“..but we’ll lease state property designated for an educational institution to honky tonks and hotels for a quick buck”
Donde Plowman’s actions vs Donde Plowman’s words.
The UT Knoxville campus is going to very soon find itself underwater financially, having to maintain far more land and buildings than there will be students on campus to use. Very little of that educational complex will be generating money. All of higher education is about to flip upside down, and responsible leaders like Plowman and Danny White are racing to keep UT ahead of that collapsing curve. Over the next 5 years the need for and market for brick and morter-based education is about to plummet to maybe 15% of what it was in 2015.
That is why college football (as a business) is becoming more professional (self-financing) and less traditional-institutional -- because the undergirding institution
and the resident student population that supported it are about to disappear, at least as we've known it in our lifetimes.
They are trying to hold on to as many remnants of college football's history and tradition as they can. But they will be only remnants. Shadows, not substance. The world is changing under our feet. There is potential for life being greater than we can imagine. There is also the potential for greater loss of human sovereignty than we can imagine.
We need to bring the best of the past with us. Not the
sentimental best of the past...
that will die with our memories. We need to bring along the habits and traditions of the past that developed character and promoted community, to bring the music, arts and literature that explore, reflect and reveal what it means to be human, and to be wise and diligent stewards of creation.
Nobody likes change they didn't choose. We usually wish we could give our grandchildren the childhoods we had. But the best we can do now is to make sure our grandchildren have the best
possible future. That's a task worth our best effort.
[ yikes! impromptu speech / off ]
