Trib: Big Sky fits UI students’ wallets
In his editorial in the Lewiston Tribune this morning, Opinion Editor Marty Trillhaase comments that Idaho's return to the Big Sky Conference two years from now is a good fit ... for the wallets of UI students:
Political historian Randy Stapilus started off his column this week by observing he enrolled at the University of Idaho nearly 40 years ago because it was not "football-obsessed." A university where the football team posted three winning seasons between 1945 and the early 1980s was just the kind of school Stapilus said he found "amenable." He's on to something. It is possible -- and some would say likely -- that many if not most UI students may get through four years of school without attending a single Vandal football game. They may leave football alone. It is not the other way around, however.
At the UI, fees students pay and the taxes their parents shell out will subsidize nearly half the costs of the intercollegiate athletics program. That's a bit better than Idaho State University, where fees and taxes cover two-thirds of athletics costs, or Lewis-Clark State College, where public dollars pay roughly 60 percent of the bills. Even Boise State University - with its upper-division football team, legions of enthusiastic fans and healthy television contracts - can't support athletics without help. Student fees and tax revenues support about 10 percent of its program.
All of which begs the question: What are they getting in return? Keep that in mind as you contemplate UI President Chuck Staben's decision last week to return to the Big Sky Conference after nearly two decades navigating the upper division. More here.
