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More football, more rape & Emerald op-ed trashes Mariota Complex, subsidies

Grace Sullivan in the Emerald, here:

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long story, read it all, includes Duck PR flack Craig Pintens latest carefully worded denial of the fat that Duck athletics is taking millions from UO:

UO isn’t actually putting up the money to build the complex. The initial construction costs are $19.2 million, according to a building permit the university filed in November, and the complex is funded by Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight. The center is expected to be 29,000 square feet when completed, according to materials from the Board of Trustees.

That doesn’t mean UO isn’t investing in this complex. Power, maintenance and paying two full-time staff members will come out of athletics’ budget, but it’s not clear yet how much that’s going to be, according to Craig Pintens, a spokesperson for athletics. The Jaqua Center has $2.2 million in academic and operational expenses per academic year, according to Steve Stolp, executive director of services for student athletes. (The athletic department doesn’t receive any direct institutional support, according to Pintens.)

Yes, if you really twist the accounting definitions, and ignore things like legal fees and settlements for rape allegations, tutoring costs, police protection, bond payments on Matt Court land, lottery money, student ticket fees, the cost of Schill’s presidential skybox, parking subsidies, the upcoming costs of the IAAF championship, and who knows what else they’re hiding, you can claim that.

In other athletics news: More football, more rape. Former UO economist Jason Lindo’ latest paper is explained in Newsweek, here:

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Lindo’s study used the National Incident Based Reporting System data collected by the FBI, as well as football schedules and game outcomes, for the calculations.

The research found that home games increase reports of rape by 41 percent, while away games increase reports by 15 percent. Per year, that means there are between 253 and 770 additional rapes per year across the 128 schools participating in Division 1A because of the spikes in partying that accompany football games. The wide range is due to how the researchers weighed increased partying, more people in town for the game and more policing attention in the statistics.

The largest increase came after an upset win. Upset wins also increased arrests for drunkenness, DUIs, liquor law violations and public order offenses.

In an earlier study, Lindo investigated the relationship between non-athlete academic achievement and college football wins at the University of Oregon. That research found the football team’s success significantly reduced the grade point averages of male students.

“In terms of football programs themselves, there are lots of benefits and lots of costs of these progress,” Lindo says. “I still think there is a lot of work to be done documenting the non-monetary costs.”

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