- Joined
- Jul 16, 2008
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https://deadspin.com/how-unh-turned-a-quiet-benefactor-into-a-football-marke-1819064622
Cliffs:
- Librarian worked for 49 years at the UNH library.
- No family and no expensive habits let him accrue $4 million over his years.
- He bequeathed his silent fortune to the university, with no restrictions.
- They spent $1 million on a football scoreboard (they are um....not....a football powerhouse and never will be.)
- To make it sound like this is what he wanted to do with the money, the university marketed the fact that he started watching football games on TV once he was in a hospice center.
Tidbits from the story:
- "only 21 of the 201 Division I athletic departments they studied broke even or turned a profit. The other 180 depended on a staggering $10 billion in student fees and other subsidies to cover their ever-expanding athletic budgets."
-"To keep its sports teams afloat, though, the school slaps one of those additional “student athletics” fees on every full-time undergrad. Multiply the fee—$1,075 for the current academic year—by the school’s 12,000 or so students and you’ve got a $13 million annual subsidy. And it’s not clear the students want big-time college sports; last year, even with the upgraded stadium and a good team, UNH couldn’t crack the FCS’s top 30 in attendance."
- "But none of this seems to matter. UNH’s administration has fetishized football, just like pretty much every other administration has fetishized football, and now even the meekest programs seem desperate to spend."
Last from me:
- Why does football have such a strong impact on the decisions college administrators make; even schools that make less-than-zero dollars from their football program?
Cliffs:
- Librarian worked for 49 years at the UNH library.
- No family and no expensive habits let him accrue $4 million over his years.
- He bequeathed his silent fortune to the university, with no restrictions.
- They spent $1 million on a football scoreboard (they are um....not....a football powerhouse and never will be.)
- To make it sound like this is what he wanted to do with the money, the university marketed the fact that he started watching football games on TV once he was in a hospice center.
Tidbits from the story:
- "only 21 of the 201 Division I athletic departments they studied broke even or turned a profit. The other 180 depended on a staggering $10 billion in student fees and other subsidies to cover their ever-expanding athletic budgets."
-"To keep its sports teams afloat, though, the school slaps one of those additional “student athletics” fees on every full-time undergrad. Multiply the fee—$1,075 for the current academic year—by the school’s 12,000 or so students and you’ve got a $13 million annual subsidy. And it’s not clear the students want big-time college sports; last year, even with the upgraded stadium and a good team, UNH couldn’t crack the FCS’s top 30 in attendance."
- "But none of this seems to matter. UNH’s administration has fetishized football, just like pretty much every other administration has fetishized football, and now even the meekest programs seem desperate to spend."
Last from me:
- Why does football have such a strong impact on the decisions college administrators make; even schools that make less-than-zero dollars from their football program?