When you live in a world like this,
In the N.F.L.’s world, displays of principle and common economic sense are for chumps. Las Vegas and Nevada adopted the league’s preferred stance: They rolled belly up. Politicians raised taxes to provide a historic $750 million public subsidy.
This led to unremarked-upon cognitive dissonance in Las Vegas. Even as politicians increased taxes for stadiums, Clark County school officials voted last spring to increase public class sizes and to close a school for at-risk students. There was simply no money. “This is the last thing we ever want to do,” Linda Young, president of the school board, said at that time.
It’s a shame the school board did not build a football stadium, perhaps with a public school annex.
… is it really hard to understand why in most places the highest paid state employee is the college head football coach?
You almost feel like college presidents wish they could move their campuses so they could get in on some of that sweet bidding action for themselves.
Get The Picture 
The American way. Let’s give billionaires money from taxpayers but let’s cut out food for the poor and aged because they are lazy and worthless
LikeLike
i don’t blame the NFL or owners for this. We, the American people are to blame, as we put absurd (unhealthy, IMO) emphasis on sports. For example, we create all sorts of pomp and circumstance for HS athletes who choose which college they will be playing football. But the quiet student with a 1600 SAT who was just offered a full ride to a prestigious school merely gets a scant mention during the morning announcements over the intercom at their school.
Sadly, athletics (especially the big 3) trumps academics for most Americans, hence the reason why we build billion dollar stadiums with crumbling schools nearby.
LikeLike
Bingo.
LikeLike
I wonder when Greg will start shaking down Athens by threatening to move the team to Gwinnett County?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is there any country in the world other than the United States in which stadiums for professional sports teams are paid for in whole or in part by the government?
Surely the days of this sort of giveaway are numbered. There’s simply no constituency for it. It’s unpopular both with conservatives and liberals. I think McGarity is right about one thing, there’s a big correction coming in the world of sports, sooner rather than later.
LikeLike
Exactly, I don’t watch pro sports for a number reasons, stadium funding and non profit status being some of them. The college model is flawed to but at least the fans/alums voluntarily contribute for most of it.
LikeLike
Umm… college athletic departments are non-profits, which means every taxpayer in America subsidizes them. Also, UGA, at least, hammers students for an athletic fee, despite rolling in dough.
I don’t think “voluntarily contribute” means what you think it means.
LikeLike
Exactly
LikeLike
I said it was flawed but I guess those donations for tickets are just a drop in the bucket huh? It is what I think it means.
LikeLike
That’s no different than what the Falcons are doing with seat contributions in the new stadium.
LikeLike
http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/football-revenue-bolsters-athletics-academics/article_706019cc-01dd-11e6-8b16-0ba043051140.html
What slice of the pie comes from the students? When did a NFL team turn a profit and donate to local schools? Did UGA issue a bond for the IPF which a county commissioner railroad through or did alumni step up and offer donations?
LikeLike
You’re arguing that college football is somehow purer than the NFL is. That’s a joke.
At least the NFL pays its hired help a market wage. That’s where most of college sports gets the monetary nobility you laud.
LikeLike
I do think the funding of college football is more from the people who enjoy the game as flawed as it is. Players get room, board, and a education if they want it, besides aren’t hundred dollar handshakes common? Players also enjoy these facilities, billiards tables in club rooms, which many here seem to think are unnecessary. If you play college football, graduate, even if you never start, doors will open which the average student will not have access to. I have family that has done it. They get their compensation.
LikeLike
You are not going to win this battle with The Senator…give it up..
LikeLike
http://www.nflfoundation.org/
LikeLike
http://www.atlantafalcons.com/community/
LikeLike
At Georgia Southern students pay an athletic fee of $214 and an athletic facility fee of $40 a semester. It is the same fee per students taking 4 hours or more a semester. GSU has an attendance of 21,000, if all pay the fee that equates to $5,334,000 a semester from the students. Even if only 3/4 pay, not sure if masters or phd students are required to pay, you are still looking at $4 million a semester.
LikeLike
I think West Ham’s new stadium was publicly funded. But I could be wrong. I bet Russian soccer teams don’t pay for theirs with the WC on the horizon.
LikeLike
Good point regarding West Ham. Although that seems to be a special circumstance because it was originally built for the London Olympics and the city still owns the stadium. In comparison, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur have had to pay for their own stadiums.
LikeLike
According to this, the new AS Roma stadium will be only the 2nd Italian soccer stadium to be privately owned and financed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadio_della_Roma
The Westfalenstadion used public money and was owned by the City of Dortmund when it was built back in the 70’s. The Allianz was privately funded but Munich kicked in $210 million in infrastructure improvements in the area around the stadium.
LikeLike
Hotel/Motel taxes are not tied to school taxes…
LikeLike
We can assure you, the contributing Bulldog Club membership, that we are already well in front of this evolving trend.
