After reading yesterday’s “Runaway Athletic Budget” article, I was driven to a state of sincere anger. While I do agree with a few of the author’s observations, there is one concept that the writer is totally ignoring, which is tradition. He asked why we “pretend [we] can compete with enormous state university athletic programs like Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Boise State?” How about you look deeper into history, and you will see that Texas A&M and Oklahoma State were fellow members of the former Southwest Conference and serve as regional rivals. While those programs may be dramatically more successful, there is so much more appeal to one of these games than any former WAC conference game. I know the program boosters really got up whenever the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors came to town. Were you aware of the enormous payouts we get from playing these teams? Ever wonder why Middle Tennessee State plays at Florida, or Indiana State at Texas Tech? $$$. And quite frankly, it is the attendance from these contests that boosts our attendance average over the NCAA minimum of 15,000. For anyone who attended the East Carolina / Charleston Chief game (Slap Shot reference, naturally), can understand how desperate we are for any additional attendance.

SMU is trying to regain the image of being a nationally known program, and the first step to accomplishing this was our recent move to Conference USA, which was a great start. Conference USA has a yearly television contract with ESPN, which translates to national exposure and recognition (yes, the nation saw us defeat the then No. 20 TCU Horned Frogs). We lose teams such as Fresno State, San Jose State and Boise State, and gain more regional rivals such as Tulane and Houston. Do you think that lowers travel fares at all?

You question Phil Bennett’s salary of $500,000 a year. What you fail to recognize is that price is simply the national standard these days. Florida coach Urban Meyer gets paid four times that amount in only his fifth year as a head coach. If anything, Bennett is underpaid. Do you think it’s easy being the head coach of a once proud team, whose 41-5-1 record from ’81-’84 rivals the current streak of Southern Cal? A team that ranks No. 8 in the state , (behind Texas, North Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, Houston, Texas Tech, TCU and, arguably, Rice), which also happens to be the most football-hungry state in the union? We are a school with high academic standards and one of the smallest recruiting budgets in the nation, and just happened to have our entire football program cancelled a few years back. Not many coaches would even consider it, to be honest.

At one point, you cited that “drafting funds away from the athletics would eventually weaken the program to an even greater extent than it is now.” What you have to realize is that, despite being sports performed at an amateur status, college athletics are a product with a huge business side that keeps some schools afloat. Those “millions of dollars … misallocated to athletics” are the dollars responsible for merely putting the team on the field, not enhancing their experience. You want to talk about wasted SMU dollars, talk about paying extra dollars to get the Mustang logo and “horse power” put on the new dumbbells at the Dedman Center.

It may be a sad fact, but what else do old alums sit around and talk about in the cigar room? Last week’s Meadows Symphony performance? The Week of Integrity? No, they talk about the Hail Mary to beat UAB. They talk about the Pony Express. They talk about tradition. They don’t talk about academics. In fact, it was these alums that raised the majority of the money for Ford Stadium, not your tuition money. Sports are simply the best and easiest source of national exposure, so it is completely understandable why we pump so much money into it. It’s easy to criticize this budget now, when we stand at 2-5, but if we stood at 5-2 with wins over TCU and A&M, no one would be complaining.

All it takes is one season to turn everything around. In 1979, Miami voted to drop down to D1-AA status but decided to give it one more shot. By 1983, it won a national title and have been the most successful football program in the last quarter century. TCU was overwhelmed with the admission onslaught following its impressive 11-1 season two years ago, so much that it had to raise their academic standards. Even Vanderbilt, who doesn’t even have an athletic department, has seen a dramatic rise in interest this fall, largely due to its recent 4-0 start on the football field. Success breeds success, and we are on the verge of that turnaround season.

Any way you look at it, SMU’s academics are going to be just fine. Academic standards have already been raised since I was a first-year, and from my understanding, many of our majors have received major upgrades in recent years. I’m confident that my degree, and yours, as well, will hold more precedence five years from now than I ever anticipated. I personally think that academics here have made far greater strides than the athletic program. But, why can’t we be both a successful academic institution as well as an athletic one? Other private schools, such as Miami, Boston College, Notre Dame, Stanford, Southern Cal, Duke and Wake Forest, have found success and in tougher conferences, at that. Look at the bright side, at least the athletic department’s money isn’t being allocated to the players’ pockets again.

Toby Atkins is a senior advertising major. He may be contacted at [email protected].