[Spiny_Norman]

Another Stanford writer opines. Sally Jenkins rips into the schools and their administrations that have spent so much money on athletic salaries and infrastructure lately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20...-come-due/

The pandemic has subjected the NCAA to radiographical exposure. Every crooked vertebra of the system is on glowing fluorescent display. It’s similar to the sensation when you view an X-ray that shows your cat swallowed your favorite fountain pen. You can see all the things that don’t belong in the guts of a university.

The coronavirus crisis is an incredible diagnostic tool. The excesses have never been so sharply delineated: The $50 million stadium upgrades, the indoor waterfalls, the ballooning salaries, the locker rooms designed like first-class luxury airliner cabins now look like protruding, tumorous distortions, worthy of recoil and disgust. Institutions have laid themselves bare, with their desperate insistence on trying to make unpaid kids play football in a viral outbreak simply to meet their overextended bills.


 . . . Understand this: These schools don’t have a money problem. They have a shopping addiction. From 2004 to 2018, NCAA revenue exploded from $3 billion to $14 billion thanks largely to media rights, licensing, and sponsorship deals. Yet some schools are so financially distressed that a single canceled football season could be catastrophic. Stanford has cut 11 sports, and Wisconsin informed donors that it could face a $100 million shortfall. Where’d the money go? The answer is, to compulsive spending and gross misallocation. Hundreds of millions disappeared into the pockets of deputy assistant associate athletic directors for administration; conference commissioners for the commission of commissions; and Nick Saban’s corporate-welfare army of “football analysts.”

[Spiny_Norman]

Another Stanford writer opines. Sally Jenkins rips into the schools and their administrations that have spent so much money on athletic salaries and infrastructure lately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20...-come-due/

The pandemic has subjected the NCAA to radiographical exposure. Every crooked vertebra of the system is on glowing fluorescent display. It’s similar to the sensation when you view an X-ray that shows your cat swallowed your favorite fountain pen. You can see all the things that don’t belong in the guts of a university.

The coronavirus crisis is an incredible diagnostic tool. The excesses have never been so sharply delineated: The $50 million stadium upgrades, the indoor waterfalls, the ballooning salaries, the locker rooms designed like first-class luxury airliner cabins now look like protruding, tumorous distortions, worthy of recoil and disgust. Institutions have laid themselves bare, with their desperate insistence on trying to make unpaid kids play football in a viral outbreak simply to meet their overextended bills.


 . . . Understand this: These schools don’t have a money problem. They have a shopping addiction. From 2004 to 2018, NCAA revenue exploded from $3 billion to $14 billion thanks largely to media rights, licensing, and sponsorship deals. Yet some schools are so financially distressed that a single canceled football season could be catastrophic. Stanford has cut 11 sports, and Wisconsin informed donors that it could face a $100 million shortfall. Where’d the money go? The answer is, to compulsive spending and gross misallocation. Hundreds of millions disappeared into the pockets of deputy assistant associate athletic directors for administration; conference commissioners for the commission of commissions; and Nick Saban’s corporate-welfare army of “football analysts.”