Hugh Freeze out at Auburn. ESPN.
15-19 in “two plus” seasons, 6-16 in the SEC, and they lost to Kentucky yesterday, 10-3. They are 4-5 this season.
And the NYPost is reporting that, with Mr. Freeze’s $15.8 millon buyout, the count is now up to $182 million owed to fired college coaches.
This has sometimes been called, “Nice work if you can get it”.
I understand that colleges and universities want to have great sports programs to attract students to their schools to root on their particular team. But at some point it seems like someone would start to understand the whole mess of money and higher education and it’s link to Uncle Sam.
The whole student loan problem started when LBJ and the bunch in 1965 decided to guarantee that banks and other lenders would get their money if a student defaulted on their loan. This opened the floodgates of money coming into higher education institutions.
In order to compete for these guaranteed dollars, colleges and universities had to attract students. And thus began things like huge student union halls with massive, often marbled and statue filled amenities. Ever more attractions like huge intramural sports complexes with Olympic sized swimming pools, concert halls, etc.
Of course academia had it’s place in this as well. How many times have we seen where universities have hired well known “professors” like Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, etc. in order to attract students to sit before them in rapt attention while they delivered whatever it is that was so important that it justified huge salaries for often limited time spent at the actual institution. But the kids parents were likely impressed that the school had such distinguished professors.
And we come to ever larger football stadiums to house the huge number of students who want to attend the game of the week. I live in Michigan and the I have attended exactly 1 Div. one college football game, when I was a freshman in high school.
We were sent to the U of M by an alumni who was from our town. It was an annual tradition, and it was not just the only time I went to the U of M stadium but it was also the first time I actually smelled marijuana first hand.
The stadium holds somewhere over 105,000 people and it is always full. I have no doubt that if they were to build a stadium twice as large it would be full as well.
The way out of this pork filled college education system is simple, to my mind. Just stop guaranteeing student loans. Of course you would hear the cries of hatred from those who would figure out a way to make it a racial attack, or hatred of the poor. But you would see universities quickly stop giving multi year, multi million dollar contracts to coaches, unnecessary professors, and unneeded amenities for students that have nothing to do with education but only serve as a draw for the accompanying money that those students can bring.
No doubt this is somewhat simplistic but I am sure that it is at least on the right track. The idiom of the Whole College Experience is a misnomer that instead should be called a College Education, period. It will never happen.
You will get no argument from me on any of this.
I think between sports betting, too much money chasing too few coaches and championship opportunities, and the shifts in the college athlete landscape (the transfer portal, NIL licensing), we’re approaching the end days of most college sports.
That might be a good thing.