I love college football. When I was 13, my father took me to see the Georgia Bulldogs play. Later, in the late '90s, I was in grad school at the University of Florida, and I went to every home game the year the Gators won the National Championship and Danny Wuerffel won the Heisman.
Once, I even painted my face orange and blue. I've grown up, and I still love college football, and I even wrote a Pindaric sestina last year about Michael Crabtree, despite the fact that these elite "scholar/athletes" get special treatment above the rest of the common students.
Of course, not every one of them is a Reggie Bush. Yet, are they special enough that Texas Tech University should wink at a $200,000 loss after the Red Raiders Gator Bowl trip? Texas Tech deputy athletic director Bobby Gleason puts a spin on the deficit, calling it "this advertising dollar."
What exactly are we advertising? A botched economics department? I know it's not a popular stance to take, criticizing anything football in Texas, but I didn't choose popularity when I decided I'd be a poet.
Like it or not - and some do seem to like it - we're all affected negatively by the waste perpetrated by the football program on this past year's Gator Bowl, and we ought to hold Mike Leach's staff and certain administrators accountable for this negligence. Is this just the cost of doing business? What kind of business model is this? Apparently, Texas Tech sent 750 Red Raiders to Jacksonville to watch or play in the game.
I know. Is that all? No wonder the stands were so empty. Yes, we're the red and the black, but why not find a way to end up in the black? To travel light? Maybe even by bus, to a closer bowl? I guess I live in a different world.
At poetry readings, we're always troubled when it comes to the reception afterwards: United brand soft drinks or real Cokes? Generic chips or Tostitos? I'm certainly not doubting Leach's genius for the game.
I love his nutty ways: doing the weather, talking smack to the refs, acting like he reads lots of books on pirates. But next time, maybe send only 300 people to the game and they all eat sack lunches like the rest of us, then athletics could give a $200,000 endowment for scholarships to the English department. Or even to economics.
Maybe that wouldn't generate much press, but it might generate an education.
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