This is a rant...
The thing that absolutely kills me about *waves all around* all of this is that there is a direct correlation between football success and enrollment. College kids aren’t “rational actors” looking 100% for a place that will prepare them for a future career. State schools are affordable, and they want to go to a place that’s fun. Watching your team get their f@&$ing teeth kicked in does not look very fun. Thank god for basketball and basketball fans, because that atmosphere looks fun.
The admin needs to take a long, hard look at their enrollment numbers and shrinking state support, and ask how that equation is gonna balance itself? Jack up tuition? There’s a supply/demand issue that we are already seeing. How do I know? When I walk around campus at Mississippi State I see UT sweatshirts and a lot of kids who can’t afford UT but wanted to go to a SEC school, and MSU gave them scholarships. UT didn’t. Also, let’s be frank here. Mullen’s time at MSU was a lot more fun than what we were slogging through at the same time. Good luck becoming “UVA.” UT was already successful being “UT,” which was the affordable state-university that could take poor, instate kids like me who grew up watching Tennessee sports, had high school teachers who talked fondly of their time at UT, and looked forward to being one of the rowdy idiots in the student section, and eventually mold those kids into top notch research programs.
I went to a doctoral program that is historically in the top 5 for what I do. UT prepared me better for that program than kids coming out of Harvard, Stanford, etc. I was an undergrad when Clausen beat Florida twice, and a first year MA student when Wilhoit beat them on the last minute field goal. We also had a streak on Bama. Recently I’ve met undergrads who go to Florida and Bama because they just assume that they are good at everything.
My overall point is that you can be good at academics AND athletics. More importantly, if you are a state school, athletics draws the tuition paying students that help your academic programs. You can complain that they shouldn’t be linked, or come to grips with the reality that they are, and do something about it, and that starts with spending the money on a go&$)da&$ed ball coach that can win us some games and stop making bs comments about sports being the front porch and do something about it.
signed,
-pissed off alum who wants to ask Brian Maurer why it is, if my opinion doesn’t matter, that I’m getting weekly letters and emails from UT asking for money. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I donate to the VASF for this dogs$8. I’ll just keep donating to the fund that helps first generation college students...