Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from it’s football program. The University eats, breathes, and suckles football.
It’s stadium holds 107,000 people.
State College– what a dumb name for a town!– only has a population of about 50,000.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Coach Paterno and assistant coach Mike McQueary didn’t call the police because it was former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky raping that ten-year-old boy. The more I think about it, the more ridiculously lame Paterno’s excuse– that he notified Penn State’s administration and trusted them to do the right thing– sounds.
Let’s leave that aside for now.
My question is, why do they even bother with the “university” aspect of their operations?
All those professors and non-football-playing students and courses and books and libraries and museums and lectures and panel discussions and seminars and sororities and fraternities– why bother? Who needs them? Who wants them? Why not just convert all the big universities into sports franchises, like the NBA, NFL, or MLB?
The football is obviously the only real focus of the institutions that devote so many resources to the sport, and whose mostly highly paid employee is the football coach. Why are you pretending to give the slightest fuck about education?
Let’s say you’re interested in learning. Yeah, lets say you are a total weirdo by American standards. If you really wanted to, you could probably buy a few buildings, hire a few smart, educated people who know something about history or English or physics or economics, and see if you could get them to pass on their knowledge to young people who think there might be some value to it.
You could have a place where learning is valued, where knowledge is prized, and the imagination is appreciated.
Some young people who didn’t think the life of the mind was a mere after thought, a tiny, insignificant garnish to the gleaming athletic trophies, might sign up. You could have dorms and cafeterias. You could name the place after a brilliant writer or artist or economist or scientist.
And once in a while, if the kids need to get their yah-yahs out, there could be a game of football or something.
But just imagine: place devoted to learning and knowledge and the arts and intellectual development! Would that be amazing.