The P5 schools for the most part can afford what they are spending. Everyone else is going broke trying to keep up with the joneses.

 

http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/

[MDZip]

And frankly its only a handful of the P5 schools that stay in the black as well. And even when its disguised fairly well everyone knows that's its the students who end up picking up the tab for all of the debt. My daughter attends the University of Maryland and I just paid her tuition bill, even with UMD getting more money from the Big Ten I know part of her cost is certainly subsidizing athletics. Would love to know how much of it it is (and she has attended exactly one athletic event while she has been there - the Akron soccer game I went to with her last fall).

 

I heard Chris Christie speak (not a political endorsement just happened to hear him on the radio) and he has a kid a Notre Dame and one at Princeton. He got a letter from Notre Dame which proudly said tuition was only going to up 4% this year (the lowest increase in 40 YEARS) and he said the bill from Princeton had only three lines - tuition, room and board and fees. He said if you got a bill at a restaurant and it just said food you'd probably ask the waitress to break it down into the actual costs.

 

I saw a promo on a Big-12 basketball game and they were proudly trumpeting that student athletes had a higher graduation rate and came out of school with far less debt than the general student population. Gee, could that have anything to do with available tutors, someone watching over your academics (and a high number of majors in sports management and exercise science) and something called a scholarship all because you're good at bouncing a ball or the like? So you have a bunch of students subsidizing other students and you wonder why there's an undercurrent of anger about student debt (though I have less sympathy for those who feel they must attend a private school for art history and pile up a mountain of debt doing so - you have to take some of the responsibility).I love college sports but it terrifies me what it is turning into. Could be a student (or parent) revolt on the horizon. Damn it when did I turn into the cranky old man?  Think I'll just become a bitter member of the venomous minority.

Edited February 9, 2016 by MDZip

[Balsy]

4 hours ago, MDZip said:

Damn it when did I turn into the cranky old man?  Think I'll just become a bitter member of the venomous minority.

 

You could always join the young people and FeelTheBern  (not making a political endorsement, just having a fun jab while pointing out that the single candidate supported by the most millennials is Sanders).

 

But I couldn't agree more with what you said.  You're point about skewed statistics is also spot-on.  We're living in a culture, both public and private, of resume building, where people are in constant defense/justification of actions rather than being focused on a transparent and accurate/un-biased assessment of situations.  It's going to take a push back by the public in the voting booth to change anything...as well as a candidate who's willing to take on this country's addiction to 18-22 year-olds.

[Tony Levin]

I am Totally agree with Balsy.