Re: Additional Funding for Athletics: Should We?

By now, there has been a lot of discussion on the topic of athletic funding, how far behind we are, what is needed to close the gap, and that discussion can be found in several threads recently. Estimates are that we would need to up the commitment from the planned $144M to around $200M, which means that about $56M that was not previously earmarked for athletics would need to be transferred from other programs.

My question is: should we? Everybody recognizes that the money involved in major college football is completely out of whack these days. Who knows if this is a permanent state, or if the system is going to collapse under its own weight. Are we chasing an ever-increasing bar to competitiveness? Do we think that this additional funding will put us back to levels we enjoyed under Beamer? And most importantly, is it worth the opportunity cost lost from funding other education programs?

I'm really not sure. I go back and forth in my mind on this. Is major college athletics such a core part of the university that VT should sacrifice part of its academic pursuits in order to fund it? 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I would have been 100% behind it, but with the recent changes to major college football, I'm no longer so sure.

Thoughts?