International Bowl in Toronto Today: Go Bulls!

That was a good game! UB was out played and out manned but they did their best and hung in there until the last play.

Hmmm... Raise your hand if you think this was worth the over $131 million spent on Division A sports in the last few years.

xhttp://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/131-million-big-mac.html

You can also raise your hand if this makes you more likely, as a UB alumni, to donate big bucks to UB.

Sorry, screwed up the link: http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/131-million-big-mac.html

Answerlady - yes to both of your questions. Thanks.

AnswerLady - I will second that...yes it was worth it.

Yep - I do have an agenda. Gold plated salaries for state employees

http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/100k-and-up-club.html

and $millions on sports programs while preK is cut, pubic transportation costs for the poor increase, Libraries are closed, programs to help prevent child abuse are cut, etc. etc. bother me.

Contributions from "dozens" of alumni are never going to even come close to covering the costs of the sports program. I am a UB alumni and I like a lot of what UB is doing and has done, but most people go to UB because it provides a reasonable education at a reasonable cost. There are already many more people applying to UB than UB can accept. We need to spend millions to taxpayers money on a bogus sports program to get more, I think not.

And I agree, Yes, it was worth it, and yes, I would donate more $$ now.

Outside money isn't just alumni donations. There's also football and basketball ticket sales, merchandise fees on everything sold anywhere with the UB logo, fees paid to UB by large schools like Penn State and Auburn for playing road games against their teams, commercial advertising, etc. Answer Lady's blog post doesn't acknowledge any of that.

A public university like Rutgers in NJ could be an example of how this might work for UB without being a financial burden for the state. Rutgers sports revenues fund 71% of their total athletic budget, and the percent is growing.

From http://speakup.rutgers.edu/faq_athletics.shtml

"Revenues generated by athletics continue to increase, doubling over the past five years from $20.2 million in 2004 to a projected $40.7 million this year. Athletic revenues as a percentage of the total athletic budget have also increased, rising from 61 percent in 2004 to 71 percent in 2008.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 athletic programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision of NCAA Division I earned a net profit between 2004 and 2006. Rutgers, which competes in this elite subdivision and has been invited to a bowl for the past four consecutive years, is working to become part of this self-supporting group."

UB's pursuit of Division A sports is as lame as it is predictable. Colleges and Universities across the US have resorted to this tactic to evidently compensate for undersized academic packages. It has been well documented in the book Beer and Circus by Murray Sperber from Indiana University. One of the first steps is equating college sports with academic excellence.

http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/11/ub-2020-hindsight-part-2-athletics.html

What are division "A" sports excactly, I've never heard of that, but I'm sure you're an expert. My guess is the 100s of other D-1 schools also have a fallis complex causing them to have active sports programs. Are you also saying that schools without D-1 sports programs are producing higher quality graduates and have better academic programs? Last I checked all Ivy League schools are D1. UB investing in D1A football doesn't seem to have stemmed the increase in international students or applications for admittance, but I'm sure the 20,000 or so people who went up to Toronto for the football game aren't of consequence to you. They should've saved that money and spent it on public transportation and pre-kindergarden right?

One other note, the MAC Graduation rates are measured against a five year standard, vs the six year standard that SUNY and other schools have adopted, so yes Athletes are being held to a higher standard.

You may consider changing your name to the ANGER LADY.

For over $100 million and personal hand holding by "academic advisers and tutorial coordinators" still 50% of the football team doesn't graduate from UB.

Meanwhile, less important things than sports, such as science, math, english, philosophy, engineering, and economics, etc. are taught by adjunct faculty paid psuedoslave wages and TA's that in many instances can barely speak english. As Sperber said quite well, the emphasis on college sports is a rip off, cheating undergraduates out of a quality education and the tax payers who are paying to provide one.

http://buffalowatch.blogspot.com/2008/11/ub-2020-hindsight-part-2-athletics.html

Your analysis and comparisons are weak, to ascertain that the quality of TAs at UB is the result of the football program is just asinine. The Academic programs stand on their own merit and operate as their own divisions within the University. If the TAs are unable to speak to your level of satisfaction, or you feel that faculty are not paid well enough, then that is an issue with the department that hires the TAs and pays the faculty. This is not a matter of funding diverted from those departments to the athletic programs, which is one thing was never mentioned in Sperber's book. He sees University funding as though it comes from one purse and only one person is responsible for allocating funds, so those funds can either go to program A or program B, this is not how the University, or any business, operates.

