A THEME, CONT'D...

“Have we got a college? Have we got a football team? . . . Well we can’t afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.”

- Groucho Marx as Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff, Horse Feathers 1932

ESS EEE SEE CASH, BITCHES!!!

or

ESS EEE SEE BLING, BITCHES!!!

or

ESS EEE SEE SEE BEE ESS EEE ESS PEE ENN BITCHES

or

ESS EEE SEE SEE BEE ESS EEE ESS PEE ENN BLING, BITCHES

Ah, what the hell…

ESS EEE SEE SPEEED!!!

Honestly, I dont’ have a problem with Brand’s statement here. State colleges don’t have shareholders collecting dividends from lucrative football programs. And they damn sure aren’t sending any money back upstream to the government. It all get’s plowed back into the school/athletics.

And while big revenue numbers are OMG splashy, they don’t take into account the size and spending of an institution like the SEC or its member schools.

Your assesment of the UN is right on, however.

I know Kofi’s dulcet tones were a pleasure to the ears even as 12-year old child soldiers ran rampant through malnourished African villages firing AK-47s all the while, but Ban Ki-moon is the one shuffling international crises under the rug now.

For shame, Swindle. For shame.

Oh, and Myles Brand is a jerkoff.

As any professor will tell you, the law of economics is supply and demand. Get it while you can. If the last few months in real estate or the stock market have taught us anything, it is that the good times don’t always last forever. I trust that there wil be new libraries springing up on campuses throughout the SEC. They will be disguised as new athletic facilities, but will serve the greater good.

The reason that the SEC can garner more than ND is simple. ND has a declining fanbase, while the SEC has an increasing fanbase and better teams on the field. IMO, ND is on a slippery slope playing neutral site games that will be poorly attended and not compelling enough for decent ratings. They should have joined the Big 10/11, but I think they want an easy path to the BCS. That path has not been easy for Penn State since they joined in 1993.

I was fixing to take a big ole greasy shit in Orson’s cornflakes for bringing politics into this one, before I actually clicked on the link.

Crisis averted. My anus is standing down.

Crisis averted. My anus is standing down.

Oh, the multiple utilities of this phrase.

TIGERinATL @ #3:

Perfectly stated.

Take it and run, Orson. You gave the world “Wilfred Brimley Bukkake Party”, it’s the least we can do to repay the debt that society owes you.

Neither higher education, of which college sports is only a small part, nor intercollegiate athletics is truly capitalistic. They do not generate revenue to make a profit; they generate revenue to fulfill a purpose, to meet the mission of higher education.

What a crock of shit. For all the reasons I outlined two years ago when Bill Thomas was crawling up Brand’s ass with a microscope, there’s no cogent reason not to subject these programs to the unrelated business income tax.

Devilgrad @ #10…what did you expect? Rule one when dealing with bureaucracies…form over substance is key, and shall be maintained and defended at all costs.

DevilGrad,

UBTI is a bitch. Why, oh why, do you want to see that imposed on college athletics. Is the real fear not ESS EEE CEE SPEED but ESS EEE CEE CASH – or, the rich get richer and the poor go Div -AA.

Seriously though, the cash that football (and in some places baseball or basketball) generates pays for the “non-revenue” sports (which are called that for a reason).

Kofi gave us Oil For Food.

Slive has given us ESS-EEE-CEE Football For Gold.

Rather than repeat myself . . . .

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2006/10/05/tax-attorney-smackdown-ncaa-asked-to-justify-its-existence/

Just In…………..SEC Comissioner Mike Slive announces that the SEC is evaluating expansion to sixteen teams. Miami, Clemson, Oklahoma and Texas will all be offered an opportunity to share the in the glory and wealth of SEC conference membership.

Florida State was not offered due to a prevoius shafting given to the conference during the earlier expansion………..in other news the Big 10/11 has announced that they are wanting to expand to twelve teams but Mizzou refuses to run the Power I………..

OK, DevilGrad, now I remember.

You may be right – but it will be one cold day in hell before the IRS is “allowed” to go after the NCAA – Congresscritters tend to run for re-election every 2 years, and since an increasing number of them are from “pro-college football” states, it’ll be a cold day in hell when UBIT is an actual issue.

1. Myles Brand was talking about athletics, not football. It doesn’t matter how much you take in if you spend more, for instance on the band going to the bowl game or the booster party in the president’s box. (Remember the Micawber Principle: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”) Most athletic departments are in the red. Look it up.

2. Even the money the athletic department makes is heavily subsidized. For example, the athletic department at Iowa got really pissed when Iowa City suggested they help pay for the extra cops they have to put on during football week. Do you think Michigan pays property tax on the Big House the way, say, GM does on one of its factories?

The people making the real money are the beer companies, the networks. Not the athletes (this is the part that grinds my ass), and not the schools. It doesn’t take economists to tell you that, it just takes arithmetic.