Houston Prof: The attempt at being a big-time football program has failed because the deck is stacked against it; time to refocus on education

No I completely agree - there's no hostility. This kind of debate really intrigues me and that's why I'm interested in the debate.

The point I was making was that a lot of times you hear this kind of criticism from academics that have never worked in the real world and don't see the bigger picture. If he thinks people are donating millions of dollars to the university because of the French and European history classes he teaches there then he's sorely mistaken. Tuition doesn't go far enough - you need donors.

And the second part of my argument was that athletics encourages graduates to keep ties with their university and donate on the academic side. Sure, students may be paying a small fee as part of their tuition, but then they reap the reward when some donor comes in and gives the school $10 mil for a new library. Something s/he probably wouldn't have donated otherwise had it not been for that school pride and lasting connection generated by athletics. The evidence of this effect is when you look around at schools that don't have athletics and look at the kind of trouble they have funding academics.

Academia doesn't pay for itself and tuition doesn't cover enough of it. You need these big donors and often times the reason they're there to give money is because of athletics.

/r/CFB Thread Parent Link - houstonchronicle.com