UT article on the European trip

#3
#3
Learning the language:


Just read an article on CNN that said the summer tourist season in Europe is already a madhouse crowd-wise, especially in Italy and Greece where the Lady Vols are headed. Hope they are ready for that. Also, UT Athletics must be spending a fortune on this trip; roundtrip airline tickets to Europe are averaging $1,100 apiece and hotel prices are outrageous. Train tickets prices are also sky high. I hope the Lady Vols enjoy this trip of a lifetime. I am envious of the sights and places they are going to see.
 
#4
#4
Just read an article on CNN that said the summer tourist season in Europe is already a madhouse crowd-wise, especially in Italy and Greece where the Lady Vols are headed. Hope they are ready for that. Also, UT Athletics must be spending a fortune on this trip; roundtrip airline tickets to Europe are averaging $1,100 apiece and hotel prices are outrageous. Train tickets prices are also sky high. I hope the Lady Vols enjoy this trip of a lifetime. I am envious of the sights and places they are going to see.
When one speaks of profit and loss by sports team, is this trip charged against the lady basketball budget? If so,,, they will surely be in the hole this season/year.
 
#5
#5
Just read an article on CNN that said the summer tourist season in Europe is already a madhouse crowd-wise, especially in Italy and Greece where the Lady Vols are headed. Hope they are ready for that. Also, UT Athletics must be spending a fortune on this trip; roundtrip airline tickets to Europe are averaging $1,100 apiece and hotel prices are outrageous. Train tickets prices are also sky high. I hope the Lady Vols enjoy this trip of a lifetime. I am envious of the sights and places they are going to see.
These trips aren’t the same as a normal trip…
 
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#6
#6
Just read an article on CNN that said the summer tourist season in Europe is already a madhouse crowd-wise, especially in Italy and Greece where the Lady Vols are headed. Hope they are ready for that. Also, UT Athletics must be spending a fortune on this trip; roundtrip airline tickets to Europe are averaging $1,100 apiece and hotel prices are outrageous. Train tickets prices are also sky high. I hope the Lady Vols enjoy this trip of a lifetime. I am envious of the sights and places they are going to see.


I'm happy the team is getting a trip to Europe--and that's all it is, a nice boondoggle as the basketball games are complete throwaways, a pretend reason for the trip---but I'm also annoyed that non-revenue sports and student-athletes are treated as second-class citizens at major universities, simply because their sports don't earn money. They get far fewer scholarships, which is total BS and should be changed by the NCAA. Hell, basketball has more schyolarships than soccer and softball---which each have FAR bigger teams and thus far bigger rosters. It's nonsense. And basketball doesn't need 15 full scholarships. That is a waste of money. 12 full schollies for basketball would be plenty.

Also, non-scholarship sports--tennis, soccer, volleyball, swimming, rowing--tend to be big at America's prestigious universities, and so when we excel at those sports we put ourselves in very good university company--which is very good for the reputation of a state university. And they are played by very high-quality student-athletes---smart, very well-rounded young people. I'm not saying that basketball players aren't smart and well-rounded, but let's just say you don't get a lot of kinesiology majors with non-revenue players, typically. And they're not getting NIL bribe money. State universities tend to be volume universities--a large quantity of students when I, as a UT grad, would like to see UT become more of a quality academic institution with a reputation like that of Michigan. State land-grant universities will also have large student bodies and a huge number of in-state students--that's their charge--but their very size makes it hard to really ratchet up the academic reputation in various disciplines. (As an aside, what's interesting about the fan bases for football and basketball at major-college universities, especially in the South, is that a very large portion of the fans--I'm guessing it's at least half--didn't attend or graduate from the college. If you go to a Notre Dame or Michigan fan forum like this, most of those on the board are ND or Michigan grads. That's not the case here.)

Here's another example of what I'm talking about. Matt Kredich is one of the best swimming coaches in America. Both of our swim teams were top 10 nationally last year. The women's swim team has won two SEC titles in the last four years. It the the best women's sports program at UT. Mike White just gave Kredich a well-deserved contract extension---but with only an embarrassingly measly $10,000 raise in base pay. Are you kidding? What a freakin' insult. Harper, in contrast, had achieved essentially nothing--oh, wait: she "coached" three first-round draft picks recruited by her predecessor---and has gotten major pay bumps and is now making about $1 million a year. (And what's our best men's sports program? Tennis.)

Of course I realize it's all about the cash in major-college athletics, and so football and, to a far lesser degree, basketball will always rule. But as a fan of non-revenue sports, I do lament the second-class treatment they get. Though I graduated from UT, I also went on to get a master's at an Ivy League school, and as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate that old-school Ivy sports/life ethic--and the non-revenue sports that largely go with it--as opposed to the increasingly crass and corrupt ethic of major-college football and basketball. (Basketball fan: "We just have to start offering more NIL (bribe) money to prospects to improve our recruiting!") Their part of America's big-time entertainment firmament--and there is no changing that--while non-revenue sports remain more in the human-development sphere. (America could use a lot more intelligent development among its people.) But then going to Europe will broaden the development of our basketball players, so that's a good thing and now I've come full circle.
 

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