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Keith Strudler: Locker Rooms And Libraries

If you’re planning to play football next year for the LSU Tigers, there’s some good news. In addition to your scholarship, equipment, housing, weight rooms, tutors, and everything else that goes into playing for one of the country’s wealthiest athletics programs, you also get a newly renovated, high tech, five star football operations facility, that includes everything from a private dining facility that serves prime rib and king crab to a locker room with personal lounge pods for each athlete, where they can lie down, charge their phones, or watch a film, all under some nifty purple and yellow mood lighting. It’s like the first-class section on an international flight, only with a place to store your helmet and pads. That new facility cost around $28 million, which to be fair, is a fraction of their annual football budget. And all of this money came directly from private donors, Tiger fans who want nothing more than to make sure their favorite college football players have everything they possibly need to finally beat Alabama. According to the University, none of this money came from tuition or the state, or which it seems there is fairly little to go around. And all of this was debuted this week in video of players excitedly testing out their new digs. It was like kids in a candy store. Really, really big kids in a very expensive store.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people not involved with the LSU football program were less excited about the big reveal, especially when they heard the price tag. Some of those people may spend time at the LSU library, which is still in disrepair thanks to a propensity for flooding and not enough money to fix it. That disparity between the obvious haves and have nots on the same campus – and the fact that academics seem to be on the wrong side of the tracks – is causing a bit of an uproar, even in the football crazy landscape of the Bayou State.

Some within the university have taken to social media to make their point. For example, journalism professor Robert Mann noted on twitter that while the football team lavishes in luxury, he vacuums his own office with a Dust Devil he bought at Walmart. In response, LSU Quarterback Joey Burrow asked, also on twitter, why Mann should “feel entitled to the fruits of his labor.” I’m guessing that’s a feeling shared by a whole lot of LSU football players, none of whom, we must remember, can actually get paid a salary for playing the sport that helped generate the donations to build this very facility. So, I suppose the answer is, it’s complicated.

Now, there’s a lot to unpackage here, and doing so would take the better part of a weekend. And since it’s summer and we’d all rather be at the beach, I’ll be more concise. There is no question that big time college athletes, especially football, is a bit out of hand. It’s basically a full-fledged professional sport at a handful of places, only the labor works for free. And everywhere else, and in every sport that’s not football and major college basketball, it’s a loss leader. And I say that in the nicest way possible. And way too often, alumni with a lot of money pour it into athletics in the hope that they can win more games. These are all factors that contribute to the arms race that is big time college sports, including this space aged LSU locker room.

But don’t make the mistake of blaming LSU’s library woes or Robert Mann’s dirty office on the LSU football team. Yes, a lot of universities care way too much about sports, and yes, that leads to a lot of shady behaviors. But the LSU library is a hot mess because the state of Louisiana has repeatedly deprioritized funding higher education, even its flagship university LSU. Of course, Louisiana doesn’t spend a whole lot on secondary education either, but that’s another story. If LSU students and faculty and staff and anyone else who’s mad about the state of that campus wants to get angry at someone, get angry at your state government that used to put a whole lot more towards higher ed than they do now, where state subsidies are now little more than a rounding error and schools like LSU are public in name only. Or maybe get mad at all the Louisianans that keep voting these folks into office. That makes way more sense than using a football program as a strawman, especially since they’re one of the few around the country that operates in the black. And this is not a defense of the circus that is college sports. But simply a recognition that padded reclining chairs are little more than a red herring in the abyss of higher ed.

Unfortunately, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Which is bad news for anyone at LSU who isn’t planning to play football next year.

Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. 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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