Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim Richards
I enjoyed your post, L.J.. My experience going to an SEC school was that their football programs are a huge identifier for the schools in the conference. The Universities of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, etc., everyone first thinks football.
|
I did as well. L.J.
I played baseball on scholarship in college. There are really only two revenue producing sport at the college level: Football and basketball. And even then many colleges do not make money.
I am going to make a clumsy analogy: Football programs are like the top earning salesman at a company. Management is often willing to overlook certain behaviors as long as the salesman produces...behavior they wouldn't tolerate from an average earner (the baseball program, for example).
In the Penn State circumstance, the entire state was willing to overlook the wretched behavior...and more than just the janitor and an assistance coach knew, trust me, of their top salesman.
To Todd's point: No. It is fair to say the exact opposite. Penn State is a great University with an endowment in excess of a billion dollars (kind of makes the 60M fine a rather paltry sum) largely based on the laurels of the football team.
Penn State was a winner on the football field that was able to afford to attract academic talent, staff and students.