....as exemplified by a $401 million gift to my alma mater, Michigan State. Now perhaps I am old--at 56, yes I am--but I remember the good old days when Spartan Stadium was mostly bare reinforced concrete, and the athletics budget was, if memory serves, a "mere" $14 million. Even that seemed excessive when we considered that the football coach was getting a then-massive $350,000 per year or so--far more than a good surgeon would take home at the time. It was also irritating to pay $2/credit hour as an "athletic fee" to build the Breslin Center--an offense repeated when I went to Colorado for grad school. Ah, the good old days when that was the extent of the problem!
And of course, it's not just Michigan State or Colorado; I'm told that a big player in Michigan's NIL money is Larry Ellison's wife's desire to help the stinky weasels beat the Buckeyes.
Now yes, sportsball is big business, and yes, we shouldn't be taking four or five years of a young person's life and giving him Cadillac tastes and a Chevy budget (worthless or nonexistent degree), combined with lifelong injuries. But at a certain point, I'd have hoped that the educational mission of schools would attract at least equal attention with the sportsball mission, as most of us have no prospects of earning a living in sportsball.
Perhaps more importantly, we need to remember what the point of sports is supposed to be; character, character that probably is diminished when a player has money coming in that allows him to buy a new BMW off the lot. It's diminished when a player's tattoo budget isn't just for a single rose on his ankle to celebrate the 1987 Rose Bowl champions, but rather allows him to cover both arms with ink. It's diminished when the coach's plea "get to class" is answered with "I have a couple million in the bank, coach."
I don't know what the fix is--a salary cap would be a great start--but things are seriously getting out of hand.
