Sorta Sweet

Last week, I went to the Sugar Bowl with my dad in New Orleans.  It was played at the Superdome and Alabama took quite a beating.  It was disappointing watching our team lose to Utah, but Utah played a very good game and we just didn't.  Next year, baby.  Next year.  

If you're in the 20-28 age range, the Superdome in NOLA is probably a symbol to you for something very different than football victories and defeats.  It was strange being in there post-Katrina.  I'd been there before Katrina and thought it looked like a fun spaceship, but now it just represents natural destruction and human fallibility.  

It's tempting, of course, to look at it with a negative slant after losing a big football game inside the dome.  The rest of New Orleans, however, is looking great to me.  Neighborhoods that were obviously devastated are coming back, and Bourbon street sure hasn't lost its "charm."  I have a soft spot for cities on the water, and NOLA is one of them.  I'm definitely in its corner, and I hope it continues to rebuild, both physically and otherwise.    

Give 'em Hell, Alabama!

Or a shotgun blast to the chest: Football Dispute Leaves 2 Dead. [AL Press-Register].

College Sports Statistics

Interesting things I learned in Sports Law today:

• Between 16 and 19 out of the roughly 4,200 universities in the country have athletic departments that make a profit in the average year.
  
• U of Alabama is one of those universities.
  

In the first statistic, the 16-19 schools whose athletic departments actually make money were evaluated after receiving a supplement from the main university. Remember in college how, even if you weren't an athlete, they charged you a $50 sports fee? Those 16-19 schools make money after receiving that $50 from every student enrolled in the college. I wonder what that number would be without those fees.

The teacher of this class is Professor Marsh, and here's an excerpt from his bio on the law school site:

[Professor Marsh] was the Faculty Athletic Representative at Alabama from 1996 to 2003, has served on numerous NCAA and Southeastern Conference Committees, and is a past the Chair of the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. He has been a member of the Committee on Infractions since 1999.

Anyway, the point is that Prof. Marsh knows what he's talking about. I took a Sports Ethics class in college, and we talked about how few athletic departments actually make money each year. In the south during football season, with a hundred thousand people crowding Tuscaloosa each weekend, it's pretty hard to believe that athletic departments don't generally make money. Whenever I've raised that point, I've been shouted down by people who've seen the spectacle of big time college football, and I understand why it's hard to believe.

Fortunately, Alabama is one of the schools that operates at a profit. But the statistics are surprising, eh?