The Tallahassee Democrat has an editorial today about the amount of money sent towards the FSU Football program and the lack of money spent on academics at FSU thanks to the Florida Legislature. I understand their point, but the logic of the editorial is horrible flawed.

Their points:

1. FSU Football gets X amount of dollars from the Boosters
2. FSU Academics doesn’t get that money from the Boosters / Alumni
3. FSU Academics isn’t getting that from the Florida Legislature either
4. Professors making $80,000 aren’t getting raises, so they leave for greener pastures
5. The only way to facilitate change is for everyone to push money towards FSU

The arguments are horribly, horribly flawed.

First and foremost the football team has nothing to do with FSU Academics. I bet that most people don’t worry about donating back to FSU Academic programs because of a few reasons. Either they don’t use their degree so they don’t donate back to a program that hasn’t done much for their career, they choose to put their charity money elsewhere or as in my case their program disappeared (MIS was merged into Management at the College of Business). The football team is completely outside of whether or not FSU Academics are up to par.

Looking at point #4, it’s rather hard for me to be sympathetic to professors that make $80,000 here in Tallahassee. Boo hoo for you. One of my favorite professor in college could be considered a victim of the brain drain at FSU. He chose to leave for the University of Michigan after I graduated. He chose to make more money there, but he also chose to live in Ann Arbor and deal with those winters. Money isn’t the only reason to teach or not teach at FSU. It’s only part of a problem.

On top of that, the Democrat’s editorial missed the biggest point in it’s argument that FSU Academics needs money like FSU Football. Look at the numbers folks, FSU Football does MORE with LESS than most highly competitive Division I football teams in the nation. While $1.8 million to Jimbo Fisher might look like a lot, it’s a whole lot less than Urban Meyer gets paid at the University of Florida. Sure we can all argue about HOW the Booster money is spent at FSU and if it could be used more efficiently, but the point still remains that it’s unrelated to the Academic money.

If change is to happen at FSU, there needs to be a clear vision of the future. That is the ultimate problem. There’s been growth at FSU for the last decade, expansion, divergent ideas, but as an alumnus I have no idea about the final vision for FSU. Perhaps the new FSU president will accomplish that. Maybe FSU is happy being a good undergraduate value, or maybe it wants to be a new Harvard. I have no idea, but it’s up to the “Academics” there to figure that out, promote that to the alumni and push the local and state government to help them achieve that vision. Bringing the FSU Athletic programs into the argument wastes time and energy that would be better used getting Tallahassee to accept controlled growth (much like Austin, TX) and move on from being a solely government based economy. Leadership is always the problem at most institutions and companies, if FSU solves that THEN we can have a “better” FSU.