At a time of escalating tuition costs and dwindling state and federal support, $90,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to in higher education.
Still, $90,000 could pay a year’s salary for two assistant professors in, say, English.
Invested properly, $90,000 could fund a full-ride scholarship for an honors undergraduate at a public institution.
It could buy 30 personal computers at $3,000 apiece.
It could endow a faculty chair at many graduate schools.
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“That’s not chump change, I can tell you that,” said an official in one Big Ten president’s office.
But down at Texas Christian University, they’re hoping $90,000 will buy something else this autumn.
A Heisman Trophy.
That’s right. A stiff-arming little sculpture.
Funny thing is, the Ft. Worth school already has one Heisman. Quarterback Davey O’Brien won it in 1938. But the Horned Frogs apparently want a bookend. So a bunch of private donors have ponied up an estimated 90 grand to promote tailback LaDainian Tomlinson’s campaign for the most prestigious individual award in sports.
For their money, the LT-for-2000 campaign consists primarily of a snazzy Web site and assorted bells and whistles. Not a nickel goes to LT himself, but let’s not open that pay-for-play can of worms here.
If this seems slightly out of whack, as opposed to out of the WAC, listen to TCU coach Dennis Franchione, who has tried to put the scheme in a nobler context. According to Franchione, this isn’t about buying a trophy. It’s about fostering name recognition for TCU–the university, not the football team, although at times it is difficult to tell them apart.
“We looked at the campaign as an advancement of TCU in its entirety, not just TCU football or athletics,” Franchione told USA Today. “This committee put together a 21st Century attack, or approach, to this. We’re not trying to buy anything. I think sometimes people misunderstand.”
Count me among them. I was laboring under the impression that football has nothing to do with academics. At TCU, that apparently is the case. In the most recent NCAA report, only 45 percent of Horned Frog football players graduated over a four-year period. That left them a touchdown short of the national rate, 52 percent, and well below the university-wide 61 percent.
Quick thought: Maybe that $90,000 could go to tutors. On second thought, never mind. The University of Minnesota already tried that approach, regrettably.
This isn’t meant to be a knock on Tomlinson, a likable kid who unfailingly thanks his offensive linemen for their help. Nor is it a criticism of the TCU sports publicity office, which is simply looking for an edge.
Because TCU plays in the second-rate Western Athletic Conference and is rarely on national television, the team’s publicists have to work harder to put Tomlinson’s name in front of the 900-plus Heisman voters.
Horned Frogs football spokesman Trey Carmichael, who heads the publicity portion of the campaign, said the $90,000 estimate has been overblown. “That’s a little outrageous,” he said. “We’ve bought billboards with LaDainian on them, but we’d buy billboards to promote TCU football even if he wasn’t on the team. This is an opportunity for us to get TCU’s name out there.”
Along with the standard publicity stuff, TCU has distributed a laudatory letter from alumnus Dan Jenkins, the author and legendary college football writer.
There’s some irony here, for Jenkins used to have great fun skewering grandiose Heisman campaigns.
“The weight that publicity men have had on the selection is most likely exaggerated,” Jenkins wrote years ago in Sports Illustrated. “But this doesn’t keep the campus flacks from thinking they sometimes win for their boys.”
Indeed, there’s nothing wrong with TCU promoting its guy for the Heisman. But somehow this extravagance would seem far less obnoxious if a Horned Frogs booster had said, “We’re going to spend what we want, and if y’all don’t like it y’all can kiss mah purple …”
At least then no one would be pretending it has anything to do with education.