NCAA: Louisiana Governor hints at halting LSU football due to budget issues

[Hasbro]

Since the Governor would even consider this option....

When was that last lynching in Louisiana?

He might get Huey Longed.

 

[EvilCoop]

Since the Governor would even consider this option....

When was that last lynching in Louisiana?

It's not really an option if they're discussing closing the universities, that's Greece-level stuff.

 

[guinness]

Nothing will happen to the football team; it makes money, and there are probably lots of people that care more about the sport, than the actual educational opportunities, just cut some liberal arts or science courses/faculty.

That's basically how they're trying to make up for some of the budget shortfalls up here at U of Montana...so why not LSU?

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

They can't run a college football team without a college. If LSU shuts down, it doesn't matter if alumni pour in money or if the football team is self sustaining, there's no college for them to play at.

Though if they did play while classes were on hold due to lack of $$$, that would show just how big of a farce the NCAA is.
And even then, according to the article the problem is that a shutdown on April 30th, with everyone getting grades if "incomplete", means everyone loses their academic eligibility- the NCAA won't let them play.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

They can't run a college football team without a college. If LSU shuts down, it doesn't matter if alumni pour in money or if the football team is self sustaining, there's no college for them to play at.

Though if they did play while classes were on hold due to lack of $$$, that would show just how big of a farce the NCAA is.
And even then, according to the article the problem is that a shutdown on April 30th, with everyone getting grades if "incomplete", means everyone loses their academic eligibility- the NCAA won't let them play.

One way or the other, this is going to be interesting to follow. Gonna circle APril 30th on my calendar for sure.

 

[Voight]

They can't run a college football team without a college. If LSU shuts down, it doesn't matter if alumni pour in money or if the football team is self sustaining, there's no college for them to play at.

Though if they did play while classes were on hold due to lack of $$$, that would show just how big of a farce the NCAA is.
And even then, according to the article the problem is that a shutdown on April 30th, with everyone getting grades if "incomplete", means everyone loses their academic eligibility- the NCAA won't let them play.

which is total BS because the school not having enough $$$$ is way out of their control yet they will be punished for it.

Boosters should establish another South Harmon Institute of Technology and transplant the entire LSU Tigers staff & players there. Problem solved.

 

[rj]

Boosters should establish another South Harmon Institute of Technology and transplant the entire LSU Tigers staff & players there. Problem solved.

and they would play in NAIA Division II

In order to play in the SEC, you have to be an NCAA institution. Part of being an NCAA institution, you have to be a degree-granting college. Neither of the latter two can be done with a snap of the fingers.

which is total BS because the school not having enough $$$$ is way out of their control yet they will be punished for it.

Tough, welcome to life. These guys will be a lot more protected afterwards than the faculty (who will be out of a job and have to find something else when higher education nationally is downsizing) and most of the rest of the students (who invested toward a degree this semester, won't get credit for their work, and have to try and transfer involving a move to somewhere else) if this came to pass. The football players will be the ones that get coddled.

http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/lsu-sports/per-our-governor-college-football-in-peril/61884153/

"If you are a student attending one of these universities, it means that you will receive a grade of incomplete, many students will not be able to graduate and student athletes across the state at those schools will be ineligible to play next semester. That means you can say farewell to college football next fall."

It's based on the lack of eligibility of the players. If LSU main campus runs out of money, no one will be able to attend classes. Ergo, the players would not be academically eligible. He's not using football as saying he'll take it away, he's showing the detrimental effects that failing to fund the university could have across the board.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Not to be an ass but there are many of those and its not like they'd lose the research done there. Got to think the Tigers pay a lot of the bills around there with their gate receipts.

What do you mean, they wouldn't lose the research?

You don't think closing the facility and firing all its employees would cause them to lose their research? These programs aren't something you can just de-fund, stop, pick up and move to another state, and re-start as if nothing happened. Grants don't work that way, and the scientific method doesn't work that way. When they turn the lights off, it's over. Lifetimes of cancer research will be destroyed.

This happened during the last federal government shutdown. It's one of the many critical things that politicians don't even pretend to give a **** about when they talk about government shutdowns.

Never mind the impact of shuttering TWO university campuses. Derailing or delaying tens of thousands of people's college educations. Wiping out the life's work of the researchers whose jobs disappear in a puff of smoke.

And yes, LSU football gives a grand total of around $10 mil a year to the university (Les Miles makes a little less than half that as coach of the team), whereas the budget deficit in question is $940 million.

 

[Rocko604]

The comments on the ESPN article for this are amazing. (mod) They don't realize that without the actual ****ing college, there can't be college football.

 

[rj]

The comments on the ESPN article for this are amazing. (mod) They don't realize that without the actual ****ing college, there can't be college football.

That's because for a lot of people college sports are the only thing they care about at the university. In North Carolina, you have a ton of Duke fans that obviously never went to the school, and then you have UNC fans that we derisively referred to as "Wal-Mart Nation" - their only connection to the campus was they bought a T-shirt.

Doubt this will happen regardless, no state legislator would want to run in the next election with that on your record. At the Tiger Droppings site, there was a plan from previously that was mentioned but had gone nowhere to reduce the number of campuses. Perhaps it should here for a couple of the smaller schools with dropping enrollments and graduation rates, which in the South is a politically touchy subject for racial reasons.

