Would stink if KU left, but no different than Mizzou.
That could spell the end of Big12 Hoops Tournament always being in KC. Not sure what the economic impact is on having Tourney in KC. But when attending Big12, I always heard that P&L businesses made much of their $ off 1 week with Big12 & St Patty's day.
It's the state "welfare" check that's really stirring the pot down here.
FROM THE PUBLISHER Manhattan Mercury | Welfare for KU football? Or an eco devo project
It’s tempting, as a K-State fan, to bash the state government’s decision to hand $50 million of taxpayer money to KU to help it fix up its football stadium.
Very tempting. It seems preposterous on its face. A government subsidy at a time when TV contracts provide giant money gushers into major conference athletics programs? Taxpayer money to one Division 1 football stadium in the state, when the other big one (which happens to be here in our town) has done its upgrades with private money over five decades, upgrades that have brought in tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue?
I could yammer on in this vein at some length. How about the state give K-State $50 million so it doesn’t have to knock down the Ahearn gym, and abandon the fieldhouse to the eventual wrecking ball? What if the government just agreed to give K-State one-third of the money the Vaniers have donated since the late 1980s? There’s some irony in the coincidences — perhaps the passing of Jack Vanier marked the end of one philosophy and the beginning of something different.
The jokes come easy. The Welfarehawks? Should the midfield marker by the $50-yard-line? And so on.
But, OK, that line of argumentation is tinged with provincialism.
Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that the roles were reversed. Assume that state economic-development officials handed over $50 million to K-State to help add on to the football stadium – on the grounds that it would help the state’s economy. Would we in Manhattan be against that? Well, certainly not on the basis of envy or self-interest.
The government has, in fact, helped spiff up the area around K-State’s athletics complex, with major improvements to roads and other infrastructure. That’s why Kimball has been torn up forever. The state’s portion of the KU project is, in fact, supposed to be used for that sort of infrastructure, too.
Still, there’s no denying that this is a shift in the standards. So we can further assume that K-State’s athletics department will be the next recipient at the taxpayer trough. Right? I don’t know what that project will be, or when it will come, but if I’m Gene Taylor or Richard Linton, I’ve got the memo already written.
And so, out of economic self-interest, perhaps it would be wise to keep our powder dry on this subject. It would be prudent to erase the first three paragraphs of this column. Except that, umm, oops. I didn’t.
No, the real and substantial argument against it is that taxpayers ought not be subsidizing major college sports venues because of the bottomless pools of money those businesses have to draw from. That’s an awfully compelling argument.
Do we want to make that argument in Manhattan? We certainly can at the moment. Down the line, my guess is we’ll want those bullets back.
