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Keith Strudler: Political Football In Louisiana

For the citizens of Louisiana, this is not just a budget crisis. It’s truly an existential one. It’s the end of days, the apocalypse, cats and dogs living together. Because according to Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards, if the state can’t find a way to close a $940 million budget deficit, then higher education – and its solvency – is on the table. And that could mean for next season, no LSU football. That’s right, forget the prospect of cutting classes, no diplomas, and no grades assigned. Next fall, according to the highest ranking state employee, Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, the Mecca, Taj Mahal, and Wailing Wall combined, could remain empty. So instead of a mini-Mardi Gras event other Saturday, as the Tigers take on Alabama, or Ole Miss, or really anyone, Louisianans will have to find other pastimes for the Saturday morning into late night.

Those are the stakes, or at least the ones that caught the eye of fervent sports fans. There’s other potential dire consequences for this pending fiscal disaster, including a relative impasse of all state higher education, which, believe it or not, includes initiatives beyond the gridiron. There’s also the possibility of taking people of kidney dialyses machines and suspending hospice. So we shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. But for many in the Bayou belt, this doomsday proposition is the first real dire consequence of a much larger issue. It’s like not caring about the US Congress shutting down until you realize you won’t get a Social Security check. Politics and policy is always personal, even when it shouldn’t be.

It’s somewhat unfair to attack LSU football specifically, since it’s one of the few money-making ventures in the whole cash strapped landscape of Louisiana politics. The Tigers are one of the few “haves” in the greater college sports ecosystem, actually returning money to the university bottom line. Granted, it’s often fuzzy math to arrive at that assessment, since things like capital costs and branding often get lost in the calculus. And that’s leaving aside the ethical quandary that is big time college football, from the unpaid labor issue to the looming concussion problem. But, compared to most Louisiana programs on the chopping block, the LSU Tigers seems like an innocent victim of circumstance. Now swimming, and track, and all those so-called “Olympic” sports can’t say the same. But no one’s going to raise taxes to save the Louisiana Tech volleyball program, and the governor knows it. So football is truly, in this case, a political football.

It’s entirely possible governor Edwards is playing a game of political chicken. Perhaps the average state lawmaker, and his or her voters care more about football Saturday than things like, say, books in grade schools. This is an entirely reasonable theory, given every reasonable indication of relative value. Like the fact that Louisiana public education finishes last in almost every state category, but LSU vies for a national football title every year. So maybe the governor figures he can’t win the war by trying to save the sick, but if there’s no football, pretty much everyone loses the next election. I get that.

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible this strategic money grab backfires. We know a lot of people in Louisiana care about the Tigers. A whole bunch probably don’t. See, even for the half of America that watches the Super Bowl, the other half does something else. That’s the risk you take when you throw your ace – you just don’t know about the other hand.

Perhaps more generally, though, is the question of why college football is caught in the crosshairs of a state budget crisis. Why are state governments, through their land grant and flagship state universities, in the business of quasi-professional football? And how is it that someone’s sales tax will determine whether Alabama has a hole in their schedule, or whether ESPN makes a fortune on Game Day from Death Valley – the now potentially telling name of LSU’s cavernous stadium?

Perhaps it’s simply like any other oversized American institution, from banks to airlines to car companies. College football is, as inferred by the Louisiana state governor, simply too big to fail. Which is why an unveiled threat to its existence served as the best way to ensure that seniors will actually receive medical care next year. Not an appeal to reason about the dignity of human life, but instead, what in the world would we do with our Saturday evenings?

That’s the world we live in, where LSU football is far more important than any budget crisis.

Keith Strudler is the director of the Marist College Center for Sports Communication and an associate professor of communication. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler

 
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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