Elf Sternberg

Umm… gromm, you kinda have it backwards.

At the high-school level, the local property taxes fund everything. They fund the science program. They fund Quiz Bowl. They fund the sports teams.

So, in some (many?) school districts in the US, the football team drains money from the science programs.


At the university level … HoooooooBoy.

The university I attended for grad school has a large, lavishly-funded football team. It was an open-secret that research grant-money paid for that team. The physics buildings has a tower that overlooks the football stadium. The department lounge was at the top floor. "Our grant money at work," the physics department faculty used to ruefully say as they looked out the physics lounge windows at the stadium. They'd then point out that the football teams luxurious, private gym was built by skimming money off of the physics+chemistry+biology+other research grants.

And this was also a huge bone of contention even between the football team and the rest of the sports teams at that university. (Not that those other sports teams were that much better. While I was there, an infamous incident occurred involving the women's basketball team. You see, there was an arena that doubled as a lecture hall. The first-year Spanish finals were taking place in one such arena, and the women's basketball team kicked them out in the middle of the final so that they could practice.)



So, no. It's the intellectual pursuits which have funded the university sports. Sports in the US not only outranks intellectual pursuits, and is more popular than intellectual pursuits, it sucks the life out of intellectual pursuits.