 

[RaiderDoug]

Doubt this will happen regardless, no state legislator would want to run in the next election with that on your record. At the Tiger Droppings site, there was a plan from previously that was mentioned but had gone nowhere to reduce the number of campuses. Perhaps it should here for a couple of the smaller schools with dropping enrollments and graduation rates, which in the South is a politically touchy subject for racial reasons.

The state of Louisiana has a silly # of public universities for a state that size - no less than 20 publicly supported major schools, not including junior colleges and comminuty colleges.

In states with similar populations, Kentucky has 8, Alabama 13. Oregon has 9.

The public schools are also divided up into 4 different systems, every single one of them have been fighting tooth and nail for every budget $$ for over a decade and have resisted every single attempt at consolidation. There's a 4 year degree granting school for every 310k Louisiana residents. And this is a state where, to be honest, the rate of kids going to college is probably lower than the national average. This is untenable.

But every school has that 1 state senator fighting to keep his college open - even just for the jobs that the school provides the community.

 

[Voight]

What do you mean, they wouldn't lose the research?

You don't think closing the facility and firing all its employees would cause them to lose their research? These programs aren't something you can just de-fund, stop, pick up and move to another state, and re-start as if nothing happened. Grants don't work that way, and the scientific method doesn't work that way. When they turn the lights off, it's over. Lifetimes of cancer research will be destroyed.

This happened during the last federal government shutdown. It's one of the many critical things that politicians don't even pretend to give a **** about when they talk about government shutdowns.

Never mind the impact of shuttering TWO university campuses. Derailing or delaying tens of thousands of people's college educations. Wiping out the life's work of the researchers whose jobs disappear in a puff of smoke.

And yes, LSU football gives a grand total of around $10 mil a year to the university (Les Miles makes a little less than half that as coach of the team), whereas the budget deficit in question is $940 million.

So all the research they've compiled is going to disappear from the file boxes & hardrives of the computers? All the samples are just going to be destroyed?

 

[Rocko604]

That's because for a lot of people college sports are the only thing they care about at the university. In North Carolina, you have a ton of Duke fans that obviously never went to the school, and then you have UNC fans that we derisively referred to as "Wal-Mart Nation" - their only connection to the campus was they bought a T-shirt.

Doubt this will happen regardless, no state legislator would want to run in the next election with that on your record. At the Tiger Droppings site, there was a plan from previously that was mentioned but had gone nowhere to reduce the number of campuses. Perhaps it should here for a couple of the smaller schools with dropping enrollments and graduation rates, which in the South is a politically touchy subject for racial reasons.

Well they're going to have to do something one way or another because the deficit could be as high as $2 billion next year. I do believe the main LSU campus itself would be the last domino to fall and that they would shut down campus from all four systems.

 

[tarheelhockey]

So all the research they've compiled is going to disappear from the file boxes & hardrives of the computers? All the samples are just going to be destroyed?

I strongly recommend reading this article in its entirety:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-science-suffers-during-government-shutdown/

"Losing two weeks of data collection during a critical research period or two weeks of a key experiment that took months or years to set up will have repercussions for years,†Andrew A. Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote on our site last year.

The shutdown hit lab animals particularly hard. Thousands of transgenic mice, bred for science at significant expense, were euthanized to avoid overcrowding. Other high-maintenance breeds simply died from neglect.

As soon as the shutdown began, the National Institutes of Health suspended all new clinical trials. Each week, the NIH turned away as many as 200 volunteer subjects, many of whom were cancer patients desperately hoping that an experimental treatment might save their lives.

“I am furious,†Michelle Langbehn, a cancer patient who was unable to enroll in a drug trial due to the government shutdown, told CNN in October. “They are denying or delaying potentially life-saving treatments to Americans in need of a miracle. I speak for everyone battling cancer when I say we don’t have time.â€

For more than two weeks many American scientists couldn’t share their findings with the international scientific community or participate in joint research projects abroad. Government shutdown not only stifled U.S. research—it set back our foreign collaborators, too.

For science, perhaps that is the biggest problem with a government shutdown. So much of scientific research relies on trust. Scientists abroad trust that their U.S.-backed partners will be able to see a project through to the end. Conference coordinators trust that decorated American scientists will be able to present their findings at major meetings.

And federally funded researchers trust that the government won’t pull the plug on their work and send them back to square one.

In the case of something like tissue samples, what are the scientists supposed to do? Take them home and put them in their fridge? Aside from the fact that almost all of what we're talking about is state property and not theirs to take, there's also the fact that they're going to be busy trying to pick up the pieces of their career, not trying to salvage what scraps of their project that they can still access. It's not like there are funders out there with millions of dollars to pour into saving research projects that are scrapped by their own government. Anyone caught up in the wave of layoffs and lab closures will be, in a word, screwed.

 

[DoyleG]

He might get Huey Longed.

Rather ironic given that Long was an LSU booster.

 

[Hasbro]

Rather ironic given that Long was an LSU booster.

You get accidentally gunned down by your own body guards, your middle name is irony.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

You get accidentally gunned down by your own body guards, your middle name is irony.