re: Some LSU profs don't support athletics

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Money to academics does not then flow to athletics, its the other way around, though the actual amount is relatively small.

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Yeah I really fricked up my point. I have since corrected it.

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What I am saying (and maybe the professor is saying) is that its frustrating when the academic/research budget is being cut while the athletic budget just continues to increase. I am happy for the football team, but there is a slight disconnect there.

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And what I am saying is that it shouldn't be frustrating to this professor. The professor can be validly frustrated if the athletic program is losing money. But at LSU, the athletic program is making money. And it's contributing a portion of that money to the academic side.

It's like two partners in a business. One guy spends $200,000 in overhead and generates $200,000 in revenue. The other spends $500,000 in overhead and generates $1 million in revenue. They each then earn $250,000. It would be the definition of chutzpah for the break-even guy to start complaining that the rainmaker is using up the firm's resources. Without the rainmaker, that guy would be worse off. The break-even guy should be thanking, not criticizing the rainmaker.

And so I think that's what people are reacting to. They view the professor as the break-even guy who ought to be grateful, not spiteful.

Now, it could be that if the break-even guy were to spend $100,000 more and the rainmaker $100,000 less, the breakeven guy would start generating a profit and maybe the rainmaker would still make the same or have any decline cancelled out by the breakeven guy's newfound profitability. And maybe that is the professor's point. If we spent less on football, we could spend more on academia and the football program wouldn't suffer while the academic programs would improve.

To get there, you have to believe that the football program is not efficient with the resources and is not maximizing its profitability (and that the academic programs would be efficient with the resources). I don't know enough of the facts to argue definitively. But my sense is, that the opposite is closer to the truth.

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I thought we were talking about Professors?

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Have you looked at the salary of a tenured professor these days? Compare that to the average salary for all jobs in Louisiana. And people wonder why the cost of higher education continues to skyrocket.

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Have you looked at the salary of a tenured professor these days? Compare that to the average salary for all jobs in Louisiana

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Yeah - because the average job in Louisiana takes 8-10 years of school + a 3 year postdoc to get.

Talk about apples and oranges. Do you think EVERYONE making above average salary is making too much?

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Have you looked at the salary of a tenured professor these days? Compare that to the average salary for all jobs in Louisiana

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Isnt that kinda the point of the whole thread? The fact that if we would use a bit of the energy and resources pulling and supporting a football team for other development within the state, maybe the average salary for jobs in Louisiana increases?

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I do. Liberal teachers and professors from feakin' pre-school through higher education are ruining the minds of our young people.

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You're funny.
Are you a character on South Park?

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By the way, I used to be liberal back in my college days

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Did you go to India and smoke dope, too? Is this Brother Jed I'm talking to?

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I believed all the crap I heard from my professors and the media.

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The engineers who put man on the moon also believed all the crap their professors taught them. IDIOTS.

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"If you're liberal when you're young, it shows you have a heart. If you're conservative when you're older, it shows you have a brain." Winston Churchhill

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That's great. And irrelevant. I don't really feel I have to tell you why.

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The fact that if we would use a bit of our energy pulling and supporting a football team, maybe the average salary for jobs in Louisiana increases?

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How much is my raise if LSU goes all the way this year?

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Liberal teachers and professors from freakin' pre-school through higher education are ruining the minds of our young people.

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Oh hell, you can't be serious. Look, I'm a registered Republican, voted for Bush twice and McCain this last time. I have a poli sci degree from LSU and every professor in that department is a Democrat (moderate to liberal). Did they "ruin my mind." No freakin way. What they did do is make me make damn sure my counter-arguments were well thought out and made me challenge my preconceptions. But professors have been and always will be more liberal than the general population. You have to be to waste that intelligence on not-profitable activity! It doesn't mean they are "ruining the minds of our young people."

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Your logic

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what logic? I've mostly been laughing at you. You're not worth logic.

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But professors have been and always will be more liberal than the general population. You have to be to waste that intelligence on not-profitable activity!

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exactly.

If conservatives want more conservatives in academia, all they have to do is up the salary of professors to $10,000,000 a year.