9/22/2010: USA Today has been doing a lot of good reporting on college athletics, backed up by a database they painfully compile from FOIA requests to public schools for the reports those schools submit to the NCAA. (The NCAA – a non-profit which gets a tax-exemption by arguing they act in the public interest – refuses to share this, or much else, with the interested public.)
In today’s story they look at student subsidies for athletic programs. Some of the numbers are amazing – $652 per student at UVA. The number for UO is $0. Which makes our administration’s refusal to admit the indirect subsidies – like land for the arena and jock box, increased parking fees, $1.4 million in state lottery funds – even stranger than it already is. Why not just fess up and tell us faculty ingrates that things could be worse. Much worse. And if you keep pissing off our boosters, maybe they will be soon.
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