Several weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with one of my friends, a fellow junior ADS major, who wishes to remain anonymous for publicity’s sake. We were talking about football ticket prices going up. Neither of us really have a problem with it, although it seems a little ridiculous to raise prices for people to watch a losing team. The main issue, however, is we both fail to see the point of putting more money into sports.
“A lot of our educational departments aren’t up to par, and they should be the number one priority to the university,” said my friend, and I couldn’t agree more.
Why does the money made off of tickets need to be spent on “colosotrons” and plastic footballs to give away? It would be much more beneficial to put the money into better chemistry lab equipment or other tools for learning. After all, that is why we pay to be here – not football, but an education.
Why then does it seem like so much of our money goes to landscaping, athletic events, and pointless “free” things? I like that our campus is nice, don’t get me wrong, but I would rather we have working microscopes in microbiology. The athletic department is one of the biggest sources of income for this school, and yet their money goes to giant screen TVs? My incognito friend asked, “What’s the point of even having the ‘colosotron’ if it doesn’t tell me what just happened on the field? There is plenty of room for a Football for Dummies section!”
The high definition video screen cost $6.1 million. What if the school spent half that on a slightly smaller, but still spectacular, screen and used the rest of the money for more scholarships or laboratory equipment or other necessary items?
And don’t think my friend and I are football haters now. We both enjoy the crowd, fun and excitement of sports events, but can’t the school do it on a slightly cheaper scale? That way there would be more money for things that actually matter to our education. “We need to put money to something other than the department that makes the biggest source of income” my nameless friend suggested.
The point of a university has never been sports. While some schools can be proud of their team and choose to make a big deal out of it, a university is about knowledge and learning.
I decided the best way to prove my point would be actual numbers. I was unable to receive the actual spent numbers from Mike McGreevy, vice president for finance and administration, as he declined to comment. However, I did find the school’s planned budget for the year on the MSU Web site, which any student can access. The athletic budget for the 2008-2009 school year was $31,800,466! How crazy is that number?! The athletic department already expected $12,246,500 from tuition, fees and gifts this year alone. This is on top of the revenue generated by ticket and merchandise sales of $13,596,316, of which $12.5 million was purely football. The football department alone cost the school an estimated $9,374,909 to run this year; $2,356,726 of this was purely salary. Trust me, not one of our school’s 10 coaches is getting paid less than $125,000 a year, with most getting paid $175,000 or more. Compare this to basketball where head coach Rick Stansbury is getting paid $194,670 and the rest of his staff less than the lowest football salary. All the other sport’s coaches get paid even less.
Football consumes 29.48 percent of the total athletic budget, and it’s only one department! The rest is divided among 13 different departments and 13 different sports. This seems a little unbalanced, doesn’t it? And the school really thinks we should raise ticket prices to spend more money on them? The athletic department alone received a budgeted $6 million in donations this year. Since the school can’t change where donations are given, can they not at least revert some of the school’s money to other departments?
If you get a chance, you should check out the budget on the school’s Web site. It’s amazing what some of our money goes to! The athletic training room was allotted $1,176,965 this year alone, and $506,588 was allotted to the ticket office. Why does selling tickets cost us half a million dollars?! There has got to be better things for us to spend our money on!
I realize the athletic department is separate from the rest of the school, at least money wise. But who made that decision except the university itself? So couldn’t they change that policy if they felt it important enough? Which leads me to wonder, “Why haven’t they? Don’t they think their students’ educations are essential?”
The school needs to get its priorities straight and decide what’s more important: education or football?
Hannah Kaase is a sophomore majoring in animal and dairy science. She can be contacted at [email protected].