As you are already aware, in 2009 we created the Gameday Gameplan initiative to move the riff-raff off of our campus, making the gameday experience more enjoyable and comfortable for our top Hartman Fund contributors and Magill Society members.
As you are also aware, we have already accepted bids to move two of our home games to Jacksonville and Atlanta, cities having NFL-quality sky suite facilities for your gameday comfort and enjoyment.
Yesterday, in support of our initiative to move all home games off our campus, we announced the relocation of our Bulldog Club meetings to Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and Charlotte. Like Jacksonville and Atlanta, these cities also have NFL-quality sky suite facilities for your gameday comfort and enjoyment. They will immediately enter the bidding process for the remainder of our future home schedules and we will soon be announcing points cutoffs for each location.
Honoring our Georgia heritage, we are lobbying our former Bulldog Club counties of Chatham, Muscogee, Richmond, Bibb, Dougherty, Hall, and Lowndes to approve bond measures to build facilities worthy of our presence and immediately enter the Bulldog home game bidding process.
As always, we are continuously striving to improve the gameday experience for you, the discriminating University of Georgia financial contributor.
#COMMITTOTHEG
LikeLiked by 1 person
“displays of principle and common economic sense are for chumps”
I would argue they ARE displaying economic sense, it’s just seldon compatible with principle. Just ask North Carolina.
LikeLike
Is there a state that has a higher paid employee than the head football coach of the flagship university of that state?
LikeLike
Kentucky. 🙂
LikeLike
Kansas as well.
LikeLike
H/T…my wife’s right, I’m an idiot.
LikeLike
I think there’s only 11 states where the highest paid state employee isn’t a football or basketball coach.
LikeLike
There are a lot of states besides Kentucky and Kansas. These states have someone else besides the football coach as the highest paid state employee. Overall the highest paid in 39 states is a football or basketball coach at the major university. This data was from Sept 2016 and it could be different now since some basketball coaches have been fired (Tom Crean, Mark Gottfried) and Minnesota paid big $ for PJ Fleck. Jerry Kill was making more money than Pitino. Also, Oregon fired Helfrich and Texas fired Charlie Strong but I would assume that Taggart is making similar money and if Hermann isn’t top of the list then it is probably Sumlin.
Some states have some interesting ones though:
Alaska (Gasline Dev. Pres.), Arizona (Sean Miller), Connecticut (Kevin Ollie), Delaware (Brandywine School Superintendent), Hawaii (Neurosurgeon), Indiana (Tom Crean but he just got fired), Maine (Chancellor Univ of Maine), Maryland (Mark Turgeon), Massachusetts (Derrick Kellogg), Minnesota (Richard Pitino but it might be PJ Fleck now), Nevada (Professor of Surgery), New Hampshire (UNH President), New Mexico (Craig Neal), New York (Anestheseologist and CEO of SUNY Stony Brook Hospital), North Carolina (Mark Gottfried but he just got fired), North Dakota (VP of Health Affairs/Dean of UND School of Medicine), Rhode Island (Danny Hurley), South Dakota (Dean of USD School of Medicine), Vermont (Dean of Vermont College of Medicine), West Virginia (Bob Huggins),
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/09/20/the-highest-paid-public-employee-in-every-state/
LikeLike
its just a hotel and car rental tax increase for the idiots who are rushing to vegas and blow their paycheck. Its those same people that fail to understand gambling is a business not luck who are paying for the stadium. its not like vegas politicians took money away from the school board and diverted it to the nfl.
LikeLike
They could have instituted that same hotel and car rental tax to fund a whole bunch of other meaningful civic projects, but instead are using it to finance billionaire capital projects where said billionaires keep the lion’s share of the revenues generated from the project.
You don’t have a problem with public funds being used to subsidize a project whose sole existence is to enrich billionaires (who could finance the project on their own) and does not create any new jobs or benefits to the community in which the taxpayers live?
Before you go there – I’ve got no problem with rich people making money. You do you, as the kids these days say. However – I have a serious problem with investing taxpayer funds in a project that doesn’t benefit the taxpayers as study after study has shown that new stadiums have no long term growth benefits, only short term during the construction process (likely done with a bunch of illegal labor anyways!). They don’t create new entertainment dollars to spend (it re-allocates them from somewhere else) and they don’t create new jobs (it moves them from somewhere else).
LikeLiked by 1 person
the citizens voted for it, not “a whole bunch of other meaningful civic projects”. Let them eat cake!
LikeLike
Actually a college could get a bidding war going. UCLA used to play in the Coliseum before they moved to the Rose Bowl. I wonder if some of the big city schools will start shopping for stadium and arena deals. Might be tougher to do for more rural locations.
LikeLike