Imagine a world where Bend’s Summit High School gets so much money for its sportsing programs that one day, in hopes of getting even more exposure and money coming in for sportsing, the school proclaims that it will no longer play its cross-town rival, Bend Senior High School.
Two publicly funded schools of about the same size, in the same town, no longer playing one another.
You’re getting hot under the collar already, right?
That’s not happening anytime soon here in high school sports, but kick the age bracket up a few years and it’s definitely happening at the college level.
Just last week, Oregon rivals, 16th-ranked Oregon State University and 6th-ranked University of Oregon, played each other in football, perhaps for the last time in a conference game. The grand statewide rivalry that began in 1894 and was called the “Civil War” until it was changed amid the racial justice reckoning of 2020 will, at least for the foreseeable future, either not exist at all, or will only exist as a non-conference game. (Whether the two schools’ football teams will play each other next season is still undecided.)
The matter began to reveal itself this August, when the U of O opted to leave the Pac-12 conference and join the Big 10, where more dollars would flow toward school athletics by way of media rights.
In a state with few professional sports teams, the elimination of the matchup formerly known as the Civil War is a pretty big disappointment.
It also brings up a lot of questions about what all of this is for – who wins and who loses.
While college sports bring some level of notoriety, and money, to a school, the whole thing is something of a gamble. When things go wrong, and the money doesn’t flow in as expected – as was the case for the schools in the Pac-12 — the people who stand to suffer are often the students who are at these universities to gain an education and move themselves up in the world.
Compare what an average student pays for their education to what their universities devote to sports and you may be more than hot under the collar.
Oregon State recently dropped $162 million on a remodel of Reser Stadium. The school’s football coach, Jonathan Smith, signed a $30.6 million deal with OSU last year, making $4.85 million that year. This week, just a day after OSU lost to Oregon in its final PAC-12 matchup, Smith hopped on a plane for Michigan State University, leaving the Beavers behind. So much for big dollars eliciting loyalty.
Athletics are funded by tickets, alumni donations… and student fees. It will be a big surprise to see OSU’s athletics investments, now woes, not put on the backs of students.
As an example, Washington State University, the only school remaining with OSU in the PAC-12, spent $84 million on sports in fiscal year 2024. That’s far less than other schools. When WSU’s Pac-12 media dollars started to fall short, the university spent its financial reserves to keep the athletics programs going – and then dipped into money from housing, parking, food services and other revenue-generating programs to continue to pay for sports, according to reporting from Crosscut.
The University of Oregon alleges that faculty and staff salaries, not coaches’ salaries, are a driver of rising tuition. Meanwhile, student fees for everyone — including those not endowed with athletic abilities —continue to rise year over year.
And then there’s the burden an expanded travel schedule puts on student athletes. They still have classes to attend and assignments to turn in, even while they are forced to travel farther for competitions. Traveling anywhere in the U.S., rather than regionally, to compete also involves far bigger costs – financial, physical and environmental. Colleges teach students about the ill effects of climate change in classes, all while some of those same students amass huge carbon footprints to play a game.
Sports experts have called this notion of moving conferences to chase media dollars and TV time a novelty, and one that will wear off. But if money keeps talking, expect nothing to change in the world of college sports.
As John U. Bacon of Michigan Radio Sports said, “So, money is the winner here and greed is undefeated.”
Oregonians may not have wanted to call it the Civil War any longer, but we still want a Civil War.
This article appears in Source Weekly November 30, 2023.
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And I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich, while it buries the poor
You’re power-hungry, sellin’ soldiers in a human grocery store
Ain’t that fresh?
I don’t need your civil war
Ooh, no, no, no, no, no, no