You are making no sense at all. You're equating a football program spending money on a football program (money that it makes itself as well as private donations) money in politics and state money. You make no sense.
I'm not
equating anything. Instead, I'm
comparing the arrangement between higher education and its burgeoning corporate partnerships to that which the "Good War" allegedly defeated: fascism. If it comforts you to use the euphemism "public-private partnership," then go ahead, but know that what we are talking about is the ubiquitous collusion between corporations and government institutions, resulting in the empowerment of both at the expense of society at large, primarily those not politically connected. Conservatives, like most people on this forum, well understand how incentives affect human behavior. When wealth is frequently found in business relationships with government entities, signals are sent out to all private actors to look towards government for profiteering or at least as a way to mitigate risk from an unpredictable and competitive marketplace. This begins a dangerous feedback loop whereby public officials become incentivized to extend favors for private gain. We as a country are well down this path and are seeing the consequences of a century-long takeover of government by corporate influence.
The viewer comments were noted by Terry. Well, when lots of people are struggling out there, it isn't surprising that the reflexive response to the flaunting of frivolous excess is less than positive. One doesn't have to be fluent in political philosophy or economics to come away from that video scratching your head when there is so much economic dislocation in the country. Your typical blue-collar, lowbrow fan is intuitive enough to think, "It is odd that there is a mannequin donning Nike athletics inside a public university facility. Hey Coach, how do huge walls covered in pictures of Nike equipment and details explaining Nike's product superiority contribute to 'player development'? How is it that so much money is going towards collegiate athletics when only a fraction of student-athletes will ever play professional sports and a college degree is nearly a worthless piece of paper?"
So we what put a limit on how much schools can spend on the football program? Or we put a limit on how much money WE as fans of Alabama can spend on Alabama? The school makes 30 million, it can only spend 5 million on better facilities, equipment, etc.? Fans can spend no more than $500 on Alabama a year (merchandise, tickets, etc.)? Wtf are you even saying?
These are great questions but complicated questions to answer, with few easy remedies. My suggestions first require an awareness of the legal cartelization of amateur athletics (NCAA) and professional sports (NFL, MLB, etc.), the corporate "rent-seeking" exploitation of these cartels (not unlike how corporations profit from other cartels such as the Federal Reserve System (2B2F banks), FDA (Big Pharma), EPA (Big Oil), etc., and taxpayer subsidization of college and professional sports. But further elaboration I'll save for any interested participants in
the newest thread I started in the Political Forum, as I imagine the mods' patience for this thread's political direction is wearing thin.
I'll end my comments in this thread by simply saying that the issue here is the pervasive corporatism in higher education, and in the economy as a whole. The way that we, in one breath, criticize the corporate greed and political corruption we see in the news everyday, and then moments later, salivate at the government-corporate partnerships that happen to benefit our favorite state-government football team, I find to be contradictory and unable to cheer away given the state of the country.
