business or education?

Check it out! The University of Tennessee has finally taken that final step to admitting that it is running a sports business rather than a student activity with its football program. Oh, we knew it already and snickered when we heard UT brass talk about student athletes and how football games are an event for all students. Remember when they talked about student pride? Now, they’re talking about student bucks.

Last week, UT Athletic Director Mike Hamilton announced that UT students will have to start paying for football tickets. Students will now have to pay $15 per game. That may not sound like much unless you’re a struggling student trying to work part-time and being forced to borrow money just to pay their tuition. Believe it or not, not every student on Rocky Top is a spoiled rich kid with Momma and Daddy sending them big buckets of money so they can maintain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

In explaining the decision, we heard nothing about what is best for the students. 

We heard the athletic department needed the revenue. We heard they needed to pay the coaches more money. We heard everyone else is doing it. Does it make it right just because everyone else is doing it?  Don’t you remember your Mom saying, “If everyone else jumps off the bridge, are you going to jump off the bridge?” I guess Mike’s Mom never had that talk with him.  Was the University of Florida right and UT wrong?  Is the University of Georgia a better institution of learning because their students pay for football tickets? 

Hamilton’s biggest mistake was linking the new policy to pay increases for the coaches. Let me translate for you. “We know you students aren’t all that crazy about Phil Fulmer. We know you wish we’d go out and hire a new coach with some new ideas. We know you’d like to win an SEC title sometime this millennium. That’s all fine and good but we need you to pay so we can pay Phil more.” This is trickle down economics in reverse. The theory here is we take from the poor and give to the rich. All UT students will be better off knowing their football coach is making $2.5 million. It’s worth skipping a meal or two or foregoing a date. Hamilton thinks he is actually doing a good thing. He’s teaching students a valuable lesson about money management. They have to make tough decisions throughout life and this will better prepare them for making such decisions out in the real world.  The problem is he is asking students to make tough decisions so he doesn’t’ have to. 

This is big business and Hamilton is running it like the oil companies. Exxon can’t be blamed for the price of a gallon of gas even though they made billions last quarter. UT can’t be blamed for having to charge for football tickets even though it has millionaires on its payroll who will be making even more now. Once his days on The Hill are over, the old AD may want to send his resume to Exxon. I’m sure they’d be interested. 

If you look at UT’s website, there on the home page is the mission statement, you will see talk about research. You’ll see some stuff about education. You’ll find rhetoric about preparing the next generation for the future. There’s stuff about promoting diversity,  enhancing our communities, and partnering with industry. You’ll find nothing about running a minor league football team which is what they are doing.

It’s a business being run like a business. Students are nothing more than customers and it is business’ job to extract as much money out of the customers as it can. Wal-Mart doesn’t exist so it can provide products at reasonable costs to customers. Wal-Mart exists to make money. Microsoft is about creating dividends for its stockholders rather than helping Americans meet their technology needs. It’s all about the mighty dollar. It’s a business and education has nothing to do with it.