(08-26-2023 05:27 AM)Gitanole Wrote:  

(08-25-2023 11:32 AM)orangefan Wrote:  Many of the folks who like to bash college athletics (e.g., professors who think its a distraction from the academic mission of the school) don't seem to understand that it's a giant marketing scheme.
....

University faculty members do understand this.

They also understand that it is entirely possible, logically, for something to be both a giant marketing scheme and a distraction.

I mean, ideally we wouldn't attatch and subsidize semi-pro/pro sports w/in our public university systems. Sure, it's advertising, but it is a distraction (and in most cases needs heavy state subsidization) from the educational mission that already is strained by the state/fed funding cuts of the last few decades, the school loan racket (feds give lenders money at zero or subzero interest), the replacement of professors w/ adjuncts, wreckless and typically meaningless expansion of administration and infrustructure, program cuts, etc.