Questioning Temple's proposed football stadium

(Note: The dollar amounts cited in this story were acquired from official documents from the schools in question, including operating budgets, EADA disclosure forms, 990 forms, legislative reports, and board of trustee meeting materials.)

THE QUESTION that we never seem to ask is why. We'll wonder whether Temple can continue to win football games without an on-campus stadium similar to those of its opponents. We'll wonder whether any of the university's students or alumni would object to the opportunity to eat, drink and cheer together six Saturdays a year. We'll wonder whether the school might begin to attract potential students who view a competitive on-campus football environment as a prerequisite.

What we won't ask, what we never ask, is why a college such as Temple University - or any college, really - should care about these things. We won't ask how a Top 25 ranking or a visit from ESPN helps fulfill the mission of an institution of higher learning, or why such an institution should spend any of its resources pursuing them, particularly when those resources are financed in large part by taxpayer and student debt.

Oh, I know what Temple is telling us, because it is the same thing that all public universities tell their communities when they start to grease the skids for a project that, deep down inside, they know is not in the interest of the public good. They tell us that tuition dollars won't be used, that all capital invested will be of a specific type, that all money spent will have been offered up for one specific use by private individuals who would otherwise turn around and donate their money elsewhere. There is no opportunity cost here, they will say. Besides, the thing will end up paying for itself. And then some. Just you watch.

It is what they said at the University of Connecticut and the University of Akron and the University of Central Florida and pretty much every other university that has built a football stadium in recent years. You can choose to believe them. But know this: The numbers say something entirely different. At best, they say something that is contrary to the well-meaning intentions of these schools. At worst, we are being taken for suckers, a new ground floor in the multilevel marketing scheme that this country's education-industrial complex has become.

Let's start with Akron, because it is a more or less representative situation, a public university located in a post-industrial downtown with a historically lackluster football program that used the buzz generated from its first-ever bowl berth in 2005 to start the push for a new on-campus stadium to replace its aging digs 7 miles away. When the school unveiled its plans for the new facility in 2007, InfoCision Stadium was a $55 million project that would be funded exclusively by private donations and stadium revenues. When it hosted its first game in 2009, it was a $62 million project funded primarily by student tuition and fees.

Every year, Akron pays $5.3 million in mortgage payments and upkeep costs on the stadium. In its first four years of operation, the stadium generated an average of $1.8 million in revenue, leaving an annual deficit of $3.5 million that the school paid for out of its general fund, which includes all of the tuition and fees it collected from students.

Now, let's think this through. If the school pays for the stadium deficit out of its general fund, and the general fund includes all tuition dollars, and the deficit equates to 0.95 percent of the general fund (which it does), then a student who graduates with $23,300 in debt - the average amount for an Akron grad, per a 2012 study - will have accumulated $221.35 of that debt to pay for a football stadium.

That might not sound like a lot, but head over to Temple and ask a random selection of students whether they'll pledge $221.35 toward the construction of a stadium, or whether they'd rather be forced to find something else to do with their Saturdays in the fifth-largest city in the country.

Meanwhile, much of that money is flowing straight into the pockets of the people who work for these athletic departments, the people who convince us we need new stadiums.

In the first six years after the University of Central Florida opened its new stadium in 2007, athletic department wages and compensation rose by an average of 7.2 percent per year from a starting point of $9.6 million. By 2012-13, UCF athletic coaches, administrators and staff were earning $14.4 million, an increase of more than 50 percent from 2006-07.

During Akron's first four years in its new stadium, the stakeholders in its athletic department saw an increase in wages and compensation that averaged 7.9 percent per year. In the first four years of the stadium's operation, those stakeholders collected $34.5 million. In that same stretch, the department spent $27.8 million on its athletes in the form of operating expenses.

Did we mention that the entire athletic department generated a total of $21.2 million in revenue during that stretch? That's right, in 2012-13, a department that generated $5.4 million in revenue paid out $9.3 million in salaries and other compensation, while spending $7.3 million on operating expenses.

Guess who funds the difference? Students, in the form of tuition dollars and fees, and the banks and governments who underwrite their loans. And that's in addition to a $3.5 million annual hit on the new stadium, which this year is attracting the lowest attendance in the MAC.

This is the worst kind of capitalism, the kind that true capitalists should despise, because it causes people to question the legitimacy of the guys doing it the right way. These schools end up financing their capital using other people's credit and collateral, with no potential return on investment for the people who actually assume the risk and pay the cost. It's like a guy asking you to borrow a dollar from someone so he can play the lottery. Even if he hits, you still owe your friend a dollar. All you get is the intrinsic value of watching the nightly drawing and rooting for the guy to strike it rich.

Intrinsic value. That is the kind of term we'll hear from the people charged with selling us on the wisdom of these projects. It's the kind of term people use when they have run out of legitimate terms, when they are deep in the throes of rationalization and desperate for you to nod and move along. It is a laughable term, particularly when you consider just how concrete the value is to them personally.

The simple truth is these stadiums do not pay for themselves. The University of Connecticut's Rentschler Field has run a deficit in each of the last three years. Minnesota is getting $10.25 million per year from the state, plus $25 per year per student in fees (in addition to $86 million in private donations and $35 million via naming rights).

In September 2014, Colorado State acknowledged that it had raised only $50 million of the $110 million it said it would need from private donations to move ahead with its new stadium. Five months later, it received approval from the state Legislature to borrow $220 million to build the stadium. It plans on covering the annual debt payment with stadium revenues.

Who will eventually shoulder the cost? It's a question we never ask, because debt is part of our lives, and so is sports. This is how institutional complexes operate, not only bureaucracies.

I suspect most of the agents of these universities believe in what they are selling. It is not they who are corrupt, but the system in which they operate. It is a system that, like all institutions, self selects until it is composed entirely of ardent believers, people who truly believe in things like the intrinsic value of propagating the system. But belief is a tool of the powerful, and they should never forget that.

In July, the same board of trustees that approved Akron's stadium eight years ago voted to eliminate 213 jobs, 161 via layoff, to eliminate a $60 million budget shortfall. The decision followed a proposed $50-per-credit-hour fee increase that eventually was rescinded in the face of pressure from students, faculty and legislators.

The school also eliminated its baseball program. If that sounds familiar, you might want to start asking the right question.

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