Quote:
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501
Because this isn't a corporation. This is an institution with an $8.5B economic impact and the lifeblood of the state of Pennsylvania. It encourages Pennsylvania residents to stay in state, provides affordable tuition to good students, and then turns those students into future employed Americans who usually stay in-state to keep Pennsylvania's economy running. It is a public institution that, if it fails, Pennsylvania residents will have to foot the bill for the $8.5B per year (and beyond) of loss of impact.
The stats are below:
http://econimpact.psu.edu/
So you're telling the state of Pennsylvania that they should suck it up and lose $8.5B? You're telling students that they should just move to a new state or suck it up and pay a higher tuition rate because they were dumb enough to live in a state that funded Penn State? You're going to tell 44,000 faculty members and staff that they should get their walking papers, not because the university folded, but because some overzealous regulator decided they needed to go above and beyond the necessary punishment?
This isn't just a football program that happens to have a school attached to it. This is a critical piece to the Pennsylvania economy. |
Can we overstate the importance of penn state football any more? Maybe the whole state of Pennsylvania would fail. And if that happened, would the united states be far behind?
Back in reality, there is zero reason to think that losing football for a few years would appreciably affect the well being of the school as a whole. Some reality checks: are there thriving schools without football programs? Of course. Are there thriving schools that have football programs that are lucky to break even or at best turn an insignificant profit? Oh my god yes. In fact that probably describes the majority. Finally, did SMU curl up and die? Of course not.