Despite Massive Cuts to Higher Ed, We Faculty Are Thrilled about Our New Multi-Million-Dollar Football Coach
Dear Board of Trustees,
As professors at this large state university, we want to thank you for your recent investment in athletics. We admit, when we first heard that you were spending $50 million to replace our washed-up, elderly football coach with a washed-up, elderly, unemployed NFL coach, we were skeptical. But now we see the error of our ways. During this era of declining enrollment, public mistrust, and open attacks by the US government, it’s clear that only one thing can save this institution, the country’s oldest public university: college football.
We are grateful that, through this mega-contract with a coach with zero collegiate experience, the university is publicly recognizing what we’ve known for years: Our mission is not to prepare America’s youth for successful careers; it’s to make money on football. Now, we’ll finally be able to maximize profit through ad revenue, ticket sales, and selling overpriced beer to drunk fans. Just like the NFL, but with fewer Taylor Swift sightings.
Of course, some faculty complained at first. We didn’t understand how the university could come up with so much money after two decades of budget reductions. After all, you cut scholarship programs, axed the entire American Studies Department, and replaced the library with a Chik-fil-A. But now we realize that, in addition to semester-to-semester adjunct contracts that barely cover the rent, we can make extra cash working the concession stand.
We’re also happy that in order to get more TV revenue, you dropped our regional athletic conference for a thirty-team conference with schools across the country. At first, we thought, won’t this make it harder for student-athletes to get to class? Most athletes already miss a lot of classes for travel. Many are barely passing. Won’t it be even harder when they have to fly across the country and back on a random Tuesday? Luckily, you reminded us that we have to treat student-athletes and nonathletes the same. That’s when we realized that the new travel schedule could benefit everyone. We’ve shifted from teaching Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week to holding class on one single Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the entire semester. Sure, after some parents complained, you cut faculty salaries even further. But we don’t mind, since it allows us to focus on our new career passion: walking around the stadium hawking Bud Light.
We are thrilled about the brand-new 80,000-seat football stadium you’ve built in the center of campus. Sure, a stadium that’s the size of a city block makes it hard to get from one building to the next, but since none of us can afford parking spots near campus anyway, we don’t mind a few extra steps. And when we’re giving a lecture about the dangers of unchecked capitalism, there’s nothing better than gazing out the leaded window of our unheated, asbestos-ridden lecture hall and seeing a gleaming monument to what really matters: college athletics.
We also appreciate how sports infuses our campus with festivity. Before, our main social events were faculty book-launch parties, which, after years of fieldwork and brutal peer reviews, took place at an abandoned elementary school playground and featured boxed wine, cheese from Aldi’s almost-expired section, and at least one weeping assistant professor. Now, every time we win against our rival, we have huge campus-wide parties. The ice sculptures, flowing champagne, and celebrity cameos are not only fun but also remind us who are the real engines of this world-renowned university: a few dozen teenage football players.
In sum, we faculty could not be more pleased with the Board of Trustees’ increased investment in athletics. We’re delighted to discuss further how we can better leverage our decades of training in highly specialized fields to better promote college sports. To contact us, please reach out: You can find us at the hot dog stand.
— Your university’s professors
