In my opinion there are a lot of reasons to have an athletic program at any university and turning a profit or increasing admissions is the least of them.

The first is still education. I strongly believe that the most important lessons we learn at college happen outside of classrooms like Dr. Chomsky’s. I know it’s cliche but athletes learn and gain lessons in teamwork, character, committment, etc… Those are valuable skills that make these STUDENTS more competitive in the work place. I also still think physical education / training should be an important part of school. Athlete or not those with healthy bodies are usually capable of doing more with thier minds.

I don’t dispute that athletes could gain of lot of those same lessons through other extra curricular activities but sports is what they love. They should get to use their talents in extracurricular activities just like writers for the school newspaper, actors in a school play, band members and students in how ever many hundreds of student organizations we have on campus. I don’t understand how acting or playing a musical intrument is any more academic than running off a play in basketball. All take intelligence, talent, coordination and coaching. All of them are a performance. None of them involve filling in bubbles on a scantron worksheet.

I think we have about 250 student organizations on campus. How many of them turn a profit? I doubt many do but I bet all of them take up student fees and alumni donations. I do admit athletics spends a lot of money. However, they also gain the most publicity for the university. They also give students and alumni something to take pride in and athletics give those groups a way to connect with the university and eachother. I’m not saying athletics are fundamentally more important than any other activity. However, I will say they have more value in community and alumni relations.

The difference between the average sports fan and the average theater fan is mostly just one wears a tie and the other wears a hat. Just because you are not passionate about something doesn’t mean that it has no place on our campus. I’d venture to say that MSU sports are the activity that the the most students share a passion for. Several thousand students may be at a game but we’ll never see that kind of numbers at any other event. I say that just to show that while all students may not be passionate about sports they ones that are passionate about them do come in larger numbers than any other activity on campus. Sports spending is not just to benefit the 300 or 400 actual athletes who are on the field or court.

I don’t get too uptite about this kind of article. I know that articles like yours don’t get written very often when teams are winning. Right now MSU is transitioning in it’s most high profile sports. I doubt we saw too many articles like this when MSU made the playoffs in football years ago, was in the sweet 16 in men’s bball, the final four in women’s bbal, the college world series in baseball or any other time we experienced big highlights. I also wonder if you’ll feel the same way when those good times come again in the future.

PS: The athletes at MSU have a higher graduation rate and average GPA than the general student body.