Penn State Football Tickets Face Increase To Upgrade Women's Softball Field

Submitted by anthony on Tue, 2009-11-24 19:36

Article here. Excerpt:

'Penn State is scheduled to announce soon a new pricing structure that could significantly increase costs for season-ticket holders. The full details are not out yet, but according to several reports, members of the Nittany Lion Club will be required to make larger donations (some by as much as five times) to continue buying season tickets.

Head coach Joe Paterno, at one time Penn State’s athletic director, was asked Tuesday about the prospect of raising ticket prices. He referenced how the football program, which took in $45.7 million in revenue during the 2008-09 season, is responsible for paying the freight for 28 other varsity sports.

“It's a lot different than when I was the athletic director,” said Paterno said, who held the position from 1980-82. “Didn't have the impact it was now. We didn't have scholarships for all the women's sports. We didn't have to upgrade facilities. Right now we're going to build another softball field, a better softball field, for the women. And I think we should.'

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As anyone who has read my previous posts regarding college athletics, my reaction to this story is sure to come as no surprise.

If they are raising ticket prices, the money should be going to bolster REAL academic programs (eg: sciences, and real live actual scholarship in other areas that are valid uses of time and money... ie, not the WST dept, thank you), not sports at all. But if they have thrown all pretension aside and are just raising ticket prices because they can, and because they are driven by the desire to collect money, should it not go to the sports team that is actually drawing the crowds? Why skew the market and send the cash into some kind of sport team that can't sustain itself by receipts? The answer by now should be obvious: The team in question is a girls' team, and of course as we know, it is fine when men's efforts support girls' leisure activites. Would they channel this money into the boys' softball team? Not on yer life!

But to continue my college rant: I see colleges eventually morphing into little more than sporting facilities with a few extra acres of land and a couple buildings here and there. In fact, in future when campuses are built ground-up, the first thing they will take into consideration after deciding to go ahead with the project is the stadium size and cost, and accommodating parking and vendors. Then they will ask themselves about the overall appealing nature of the environment: will they be able to keep the sports teams training all year so that they can maximize their investment in the athletes? Is there a large-enough population to keep the stadium filled all year? Can they charge enough for admission?

Finally, they will formulate the fastest and least-expensive way to get some kind of degree-granting accreditation from the appropriate "academic authority" such that they have to spend as little time and money as possible on actual academics or professional education/training.

I see them dispensing entirely with classrooms. They will do all "that sort of thing" on-line and just collect the tuition (what little of it there will be, since the actual intended revenue stream is the sports teams) by PayPal.

The only people who will have to actually show up on campus is the "scholar-athletes" for practice 16 hrs/day.

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Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2009-11-24 20:28