Picture this. It's the year 2005. Ohio University has concluded that its decision to give Ohio Athletics a $500,000 budget increase was ludicrous, and maybe it would be better to just cut athletics all together.
After all, if you are going to keep operating on a budget that ranks so low nationally in percentage of institutional support for athletics, you might as well just get rid of the program altogether and save some money, right? And it's not like athletics really means that much anyway.
So now not only are there no varsity athletics, but academic programs are cut too. You might not care about how the basketball team does or that we even have a basketball team, but basically, your best buddy down the hall majoring in sports industry, sports administration, athletic training or anything else related to athletics, is gone. You can't get the best training for those without varsity teams.
My fellow sports writers, the young budding studs that they are, now also have to transfer. Same with anyone else interested in sports journalism. There's no way I would have considered a school without athletics; it's not much fun trying to gain experience in sportswriting when the only sports to cover are intramural and club, which are great but don't provide very impressive clips for us.
Then there's the Marching 110 -let's ax that because there's no football games in which it can play. That's a huge hit. And West Green is pretty much wiped out too.
Alumni couldn't care less about returning to their alma mater. Where's the school pride? Uptown businesses take a hit because there are no big game day crowds on which to thrive. Worst of all, no reason to hate Miami. No Muck Fiami shirts, either. No Bobcats. And what will you do with your sibs on that Saturday afternoon in February?
Bird Arena explodes because people looking for some kind of sports fix every once in a while cram into club hockey games, even more so than usual without much of a rival on campus. Out-of-state recruiting drops because several non-Ohio residents are athletes, and no, not all athletes are on scholarship.
Even this paper would suffer from the loss of the athletics department's advertising for games and the loss of arguably some of the best copy in The Post. Circulation would drop because, let's face it, some people read only the sports pages while skimming the rest, if that.
And finally, the university would just crash. It's a very slippery slope I tell you.
(OK, so some of that was ridiculous, but I don't think some people realize how much a university really benefits from athletics. By the way, the university wouldn't necessarily even save money -it would likely lose some.)
In my four years at OU, we might not have had the greatest sporting events to witness, but I wouldn't even be here without those teams, and maybe you or your buddy down the hall wouldn't either.
If OU is going to continue to be a top-notch university, it needs to treat even the so-called add-ons like they matter. Otherwise, it's a limp leg.
This university could thrive off an investment in something like athletics, and the $500,000 increase is just a start. Here's to hoping that in five years when I come back to see my brother in a cap and gown, people will have learned the value of athletics.
That is if he decides our athletics matter enough for him to want to come here.
-Scheffel is a senior journalism major who will transfer to Louisiana State for finals week after going there this past weekend and seeing how cool it treats athletics.
Send her an e-mail at laurel.scheffel@ohiou.edu
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Laurel Scheffel
