Scoreboards are reading, ain't they? Can't you nerds just be happy for once?

Meh, elite level sports is a cancer on the human species, period.

Are all incredibly expensive, mass media forms of entertainment cancers? Movies, pop music, high production value TV shows? I'm honestly curious.

College sports are exploitative. The players aren't paid, but the games generate billions in revenue. Smaller colleges "invited" to bowl games have to cough up money for transportation, a guaranteed number of ticket purchases, and loads of other fees.

This says nothing about stories like this where sports trumps actual education. The President of a college's salary is usually only less than the football coach's pay.

"Professional" college sports are a cancer, yes. One could make the case that for all the tax breaks they get, publicly funded stadiums and the way they're run for the benefit of the wealthy is also a cancer, but that's another article.

Yeah, I do think college sports are bad for society in all sorts of ways, but professional sport, for all its garish spectacle, seems to be well loved by the proletariat.

Yes, but thanks to player strikes, it's been shown that the revenue goes to other entertainment venues, ones that often aren't supported by tax increment financing, have luxury skyboxes only the wealthy can afford, and even regular ticket prices that put seeing games out of the reach of many potential attendees.

You just like teams that are too popular!

In NH, you can get season tickets (in the PADDED box seats!) to all 28 home games of the Scarlet Knights for $162!

Birthday Party -- sure, it's

King for a Day Birthday Parties Include:

Meal: hot dog, chips and drink

Gift: Sir Sterling foam sword for each kid

Events:
Sit on the special party deck down the first base line
Visit from a player for autographs
Unlimited inflatable activities
Ceremonial pitch for the birthday kid



Cost is $15 per person.
10 person minimum.

--
Once you get outside of the major teams, sports can be REALLY affordable to attend!

Except I'm still paying for all the tax breaks and other public funding for a football and baseball stadium whether I go or not, and as I stated, the income it pulls in would go to other local businesses, which I don't pay nearly as much in tax breaks for.

How is renovating the stadium not "renovations"? And a significant majority of the gift is going to updating the career center. I don't understand all the fuss. The reality is that athletics are both a big draw to a school, as well as a big expense.

For practical purposes, most money is fungible, anyway. If the school is doing 4 million in renovations or more in total, they could just as easily say all of Mr. Morin's money went there, and then use the money previously earmarked for renovations to buy the scoreboard. Same goes for scholarships. Money is money. If you have to spend less of what you expected in one area, that means you can spend more than you expected in another.

It's generally not worth the extra overhead to try to keep funds in separate accounts. It makes much more sense to put it all under one management umbrella and simply have a line item for "added $4 million dollars from Mr. Morin" than to open a new account to manage only those particular dollars. When it comes time to spend the money, again, it's just a line item. There is no individuality to any give dollar in a pool. They could have just as easily said it would fund four years worth of million dollar scholarships, if they were spending that money anyway.

Earmarking money for specific projects only makes sense if all money is earmarked as it comes in, and that's just not the way it generally works, especially in large institutions.

It harms your ability to get future donations when you are publicly seen to be misallocating the funds. The fungibility is totally true for small amounts, but once you start having large earmarks, fast and loose just won't cut it.

Many universities have been cutting funding in research. This has reduced the number of professors and research assistants that are needed. Professors are being forced to raise funds via grants. If professors aren't able to raise money on their own, they will not be able to provide employment and grant money to graduate students. When universities cut funding to research, they are pushing the fiscal responsibilities on their already overworked professors and grad students.

It's not so much that universities are spending money on renovations, it's really that the universities are cutting funding to the education, while increasing discretionary spending in other areas. Had the librarian stipulated that his donation had to be spend on the library's improvement or on education, this would not be an issue.

I do agree that college sports are way out of hand. But when it comes to saying which dollars were spent on what, it's all pretty gray.

It really isn't. You tally up all the ticket sales, and at the end of the year give the team, say, 10% of the gross take. If that's enough to buy a new scoreboard or whatever, sure, great.

No money should be going from academics to sportball. If they cannot support themselves, including paying a reasonable fee for using the university's name, then The Market, peace be it's name, has spoken.