And it don't work out so fine, on this side of the white lines

Ok, that's a baseball reference, but we'll ignore that for now. For the moment, it's about time I mention my ridiculous addiction to sports. I watch freaking timber sports and curling when they're on tv, and I haven't yet touched on football even though college has one game left and the NFL playoffs begin in two days.

Like it or not, sports are a huge industry in America, and in many ways they represent a bizarre combination of progressive values (Jackie Robinson is rightfully considered a civil rights legend) and knee-jerk conservatism. In the latter category, we'll include the biggest evil of sports, the fleecing of taxpayer dollars for stadium construction by greedy owners when the money would be better used on public services, as well as the relatively overt racism contained in Native American-themed team names (Redskins), logos (Cleveland Indians), and mascots (our very own Chief Illiniwek and his supposedly dignified "Indian" halftime dance). Why do we put up with these blatantly racist symbols? Because it's tradition, I'm often told. look, slavery was a tradition, as was segregation, as was keeping Jews under quotas at universities, as was any number of other things. A wrongheaded tradition is not justified because it is longstanding; all that it indicates is that sometimes people are way too slow to change.

Besides the larger team-specific issues, it is useful to see how college football plays a role in University life across the nation. At UIUC, as with most Division 1 schools, football/basketball are the dominant non-academic social activities in town. Faculty may not in all cases pay so much attention, but there is an Illini poster in every administrative office in the building, and a huge percentage of both the student body and city population live and die with the team. It's a good thing people are so devoted, in a sense, because athletics programs cost universities a tremendous amount of money. From an article in CFO Magazine:

According to an analysis by the Indianapolis Star newspaper of the 2004-05 budgets of 164 public universities, just 9 percent of these Division I schools had athletic departments that were able to support themselves. The rest received a total of more than $1 billion in student fees, general school funds, and other subsidies.

Without the financial assistance, the average school would have lost $5.7 million, according to the Star.

"Except for a handful, they are all losing money," confirms Daniel Fulks, a professor of accounting at Transylvania University in Kentucky. Fulks, who analyzes athletic budgets for the NCAA, adds that the gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting wider. Many have-nots are trying to keep up, he says, but are destined to fail. "It's not so much difficult as it is impossible," says Fulks. "I call these schools 'the pretenders.'"

Athletics aren't some sort of fringe benefit of a college town, they are a choice to spend valuable resources on entertainment rather than academic endeavors. It can easily be debated if this makes sense or not, but the fact that universities make sacrifices for their sports teams is a vitally important missing piece of the national discussion. Let's just say that when Stony Brook announced a move from Division 3 to Division 1 (small athletics programs to larger ones) at a time when the nationally ranked Physics Department was facing a multi-year hiring freeze back in the late 90's, very few of us really agreed with the administration that the increased publicity would really make our degrees more valuable. Let's compare shall we, Nobel Prize winner on the faculty vs. a football team that has trouble beating Central Connecticut State on a regular basis: which is better for the students?

A clear example of the ridiculous scope of collegiate budgets is the hiring of football coach Nick Saban by the university of Alabama, a contract that will run $32 million over 8 years, going up to $35 million depending on bowl performance. Such a contract is big (very comparable to what the NFL pays), but not out of line with what big universities pay. The problem seems to be, in part, that many universities across the country see themselves as natural powerhouses (offhand list: USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Tennesee, LSU), but there are only ten premier bowl spots out there, along with a bunch of minor bowls that only bring in a fraction of the attention. Thus, many universities pay huge amounts hoping to shoot the moon, only to come up short by millions of dollars at the end of the year, having often compromised their ethical guidelines regarding students when it came to recruiting, class attendance, and treating them as amateurs. There's a running joke I have: when people unfamiliar with college football ask me if the players are paid, I generally answer "Not as much as in the NFL", which may be more true in reality than the official answer, "no". Even sadder is that many college athletes really do blow off college, including the ones with no hope of a pro career. Let's face it, maybe one or two of the Illini from this year's crop will make the NFL, if that; I can't believe 98% of the team was intensely focused on academics during their time here. The rest probably wasted the best free ride they are going to get for the rest of their lives.More later on whether college athletes should be paid officially, rather than under the table.

For the meanwhile though, I should note that for all its problems, college football can be among the most exciting sports to watch in the known world. See the end of the Boise State cinderella upset for the most recent example, featuring a hook-and-lateral on 4th and 18 to tie the game in regulation, and a Statue of Liberty Play (?!?) to win it in overtime. It was amazing to watch.

Ohio State by 17, BTW, 34-17 over Florida for the championship.