Sports Thread 1.0

I feel like I’m walking on egg shells with this but I think it falls under Angry’s provision about the virus’s impact on sports: The University of British Columbia announced today that its classes will only be on-line/distance etc. in the fall. (A couple other Canadian universities, the same.) UBC could be the first domino to fall on the west coast. no classes/no sports.

I was of the opinion that we might not have a college football season (at least in the Pac 12) but I’ve changed my mind for reasons that might strike some as counter-intuitive initially.

I was checking out a recent Bloomberg Opinion piece on “the coming crash in higher education.” Well worth it if someone here can establish a link. Anyway, Covid is going to demolish the funding model higher ed has survived on for the last generation–out of state tuition and its international student variant. I have written about that in some of those earlier and fevered threads. Those folks pay 3-3.5x the in-state rate, which is how public higher ed has survived for at least 20 years in the wake of state budget cutbacks, perhaps 30-40 years.
In the post-Covid world parents will be keeping what’s called high-school direct students close to home. As the Bloomberg writer says (paraphrasing), if you live in New Jersey, why send your kid to Colorado when you can get by on the cheap by sending them to Rutgers. Put another way, Oregon kids will be going to Oregon schools, Washington too, etc., you get the picture. A financial bloodbath, compounded by the inevitable state appropriations cut besides.

Here, according to my theory, is where football comes in. Anyone paying close attention to the enrollment scene in higher ed knows that admissions officers are postponing decision dates, down payments for dorms etc., fearing that if they demand a commitment now the students won’t sign up. Yields everywhere, even the Ivies, are in trouble. What to do? Create some campus excitement; provide an attractant for on-campus residency and the attendance tuition, in state and and out of state–football. I can see enrollment officers and their presidents besieging Governors offices later this spring and early summer telling them that they have to have on campus education and co-curricular activities to keep the institutions afloat.

Perhaps someone with tech skills can find it and post a link, but there’s an interesting story up on New York Magazine about “The Coming Disruption in Higher Education.” Author predicting a double digit drop in enrollment and registration this fall. The elite universities and big state schools will do alright–at least in the short term; they’ll just tap their wait lists. But farther down the food chain (e.g. the kid who normally would have gone to Western Oregon because he couldn’t get into OSU will now find room in Corvallis, but WOU takes the hit unless it can poach a prospect from, say, Linfield) it’s going to get ugly.

The other interesting aspect of the article is the future of big high-tech/academic marriages, like Apple/Stanford, Amazon/MIT, etc. Interesting read.

I’ve had my disagreements with Angry this spring but he’s been right on the big things: Riley was over-rated and higher ed as we’ve known it is history. Tenure–gone; sweetheart teaching loads–gone; athletics in jeopardy because the parent institutions will be in financial distress.