Pajiba

The ESPN thing would probably help the entire school because better sports facilities lead to an increase in interest and attendance which leads to more revenue which can be used to fix up other parts of the school. Hell, it's better than nothing.

I'm not sure I agree, Kballs. Attendance might increase a bit when the renovated facility opens, but it will lag as people grow less excited about it. Then, the draw will only be whatever is put on the floor, and not all schools have rabid athletic fandoms that turn out in the hundreds for every game. Worse, even if they do turn out in droves, ticket sales for basketball, volleyball and other gym-sports do not come close to covering the budget for an athletic department, much less the budget shortfalls faced by public schools. This is true even when you add in ticket sales from football, which is even more expensive, program-wise. In fact, the cost of maintaining and insuring the new equipment and facilities may wind up costing even more money.

Sorry bro. Trickle down economics didn't work for the 80s; it's not a long term solution for improving education in this country either.

The reality is that athletic departments are a drain on school resources at the high school level, and usually the college level too, with few exceptions. You can make money from sports in the following ways:

*Have a lucrative network television contract
*Be a part of a league or conference with negotiated revenue sharing (like the NFL or the Big Ten, for example)
*Have a huge stadium for which you can sell expensive tickets, parking spaces, and refreshments to a large and well-moneyed body of fans
*Apparel and advertising revenue (varies, but you can bet that high schools don't get to cash in on this at the rate that colleges and the pros do)

The bottom line is that unless you are a business like the NFL, or you are practically the minor league for the NFL (Ohio State, Florida, Alabama, USC), or if you run your department really efficiently somehow (extremely rare!), your football/basketball/other team is likely going to be in the red unless the school or someone else steps up to pay for it. Kudos, I guess, to ESPN for stepping up, but it sure seems like that money could be more useful elsewhere, like the science department or the library.

The reality is that a lot of students graduating high school these days have no clue about exercise, nutrition, and healthy eating. Providing for a physical education program in high school allows schools to teach kids about ways to live healthier, leading to less stress, less sickness, and overall greater happiness and productivity.

With the obesity epidemic facing North American lately, there's no time like the present to promote phys. ed. You can't be a very effective scientist if you're dead of heart disease by the time you're 40.

You tell em Craig! You tell em how to spend their money! You tell em how dumb it is for a SPORTS network to contribute money for SPORTS!

It's not bitching to point out the staggering cost of football and basketball programs to already underfunded schools.

There's physical education, and then there's the money spent on athletics. I think phys. ed. can certainly be done better. Phys. ed. classes at my school tended to involve about 15 minutes of actual activity and another 30 of just sitting around gossiping. I was very glad to have marching band count for phys. ed. so I could avoid the tedium, and I think I actually got a whole lot more out of that experience because a. I enjoyed it, and b. the time commitment was greater, and c. I actually cared about it, and it was not something I was being forced to do. I developed much better healthy habits from doing something I loved than I ever did in a phys. ed. class. I think the phys. ed. challenge is getting kids to care about their bodies and their health at an age where you feel young and invincible but have tons of other pressing problems. I don't think the classes my peers experienced really answered that challenge.

Also, if schools are that concerned about nutrition (and they should be), they should maybe rethink the ridiculous number of vending machines in their cafeterias, as well as the food being served. I'm not sure how things are now, but I graduated high school in 2003, and my school had two lunch lines: the traditional "hot lunch", which was mostly for the free lunch kids and was not particularly appetizing, and the "snack bar" line, which offered nachos, chicken wings, french fries, and hamburgers, as well as a particularly disgusting "Flamin' Hot" cheeto-nacho abomination covered in nacho cheese, chili and sour cream.

Anyway, the whole point is that there are probably better things to spend that kind of money on, and I wish some large philanthropically-minded organization would do this kind of thing for science departments and the fine arts. If you wanted to improve physical education, schools could try implementing new program alternatives, like yoga, martial arts, extracurricular hiking and outdoor activities, etc. It might even cost less than the gym renovation. The question for ESPN ought to be, what are we setting out to do here? Are we going to improve the lives and health of all the students at this school, or just focus on the athletes, or do we even care, so long as we get our hour-long photo op and positive publicity each week?

Anyway. Yeah. Rant over. Sorry, everyone.

I don't really expect ESPN to read this and go "Holy crap, Mrcreosote disapproves of our plan to improve dilapidated athletic facilites. I guess we'd better stop then!" I still think it's not the best use of funds. And I feel I have the right to complain about this. This isn't Russia Danny. Is this Russia?

"Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except for date rapes and AIDS jokes."

...and THIS is why I love the comments section of these articles so much. Well played, Mrcreosote, well played.

I think all of you with sports as an integral part of your younger lives are knee-jerking back on what the others are saying. The concern I took from their words is that when you do charitable things, you have to look beyond the initial feel good. If you buy someone a sweet present, but the long-term costs and upkeep of it are too much for them to bear, it wasn't a good present.

I think I remember when MTV first started doing large contests, they didn't even think about taxes and other stuff, and these kids were being left with things they couldn't afford.

Sports can be important, and this might help, but I don't think it's unfair to question how these projects will affect a school over time.