When LSU opens the 2015 college football season at home on the first Saturday of September, the weather will be typically hot and muggy. Tigers’ fans will have filled the surrounding area with custom painted trailers carrying their “Cajun microwaves” and other tailgating gear. They will spend hours dining on grilled pork, brisket and chicken, or if they are really going all out, maybe some fresh crab from Lake Pontchartrain. More than 102,000 fans will fill Tiger Stadium and watch their team beat up on McNeese State. In all, they will spend tens of thousands of dollars on parking, game programs, concessions and souvenirs. This ritual will happen at each of the seven LSU home games this upcoming season, as Saturday Nights in Death Valley are one of the more revered rituals of college football.
The irony is that by the time we are knee deep in such fabled celebrations, Louisiana State University will quite possibly have filed for financial exigency…the college funding equivalent of bankruptcy. The state of Louisiana faces a $1.6 billion dollar budget deficit as it enters the new fiscal year on July 1st. Governor Bobby Jindal has proposed a budget that would cut anywhere from 40 to 80 percent in state funding for public higher education. Jindal’s office says the state needs to cut a minimum of $300 million from the university system. Other plans being considered double that dollar amount. LSU has already lost 35% of its state funding over the last five years and dramatically raised its tuition to attempt to offset the cuts.
The Louisiana State University system is a web of campuses from Alexandria to Shreveport to New Orleans, and of course the crown jewel in Baton Rouge. With the proposed cuts, each campus would face significant reductions in class offerings and personnel. LSU System President F. King Alexander says the drop in state funding would cost the flagship campus in Baton Rouge about 27% of its faculty, 1,400 classes and would cause some buildings to cease operations. King says the downsizing would jeopardize the accreditation of the engineering and business school. This, at a school that routinely ranks in the top 25 of FBS schools in terms of graduating athletes, many with a degree in business.
Of course the one department not in any financial jeopardy is the football team. According to financial records filed with the NCAA, LSU was the fifth most profitable college football program in the country for the 2012-2013 academic year, (the most current complete records available). For that year, LSU football had net revenue of $48.5 million. That was after covering a $4.3 million dollar compensation package for head coach Les Miles. His contract costs the school more than the full tab for room, tuition and board for the entire football team, ($3.1 million). Ticket sales accounted for $33 million in gross revenue, contributions earmarked for football brought in nearly $22 million and the Tigers got nearly $16 million in distributions from conference and NCAA agreements. The only other LSU program to operate with a net profit was the basketball team which finished $2.6 million in the black.
So here comes the quixotic column that demands we defund college football in favor other college programs, right? No. That’s someone else’s piece. The fact is, LSU’s football program is self-sustaining and does not use state tax revenue for any of its activities. As the father of a high school athlete who aspires to one day play college sports, I will laud LSU football for covering the entire $15.7 million shortfall of all of the school’s non-revenue sports in that 2012-2013 reporting period. There is a women’s tennis team because the football program paid for it. There are hundreds of student athletes going to school because the football program paid for it. LSU football also allocated $4.7 million back to the school’s general fund for non-athletic initiatives. At the end of the reporting period, the football program was left at $7.5 million in the black. I don’t begrudge the athletic department that success. Maybe it could have returned another million or two to the school, but I am not their accountant.
As is the case with most universities, there is some jumbled sense of priorities. LSU has won 42 NCAA sanctioned national titles plus three football championships over the years. The men’s and women’s track programs are among the most successful in the country. Using that success as a marketing tool, the school has a relatively over-the-top fundraising campaign where contributors to the Tiger Athletic Fund can designate their donations to one of 17 different capital projects. Some have already been funded and the projects are underway. But it’s probably not too late to reconsider financing a building that has the one and only purpose of being a practice location for women’s gymnastics, or the Tiger Athletic Nutrition Center, which would be for use only by student athletes. They are also seeking donations for the Mike the Tiger Habitat Fund. I know if you are going to make the questionable decision to keep a live animal as a mascot, you need to do right by it and make its living conditions as natural as possible, but maybe Mike can do like the rest of us in these lean economic times and learn to live with a lesser cut of meat for dinner. Sound financial decisions are critical now more than ever before.
I don’t pretend to have easy answers to solve Louisiana’s budget issues. There clearly is not enough tax revenue coming in and the state has multiple industries that have yet to fully recover from the BP oil spill in 2010. It is clear that this financial dilemma has been some time coming. The other thing that’s apparent is the fact that, rightly or wrongly, schools like LSU use their bright, shiny objects to recruit students and patrons alike. A successful arts program, medical school or athletic department radiates a light for students and financial givers to see.
However, the juxtaposition of a packed Tiger Stadium on Saturday night while the engineering building is being closed is absurd. Maybe The Tiger Athletic Fund can ask for matching funds for the school. Get a donation to the Mike the Tiger Habitat Fund and ask the benefactor to match the gift with money for the school’s general operating budget. At least Mike the Tiger will be doing more to keep LSU functioning than the state’s politicians.
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