23
JANUARY 15, 2021
OPINION The Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor
Send letters to the Austin Business Journal 504 Lavaca Street, Suite 1008 Austin, TX 78701 austin@bizjournals.com
VIEWPOINT
R UPS & DOWNS
UT erred by replacing Tom Herman, at steep expense, amid pandemic
REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER PLEADS GUILTY
D
L ike many I was shocked, but upon reflection not surprised, to learn that the University of Texas at Austin ter- minated football coach Tom Herman and immediately hired Alabama Offensive Coordinator Steve Sarkisian to replace him. This will cost UT approximately $25million dollars. The total bill might be closer to $40 million if you factor in all buyouts of exist- ing personnel, the price tag for Sarkisian’s salary and the additional money needed if Sarkisian elects to clean house and recruit his own staff as is typically the case.
decision is even more disturbing this year. Like all universities, the coronavirus pan- demic has strained UT’s budget. Salaries are frozen, staff are being let go, open faculty and staff positions are going unfilled and more academic budget cuts might be on the horizon. At the worst moment of suffering in this pandemic, UT’s highest priority is a new football coach. A former doctoral student of mine put the current state of affairs in even starker terms: “College athletics is by and large a
This case stretched nearly three years, from a February 2018 arrest to Chris Milam pleading guilty in December to exposing himself to a 7-year-old girl. He received two years of probation. For more: https://bizj.us/1q86c5
Richard Cherwitz
cesspool that turns administrators and coaches into millionaires by exploiting the labor and health of young Black men. The education they were promised in exchange proves very hard to get with 6 a.m. lifting sessions and majors restricted by afternoon practice times. Fans don’t seem to care that their heroes are disposable (and readily disposed of). As Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Taylor Branch observes, ‘It has a whiff of the plantation.’” In addition, many individuals who have a long record of donating to academic departments, colleges and educational programs are now so upset that they may stop giving. One donor toldme: “As much as I val- ue the excellent education I received at UT, I’m done giving themmoney. If they can flitter away $25million on bad decision making, they don’t need my modest donations.” Unfortunately, there are no signs that things will change in the future. The beat goes on. In the years to come coaches will come and go and universities will continue to dole out incredible sums of money to hire and buy them out. Sadly, like many I may continue to be a hypocrite, criticizing and being stunned by the enormous disparity between athletics and academic budgets while simultaneously being a sports fan and cheering for UT teams. And that, of course, is pre- cisely the problem. Hence, it is not an overstatement to say that college athletics hold universities hostage. Richard Cherwitz is the Ernest S. Sharpe Centennial Professor Emeritus in the Moody College of Communication and founder of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium at the University of Texas at Austin.
Let’s put this athletics expenditure in perspective. In 2019 the football programat UT generated approxi- mately $157 million dollars in revenue. This constitut- ed an increase from $144 million in the previous year. In short, the cost of firing Herman and hiring Sarke- sian is not even tip money; the football program will not miss it. That is stunning to say the least. Make no mistake. I am a fan of college sports, each week watching, being entertained by and rooting for the Texas Longhorn teams. Perhaps I am a hypocrite but I find this recent move reprehensible and unac- ceptable — both tangibly and symbolically. I say this having been a UT faculty member for 41 years (1978- 2019), an administrator for six years (1995-2003) and a member of the Intercollegiate Athletics Council for Men for three years (1999-2003). Once again the message communicated by UT is clear: college athletics, not academics, dominate and are the priority of universities. Just imagine if the $40 million was available to help pay faculty and staff. Imagine also if UT told alumni donors (those who fill the athletics department coffers and make possible the hiring and buyout of coaches) that a certain per- centage of their gifts automatically would be allocated to the academic side of the shop — more than the $10 million currently transferred to academics. Of course none of this is likely to happen. To be fair, unlike oth- er schools, UT Athletics raises enough money so that they don’t have to be propped up by the university. As a faculty colleague of mine astutely observed, UT’s termination of Tom Herman and simultaneous hiring of a new coach would be extraordinarily prob- lematic in any normal year. However, the university’s
COVID-19 STATS LOOK WORSE THAN SUMMER
D
Public health officials warn ICUs could be overrun soon and businesses have been told to cut capacity. The Austin Convention Center has been turned into a field hospital. For more: https://bizj.us/1q86wj
A BETTER WAY TO PROTECT ONLINE DATA?
C
Tim Berners-Lee, invetor of the World Wide Web, has a new company creating personal online data stores, or “pods,” that could give people more control of their online data. For more: https://bizj.us/1q87bx
R WHAT DO YOU THINK?
SILVER LINING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
We want to hear your opinion on the issues you read about in the Business Journal. Submit letters to the editor at cpope@bizjournals.com. A few guidelines: keep it brief and civil and remember to mention which news story you’re writing about. No anonymous letters will be printed. All submissions become the property of the Austin Business Journal and will not be returned. Submissions may be edited and may be published or otherwise used in any medium.
In 2020, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose at the slowest rate since World War II — although many expect that trend to end in 2021 as the economy rebounds. For more: https://bizj.us/1q87mo
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs