I think the concept of a sports coach at an university is inteeresting in general. At Europe and the colleges here it doesn’t really matter which sports team your institution has as long as it offers good education. It is always interesting to see that for whatever reason it can be different.
Edit: typo
Lol I love this take
The idea though is that a good sports team will draw eyes to the university as a whole. Texas, California, Tennessee, Florida… All these programs have vastly overpaid coaches it’s true. But as a result you get free advertising as fans wear the team colors all over town.
Also shameless plug for our college football community [email protected]
All the advertising your institution should need is the research coming out of it.
Intermural sports are fine but if that’s mostly what your university is known for then, as the post mentions, you’re not really a university.
For the people who really value or benifit from the research like masters and Ph.D students the research is is the primary advertising. They are not mutually exclusive. Let the people who care about the team/sports have their thing. For a lot of people it could be their motivation for going there and getting an education.
And how do you propose to pay for this world class research in a world where federal university funding is constantly hamstrung by conservatives and skyrocketing tuition costs still can’t cover it? If I had the ability to charge 100,000 people 20 bucks (actually way more) a week, that’ll certainly create a dent (not to mention apparel revenue and TV contracts). Sports departments are net positive revenue for an institution, and when they aren’t they get cut. Again I fully believe that coaches are overpaid, but it’s not for no reason.
