I quit reading when I saw the name of Bill Moos, who is the Athletic Director at the University of Nebraska. I'm not interested in reading screeds from some assclown who can't be bothered to do fact checking.

Schrotenboer goes on to report that the athletic department "owes its university $51.5 million after posting operating deficits for six straight years."

Damning stuff. The prioritization of athletics over basic education in academia is so disappointing. Thanks for writing about this!

Stupid Hand-Egg.

Rich,
Your outrage seems a little outdated especially concerning WSU. Whatever your age, have you not noticed that "varsity sports" is routinely placed above "academia" or "pursuing education first" in American universities & colleges? Is the term "athletic scholarship" not oxymoronic?

To be sure, I'm in my 50s and I've known about these shenanigans. The American academy has been infected. Many NCAA Division I schools and others are routinely "choosing football over academics". It's not a secret at all.

"And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure. The trouble is we're neglecting football for education."

Prof. Wagstaff (Groucho Marx) from the film "Horse Feathers" (1932)

MIke Leach is bible-thumping, concussion-denying, Trump supporting scumbag. It sucks that my tax dollars pay his salary. Fucking leech.

We're shocked that Rich favors theatre over football.
Shocked.

For the Pac-12 Football coaches a lot of their salary is paid by the money from the media contacts the Pac-12 has I believe.

"...lifeblood of the theater scene on campus and in Pullman in general..."
LOL! Funniest thing I've read all year!

I'm sorry, but to imply that WSU/Pullman has a "theater scene," much less one with "lifeblood," would be like claiming that the Westboro Baptist Church has a "gay scene". Take it from someone who was once an actually part of the WSU/Pullman "theater scene."

Cougs are not quite the liberal effete snowflakes one finds at Evergreen or Berkeley. I doubt there are more than a dozen of them wringing their precious little hands and pining away over the decline of the arts in Pullman.

Consider for a moment: Martin Stadium capacity 33,000 vs. Jones Theater capacity 400.

to be fair, this is the norm in america. read a book about college funding and realize the whole problem with our system is a reliance on football money. not to defend anything in the article; it's still despicable. but we need to change the whole college-funding game. source: my SO is a department chair in a school going through a very similar ordeal.

I thought it was common knowledge that the highest paid public employee in most states is a football or basketball coach.

Why do I get the impression that Rich Smith worked on the high school yearbook and made fun of jocks?

@9:

And yet, if these numbers are to be believed those 33,000 seats don't come anywhere close to paying for the team's overhead, so instead WSU will cut the 400 seats that apparently do a comparatively better job of paying the Performing Arts overhead.

How did you not know Moos left when you wrote this, you fucking dingus?

Football is often the only money maker for athletics departments. I would be careful to call this "football debt".

On ridiculous coaching salaries and the damage done to these kids, I completely agree. However that applies to almost every college in the US.

Welp, @15 was clearly triggered.

@16m that's how football works. To be good, you have to get commitments from 3-5 start recruits. To get 3-5 star recruits to commit, you need a big name coach. To get a big name coach, you have to pay.

If you look at WSU's coaches in the previous 12 years, you will see the opposite of the above-formula. As well as 12 of this shittiest football years of the school's history.

You should really go talk to someone at Call a Coug or on the fundraising side of the school. When you donate money to WSU, you choose exactly where that money goes. The school isn't prioritizing these programs (STEM, Business, Comm, and Athletics), the alumni are. Please encourage your friends from school to donate to the programs/activities they were apart of and it would not only send a clear message to the university, but would go a long way toward ensuring their health and prosperity.

This notion that STEM degrees are the only degrees that anyone should pursue is arrogant. If all we had were people with STEM degrees(which would actually just be "TEM" degrees, since the vast majority of people who fetishize those degrees are global warming deniers and thus ANTI-science), we would have nothing but well-trained unquestioning supporters of the corporate status quo.

The STEM disciplines are of value, but history, the humanities, and the development of critical thinking-the kind of thing STEM fetishists oppose, preferring people to simply learn a defense of the existing order of life as a memorized catechism-matter just as much to the creation and preservation of a decent society.

Speaking of triggered. ^ STEM fetishest? lol. The vast majority of STEM educated people (doctors, research scientists, engineers, mathematicians) agree that we are clearly experiencing climate change. Do you ever listen to yourself and realize how completely ignorant you sound? If it wasn't for 'STEM fetishists', we wouldn't even be aware of climate change let alone what is causing it. *sigh*

#21:
It wasn't STEM educated people I was talking about there. It was those who act as though STEM degrees are the only ones worth getting. STEM courses are important, but they aren't more important than all other fields of study and we shouldn't be trying to press everyone into getting a STEM degree.

Most of those working for STEM degrees treat other academic disciplines with equal respect and oppose efforts to starve the other disciplines of funds or to pressure colleges and universities to put STEM above all else.

The people who use the term STEM to treat all courses of study are worthless usually have nothing to do with the educational system...unless they are Republican politicians trying to end the very concept of public education.

STEM is of great value. So is pretty much everything else a person could focus their studies on. No course of study is above all others.

Let’s see, how shall I put this?... Oh yeah, fuck you Rich.

Journalism 101: double check the actual names referenced in your article. Dr. Kirk *Schulz* is the current president at WSU, not 'Schultz'.

It’s always the case. The universities make the argument that athletics brings in more revenue for the school through donations, investments, etc. While that may be true, it’s not certain if that is because they place more emphasis on it as a source of revenue, or if it’s a natural occurrence. It also fails to acknowledge the level of waste associated with athletic spending.

If I constantly try to sell you oranges and rarely mention the benefits of apples, you are more likely to buy oranges.

Nevertheless, it really isn’t relevant because we know that academics (the ENTIRE purpose of universities) is more important than sports. Think about it, revenue security can’t be the primary driver. If the importance of revenue was all that mattered, we could more easily argue in favor of the revenue-raising power of pornography. Of course, framing it in that way forces us to confront the question of the ultimate goal in more direct terms. How many parents that support sports above academics would be willing to sign their children up for a porn scholarship? Maybe we should be focusing more on preparing people to be productive in the world, and a little less on easy revenue.