Thursday, March 28, 2024

Unpopular U athletics do not deserve funding

In the past several years, the issue of funding university sports programs has resulted in lawsuits. Recently a female student at Duke University received a huge financial settlement on the basis that the university’s football coaches cut her from the football team due to her sex. In 1996, two female students sued Louisiana State University for not providing them with a soccer team funded by the university. The university lost the suit and was forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a soccer venue. At least a dozen universities dropped varsity football in the 1990s because they could not also provide an equal number of scholarships for women’s sports programs.

Universities should not be compelled to fund revenue-losing sports. Federal courts have ruled that a university must fund a number of sports scholarships equal to the percentage of women enrolled at the institution. The women’s sports that universities have been forced to add consistently lose money by the tens of thousands of dollars every year. This shortsighted case of quota counting has caused numerous problems.

I offer two courses of action to remedy higher operating costs for college athletic departments. To implement either proposal, the university would have to show which sports spend more money than they generate.

Under my first proposal, universities would continue to pay for the facilities, equipment and travel expenses of money-losing sports but would not provide athletic scholarships to participants in those sports. My second proposal would require calculating net profits and losses of every scholarship sport for five years. Any sport that did not generate enough revenue to sustain itself financially would receive no future funding from the university.

There is no logical reason to force universities to maintain varsity sports that draw minuscule numbers of spectators. Universities are not forced to keep funding other programs that continually lose money and are not vital to receiving a college education. This mandated funding of unpopular and frivolous sports programs is as ridiculous as mandating the implementation curricula in Sanskrit or blacksmithing. There is no demand from a significant percentage of students so they do not exist in every major university.

Therefore, universities should not be required to waste money to create and prop up such unwanted programs, either athletic or academic. Universities were founded and continue to operate in order to educate students in academic curricula, not to provide them with equipment, facilities and financial aid for participating in athletics.

I can already hear the screeching and whining from feminists about these proposals. They will accuse me of sexism since all except a handful of women’s college sports programs do not even come close to supporting themselves financially. I say that if they care so much about the continuation of women’s programs, they should buy season tickets, attend matches, donate their own money to the programs and find corporate sponsors to advertise at the venues. They should not demand that universities pass along the needless costs of funding women’s sports.

Students and other fans of football and other revenue-generating sports must pay higher ticket prices to fund the other sports programs. It is absurd and unjust to force those fans to pay exorbitant prices so field hockey, swimming and volleyball teams can continue to exist. Adherents of soccer, track and field, gymnastics and other revenue-draining sports will criticize my proposal as the demise of American success in the Olympic Games. The belief that my proposals will kill Olympic sports is narrow-minded and self-centered. It is ridiculous to say that no American will participate in Olympic sports unless given a free college education in return. Besides, it is no tragedy if Americans do not dominate every sport in the world. Let the rest of the world excel at those sports about which very few Americans care anyway.

I do not believe that some sports are inherently worthless. However, everyone must face the reality that not all sports programs attract, and hold, large fan bases. If some people want to participate in certain sports that do not attract the attention of thousands of people willing to pay to watch them perform, then those athletes should not expect others to provide them with a free college education. The law of supply and demand mandates that athletes in widely followed sports will be compensated for their efforts while those in obscure or less popular sports will have to play simply for the love of their sport.

John LaFleur, State News community columnist, writes columns that appear every other Friday. He can be reached at johnclafleur@lycos.com.

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