My point in the criticism of spending 1 million on the scoreboard was based primarily in the message it sends, that among a world of needs (and all schools do), by putting that money into a fancy scoreboard it sends a message about priorities, about what is important, and that was my point. I have no influence over the decision process, I don’t expect the university to respond to me (that is up to their constituents, students, faculty, alumini, etc), all I was doing was criticizing it in the context of what I see as warped priorities when it comes to sports at all levels shrug.
"And schools with successful football teams tend to make their alumni happy, who turn around and give more to the annual fund. " That actually isn’t true, there have been studies of giving, and what they found out is the alumni happy with the football team or whatnot tend to give back to the sports programs as boosters, and that successful sports programs don’t generate alumni giving for a new library or science center or an endowed chair or scholarships (pretty much the same thing with giving and legacy admits to elite schools). Some football programs have given back some of the revenue they get to academics and the like, though I’ll also point out if you look at how big the revenue stream is for these schools (Alabama between tv contracts, merchandising and the like, was up near 90 million a year), the amount that creeps across elsewhere is minimal. There was discussion here in NJ about Rutgers, about them becoming part of the Big 10 conference and sharing in tv revenue (somewhere over 20 million a year), and how that would free up funding from the general budget that would otherwise go towards the program, since then that idea seems to have disappeared…