By Ryan Hiles

 

In America football is as ubiquitous as Christmas or McDonald’s. Even fantasy football, which for years was relegated to the most remote circles of sports fandom, has become accepted as a necessary part of the canon of the game. In return, this everlasting love for the game can also often lead us to do things we wouldn’t normally do or make decisions we wouldn’t normally make.

A good example of this might be a someone who gets a tattoo guaranteeing a championship before the season starts, or merely a Kentucky fan deciding to a attend a football game. Another possible example might include a university that has increased tuition by about 5 percent over each of the last several years deciding it wants to spend tens of millions of dollars renovating a stadium that was just renovated seven years ago. Hypotheticals are crazy, right?

Over the weekend, U of L announced a $55 million expansion to Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium. The project will add an additional 10,000 new seats, 65 new premium luxury boxes and about 25,000 additional square feet of space. At the press conference announcing the project, Louisville Athletic Director Tom Jurich assured reporters that the expansion was in no way prompted by any kind of arms race with Kentucky, who is finishing up the renovation of their own football stadium. He also added that the stadium would need no new renovations in the “distant future.”

How distant is that future though? The last renovation to PJCS was completed in 2008 and cost about the same as this makeover supposedly will. The main difference between 2008 and 2015 doesn’t have to do with the university itself, but rather the state.

In 2006, the Kentucky General Assembly was able to supply partial funding for the project, in addition to the funds already given to the school’s academics and general scholarship fund. More recently, however, the university has seen state funding plummet, to which the annual tuition increase is often attributed.

This means that most of this money is going to have to be raised through sponsorship deals and private donations.  Assistant Athletic Director Kenny Klein confirmed this assumption saying, “The funding for the project will be obtained through sponsorships, private donations, ticket sales and other possible sources, but not from the state.”

Let’s say that half of the $55 million is coming through sponsorship deals. That’s still about $27 million that the university has to fundraise for. While I certainly don’t doubt that the University has the resources to raise such a number, it’s a matter of where we’re placing our efforts.

To be perfectly honest, it’s far too soon to form a definite opinion about this project one way or the other. It was announced this weekend for God’s sake. But perhaps the university should really consider how this looks from a student’s perspective.

As of right now, what I see is the school valuing 10,000 new seats in the football stadium more than making sure student needs are met. For instance, maybe starting with ensuring that students aren’t still living in the black mold-infested Miller Hall. I see the University more concerned about a new multi-million dollar video board than with making sure classrooms have up-to-date computers.

If this renovation will be mostly privately funded, then the U of L’s fundraising emphasis will almost certainly shift toward athletics and, by proxy, their priorities too.

Again, this just seems to come down to the university being tone-deaf to the needs of students. As a football fan of U of L, I’m more than excited by the prospect of closing in the bowl and making our stadium even grander. On the other hand, as a student at U of L, I’m more perturbed by this trend of the administration constantly overlooking its students for the sake of trying to impress our new friends in the ACC. And for me, the latter title is far more important than the former.