Monday, January 04, 2016

Good Piece by John Fry of Drexel in Today's Wall Street Journal

He is the President of Drexel and known to be an educational innovator.

He explains why Drexel has no plans to fund a football team.  Drexel last fielded a team in 1973.

Fry's thesis statement is the following -- most college football programs lose money and sometimes a lot of it, and many colleges do not have the courage to stand up and provide a high-quality education for all students as opposed to funding football programs that seemingly have little tangible benefit to the university at large.

In essence, he's challenging an age-old maxim that football can do wonders for a university.  Let's face it -- the concussion issue aside -- it does not.  Sorry, SEC fans, where football is even more disproportional than say in the northeast, but sometimes it's good to challenge age-old maxims and long-held truths and see what you come up with.  And if you dig deeply enough, you'll find that maybe Fry is right and maybe there is some other alternative to creating pride in an alumni group or state than fielding a (grossly overfunded) football team.

Something to chew on.