Recently, LSU revealed their new, $28 million locker room and it looks amazing. Well, so do all things when they are shiny and new. However, someone who attended the university was not happy about it. Posting on twitter a pitcher of the run down library with missing pieces of the basement wall as well as water seeping in through that damaged wall. The question was raised, “How come the football players get all the nice new stuff while everyone else is seemingly neglected?” The answer is that colleges have a football problem.
Money
Because of course the answer is money. College football generates huge revenue streams every year for the university. So how do you get top players to commit to your school and continue that massive revenue stream. The answer is obvious: new and shiny facilities that embolden players to stay and play there. I’m not going to be bashing LSU for spending a little cash to get their players a new locker room, far from it, but it does raise a good point about the infrastructure in other parts of the school. Besides, there are many other colleges with a football problem
Not a Singular Issue
Let me start by saying I don’t know when that particular picture was taken. I don’t know if it has since been repaired. I don’t know who took the photo initially. That being said, I understand this persons frustration. My own college has the same problem. It’s an old building no doubt, but it was gone into serious disarray. Ceiling panels have been worn away, piping and heat to the building suffers from neglect, and everything from doors, windows/window frames, stair cases looks as if came out of the 50s. Think of it as Stranger Things, but exclusively set in a school building. Got it? Good.
An email was sent out to my school about the president of the university coming down to inspect it. Now it does not take a person with an engineering degree to see the problems that the building had. A few days later there was an announcement of a addition to the football scholarship fund by a donation from alumni that was meant for the volleyball team. Made my head spin. Here is a person who was no doubt dedicated to volleyball and wants to see that program flourish, but instead it was taken away to another program because it was more important to the university… What? You’re all thinking at this point where is this story going. That’s fair. I do sometime swing wildly around in my story telling, but the basic message is this: college Football own universities.
This isn’t a problem necessarily, but better care of other students and infrastructure does need to be taken care of as well as football. The two can coexist. I hope that that library situation at LSU is being fixed up and I hope that my school will do the same.
