Minster: Arrowhead provides more seats, less soul
Change in venue hurts local businesses and loyal fans
Friday, November 9th, 2007
The year’s biggest game should give local businesses a large boost in sales, but thanks to KU Athletics’ decisions, that won’t be the case. The “home” football game against Missouri will be at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, devastating local restaurants, shops, and bars while padding the athletic corporation’s take. Lawrence’s most important game in years, between the undefeated Jayhawks and the one-loss Tigers, will not even be played in this state.
What is good for the University is having the game of the season here in Lawrence. Economist David Darling analyzed the impact to local businesses when the decision was made to replace the Missouri game with an early-season non-conference home game. He estimated the loss to Kansas’s economy to be $713,000. This estimate was completed well before the season began. In light of the Jayhawks’ success, it must be revised upward.
I’ve written in this space of the football team being overrated at a time when their victories were against the football equivalents of culinary and dog obedience schools. Since that time, KU has decisive wins against quality opponents, showing their undefeated record is no fluke. KU Athletics has taken something away from loyal fans and businesses and sold it in a cynical ploy for additional money.
I wouldn’t write so frequently of athletic corporation greed if it didn’t make so many greedy decisions. Of course, supporters of the decision to move the game will say there was no way of knowing this game would be so pivotal. But a rivalry game is always pivotal. Last year’s mediocre team faced MU with bowl aspirations. Even if KU were winless, the rivalry game would be a chance to save face at the expense of the most-hated opponent.
This decision is a virtually direct transfer from local businesses to the athletic department. Some support the decision, saying those businesses have profited from KU Athletics in the past and now they can pay some back. But I don’t think Lew Perkins go into Set’em Up Jack’s and say, “Nice place you got; it’d be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
Some say the decision to move the game is acceptable because it also moves next season’s contest from Columbia to Kansas City. But if trading a home-and-away match-up for two neutral site games is preferable, why doesn’t KU move all its games? Away games are the price to pay for home games, and home games are the reason to have sports teams. Unlike Texas vs. Oklahoma or Florida vs. Georgia, this game is not a traditional neutral site game, so lost revenue is not hypothetical.
Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony has said, “A good football program helps all other sports and the university at large,” but a Wall Street Journal article casts doubt on that assessment. While Ohio’s public education spending has been shrinking, Ohio State’s athletics budget has been booming, to the point where Ohio State now spends on each athlete three times what it spends on other undergraduates, even though their athletes graduate at a lower rate than other students.
The town profits from the school, but the school benefits from the town. How much athletic revenue would exist without a town full of KU fans? Athletics makes money from loyal fans, and then repays that loyalty by raising prices, instituting a seating points system, and moving the most important home football game of the year to another city.
The decision to move the Missouri game away from Lawrence seems, in all aspects, to have been made solely from the perspective of athletic revenue, not in consideration of what would be best for the university and the community.
Minster is a Lawrence senior in economics.
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