You would be hard pressed to find any objective person, without an agenda, who would say that Athletics is more important than Science, Math, English, or any other program offered at UB. This includes the Athletic faculty.

So your claim that sports is cheating undergraduates out of quality education is misguided.

My original point, if you can open your mind to see it, is that the Athletics program at UB offers benefits to the UB community. There is a different feeling amongst many Alumni now that the football program has made a bowl appearance, there is a different feeling from the majority of the community, which is evident in the 150 people who turned out for a party at Jimmy's in Reston, VA to see the game, or the 350 people in Chicago who showed up to watch UB. These events bring the Alumni community together, it enhances the emotional bond to the school, something that you obviously don't have for whatever reason.

The chip on your shoulder for UB and for athletics in general keeps you from seeing the big picture.

1. Does anyone have any actual facts about UB's spending on athletics? In general, football is a money maker at the 1-A level, and it helps subsidize the less popular sports.

2. whynot is right that it's wacky to assume that money spent on sports would otherwise be spent on something else. There's no evidence to suggest such a thing, particularly when so much of that money is specifically raised to support the athletic department.

3. TA's in some areas are not native english speakers, but that has nothing to do with sports. It has to do with the fact that so many of the graduate students in those areas are international students. Duh.

AnswerLady,

You obviously have made your position clear. But keep in mind that when you insult one group of student athletes, you insult all groups of student athletes. So, though you may dislike the football team for your own reasons, your stance applies equally to the women's tennis team, the men's soccer team, the cheerleadering team, the marching band, and any other entity that gets support from SUNY tuition money but generates zero revenue for the school. You must really hate DIII athletics, too, since they drain tons of money from schools and they certainly don't produce any revenue. And high school sports are nothing but taxpayer funded money pits.

Where do you draw the line on public funding for athletics? And why?

What about academic scholarships? Those are no more beneficial to the quality of the faculty or the TAs at a particular school than are athletic scholarships. They don't put books in the library. They just enable some kid sitting next to you in your lecture hall to get a free ride while you pay in full because s/he aced the SAT and plays the tuba. If efficient and equitable distribution of university funds for the benefit of improving the quality of the education for each and every student is the goal, then academic scholarships have that same deleterious effect you rant against.

And what about the history department? Should the English department get some of the reallocated football monies but not the history department? Or any other department for that matter? Isn't it all just a value judgement based on someone's personal preference? Football vs. volleyball vs. chemistry vs. Classics vs. dance vs.... It goes on forever. If I majored in physics and you increase the budget to hire a Latin scholar, how does that help me? A good English major would probably say that such value judgements are sooooo colonialist-oppressive, or something like that.

And doesn't the tuition money from students in inexpensive departments like English and History subsidize the more expensive science departments? Is that fair? Ok, lets say we cut the athletic budget. Now what? Who gets that money and why? Theoretically, it should go to something that benefits as many diverse students as possible. Hmmm...one of the only departments that actually does that...is athletics.

You may be trying to make UB better in some way, but your process for doing so involves taking pot-shots at all student athletes and all UB graduates by saying they got some kind of inferior education because of the athletics program. You play on tired, essentializing stereotypes codified by some book that happens to share your sophomoric views about 'dumb jocks' and the meathead administrators who love to give them money.

I think that is a damn shame because your blog makes some valuable contributions to bettering the University Heights neighborhood, which is a noble and necessary goal. I think you're tilting at UB windmills and losing sight of the potential for you/your blog to be a positive, catalytic agent for change, as opposed to a merely another pathological critic. Buffalo has too many of the latter, not enough of the former.

Dear guys,

Literal interpretation is the sign of a small mind. I am using the athletics budget to represent the waste / living large on the public dole UB has been excelling at lately.

Thanks for all your input - AL

The ad hominen rebuttal in lieu of a direct response is sign of someone who lost the argument.

If you were using the Athletic department as an analogy for larger waste in the system then you should have addressed that instead of bringing up graduation rates and the pursuit of sports being lame and predictable. You failed in this argument. Your blog highlights your disdain for UB and the UB community, yet you live on the doorstep of the campus. As stated above, that is like moving next to the airport then complaining about the air traffic.

I agree with Reflip, and would like to add that women's athletics and smaller athletic teams (track, swimming, rugby) all benefit from the larger athletic programs (football, basketball) due to Title IX and NCAA equality in Athletics programs. There are many athletes who are able to experience a top notch education due to their involvement in softball, swimming, volleyball, and many other Division I programs that offer scholarships. It is not just the football team that benefits from D-I play. You may not have known that based on your previous comments.

Peace and good luck!