I found it fascinating that on the same day that UNCC Board of Trustees Chair and long-time QC iron lady Ruth Shaw tried one more time to explain UNCC’s football bid to the Uptown paper by ripping apart a previous editorial on the subject, editorial page editor Taylor Batten was lavishing praise on departing editorial scribe Mary Schulken. These past few years Schulken has proven singularly uneducatable on the topic, repeatedly throwing up a false choice between “academics” and “athletics.”
Shaw labeled this choice “ridiculous” and the numbers back her up. Specifically, as we’ve pointed out for years now, UNCC is at a crossroads with its athletic efforts. It can either hike student fees to pay for Division I basketball in the A10 or hike student fees and pass the hat among alumni to jump start a football program. The football program would then take on the role of primary revenue-producer among UNCC athletics — provided it is run properly with an eye toward revenue-producing “cannon fodder” games, at least at first. Other institutions, notably some of UNCC’s old Sun Belt foes, have certainly made it work.
We tried repeatedly to explain this intra-athletics choice to Schulken via email, but evidently could not pierce the academics vs. athletics dichotomy in her mind. This is when one doubts the efficacy of rational argument.
I really do not care if UNCC plays football or not. To me the institution has a long-standing imbalance in over-funding athletics as compared to institutional foot-print and alumni support. At this point UNCC could either A) Reel that in or B) Double-down with football. The status quo is not sustainable and hence is not a choice. Schulken refused to see this reality and that tells me she similarly refuses to let the facts get in the way of her opinions on other matters greater and smaller.
As a result, this community is much better off without her dubious skills as an opinion writer.
