Reilly's latest is appalling.

I second that notion. Even if OSU didn't get the money for all those extraneous features & perks, who's to say that Murphy would have seen one red cent of that? You can't. Instead, focus on something more tangible, like campus security, improve/refurbish dormitories hire more teachers & build classrooms to shrink teacher-to-student ratio, increased funding for university research, etc... Something like that would probably be better received and still get the point across.

 

Maybe they're making up the budget shortfall with all the linens and alarm clocks.

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/49629/

 

And I think it is boneheaded to make the student-athlete (O.K. big time jock) the problem. I'd say athletes on successful teams are doing more for their schools than the schools are doing for them. If you take a BCS bowl team roster and add up all the revenue it has generated for the school, I'm fairly certain it will be more money than a year's tuition, room and board. Of course for the sucky teams, the economics are much different.

 

Perhaps rather than making a dollar-by-dollar economic case against OSU athletics, Mr. Reilly was merely trying to convey how profoundly distorted our priorities are in certain areas.

 

How about a comparing an unemployed and homeless carpenter to a guy who pecks at a keyboard for a living and is able to fly cross-country to swimsuit shoots or to make out with the floozy-of-the-month at college football games?

 

I just think, jg, that the argument is fatally flawed unless the same person or entity is responsible for both things. Unless state appropriators are wholly responsible for the $109 million athletic budget - which, as a previous commenter noted, I don't think is true - there's no valid priorities-distortion argument to be made...unless the argument is that the donors to the program should instead be donating to programs for the homeless. In that case: who's to say they aren't doing both?

Also, the distorted-priorities argument implies that more money for the state's homeless would significantly improve the life of the Mr. Murphys out there - perhaps, even, that it would take them off the street. More likely: it would marginally improve their lives...make the shelters cleaner, more secure; give them a little more to eat, an additional job-training program or two. All great stuff; for most people, not life-changing. Reilly's implied belief that Murphy lives how he lives - even in part - because Freeman lives how HE lives displays tremendous naivete about politics and economics.

 

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the piece worked. In fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't because none of us seem able to identify its central premise. I was just trying to widen the discussion a little as a matter of craft.

 

JG: I think you had it right the first time. I'm not sure the head-scratching on the board over what the column's point might have been says as much about Reilly as it says about the board.

 

I think it's a valid reading, bp, but the piece is pretty imprecise mechanically and rhetorically. I think the head-scratching is a result.

 

Two things: As far as I can tell, the athletic departments at the major universities are almost completely self-funded. It's not like they are taking money from the chemistry department to pay for football uniforms.

And No. 2 -- Lots of references to the Rick-Reilly-drunk-at-an-LSU-game rumor on this thread. Correct me if I'm wrong, but hadn't it been decided that this never actually technically occurred. Maybe I missed the part where it was confirmed, but last I saw, I thought we had decided this to be completely bogus.

Anyway, carry on.

 

And whattt, Cryptic Man, does it say about the board? (Like, about me, the thread-starter?)

I won't challenge you to a fight once you tell me - I'd just like to know what you're actually saying.

 

My thoughts too. I think we might be overthinking this by scrutinizing where each dollar comes from. The main point stands that some athletic departments spend money in such a frivolous and lavish manner that's got to make you question our priorities.

Remember when a locker room was a stinky place to change clothes? Well, nobody would take my house in exchange for some of these palatial locker rooms today. But we know a lot of this shit is just a backdoor around cheating rules. It's illegal to pay recruits directly, so schools like OSU pay em indirectly by heaping the most over the top luxuries in facilities, living arrangements, and other crap that skirts delicately around the rules.

But that doesn't mean i can't see the hypocrisy of the messenger being a guy paid millions to peck on a keyboard about sports.