urbanSTL

Yeah, you're right.



It's just that using the "you were a nerd in school (which I wasn't) and you got picked on (I was bigger than most football players) and that's why you hate football (which I don't)" argument doesn't fly with me. People just thought money could be spent in better ways.

So, construction is started. I think they are starting on the football stadium first. Apparently there is some pushback in spending all this money on sports when academics are being asked for cuts.



A new video on the project is here.

Little Egyptian wrote:So, construction is started. I think they are starting on the football stadium first. Apparently there is some pushback in spending all this money on sports when academics are being asked for cuts.



A new video on the project is here.

At least the athletics will be taken care of. Because after all, it's not like they're having problems attracting/retaining students or anything.





Oh.



http://www.southernillinoisan.com/artic ... 889172.txt

http://newshound.de.siu.edu/fall06/disc ... 0?mode=day

http://www.southernillinoisan.com/artic ... 225885.txt

Well, that's the controversy.



I do think that SIU's enrollment troubles really speak to the lack of power that sports really has. SIU got more publicity from sports in the past decade than anything in its history, probably, with 2 sweet sixteen runs and lots of tournament appearances. Before last year, SIU was mentioned with Gonzaga, Memphis, Butler and Xavier (no more though).



But, during all that, SIU did not really expand enrollments. Obviously it helped the athletic booster side of things with the impressive donations to Saluki Way, but the university exists to educate kids and there is little evidence that national recognition in sports helped that cause whatsoever.



You got to build these things now because people donated explicitly for this purpose and the legislative appropriations are there, but I agree Juice that it certainly does not look good from PR standpoint.