Budget Figures are NOT disturbing!!!

[Quality Is Job 1]

Some have suggested that instead of spending $XX million on a new arena, SLU should spend a fraction of that on a state-of-the-art practice facility and continue to play the games off campus (at Savvis, or occasionally at Family Arena or the Ed). Here's why I don't like that idea. It will cost too much.

Saint Louis University isn't really shelling out its own money to build the proposed arena. Rather, local basketball fans and SLU supporters are funding the project. Not only would it most likely help the team improve its product, but they'd also get to go to the place they helped build and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Are they going to spend their money, even only a fraction of it, to build a facility they will probably never enter? I doubt it. That means the university would have to fund the facility. They don't bring in enough revenue to do it; therefore, the students would then have to fund it, and even they wouldn't benefit from the facility, so it wouldn't be fair to them.

Before you argue that people have made contributions to other campus facilities that they may never enter or benefit from, like a hospital or research facility, let me counter that there's a difference between contributing to something that will benefit the students and/or the community than to paying for something only the team would benefit from.

[AJ]

It looks like the good Doctor has really stimulated some interesting "classroom" discussion on this one ! I've been part of the great arena debate for nearly 20 years so let me through in my thoughts. First, I think I agree with virtually every point the Dr. makes, except the final conclusion.

I think we have two choices at this point:(1) build it; (2) go Div.II in BB. Here's why: in the mid-1980's I started hearing from Grawer's assistants about how tough it was to recruit with the West Pine Gym as the last stop in the tour. I heard stories about out-of-town recruits who they thought they had signed only to lose them after they saw West Pine. Let's face it, most high schools have better practice/training gyms.

I think Biondi finally realized he needed to do something in the early 90's. His solution was to make a deal with the Kiel Partners to support the new Kiel in exchange for some priority in scheduling, behind the Blues. It never happened because the Partners got in too deep financially and had to make it up with a lot of one-time events, concerts, etc. Guess who got the short end of the stick ! Spoon finally got frustated because he couldn't schedule decent teams witnout some Saturday night dates. He also got sick of trying to keep the place full - 10,000 in a decent crowd most places - but at our place it looks 2/3rds empty. It was of several factors that led to Spoon's early departure as well as Romar's. When Romar left SLU got told by Kevin Stallings that he had no interest in the job because of the gym situation. I think that is what finally convinced Biondi that he had to go for it or give up his dream of every being a top-50 program.

I vote for the new arena. The Dr. is right, the plan has risks. On the other hand, doing nothing means in a few years we will be watching SLU play UMSL and Missouri Southern at West Pine.

[Taj79]

... but Wash U., Case Western, Cal-Poly, MIT, Rose-Hulman, Johns Hopkins and some of the other "brainiac" schools that are out there. While the Doc raises some good points -- which should be raised and brought in to any logical discussion -- the bottom line will be that there is always some risk in any endeavor that is undertaken. The risk taker that siezes the day seems to succeed more times than the risk taker that quivers in the corner and waits for the decision to be made for him/her.

Every teacher I have been associated with ... and I have been in positions with both high schools and post-secondary schools ... will push for his or her particualr program. The trig teacher who believes with all her soul that math is the essence of life. The science teacher who is fanatical about physical chemistry. the art teacher who knows without a doubt that art makes the world go around. Color within the lines or out? I don't have the answers as to what is right but believe that the passion for whatever is good.

I had a meeting once at Rutgers with a member of their faculty who was on our National Research Council advisory group. You don't get any larger than the NRC. I remember with glee his dissertation to us on the state of Rutgers as he looked out his campus window down into the stadium where the Rutger football team was practicing. All he could bemoan was the fact that there were 100 guys out there getting free educations while producing high win seasons of 2 or 3. What was that doing for the good of the University, he mused. Frankly, I don't know but it seems that it would be included as part of the collegiate experience.

To this day, I sometime wonder what it would be like to have gone to a football-possible school. And not a all-around major leaguer like Notre Dame or Floria State. I've been to games at Lehigh, Dayton, Bill & Mary, Towson, Kutztown, and others. The atmosphere is electric.

The Doc has his points. I think we have others. I want the decision to go one way, others in a different way. I think I know what I would do if I were the bottom line guy. I'll wait out the others for this particular decision because its not my call. I will say though that more people here on the East Coast talk to me in March when the Bills make the NCAAs. A little less if we're in the NIT. None have ever asked me about underground lecture halls or the carpeted walls of Tegler Aud.

[DoctorB]

folks;

Several people are all over my "conclusions." but they misread my posts, I think. what are my conclusions?

I never said do not build the arena. It is a done deal anyway and so being against it now makes little sense.

My main point: talk about basketball WITHIN THE CONFINES OF WHAT A GOOD UNIVERSITY SHOULD ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE. For the faculty members, it is the only way we can look at any unit of the school. Athletics is just one unit of the school. Yes it adds excitement. Personally I love it. so far SLU has done a pretty fair job of keeping things in a good frame of reference. But our national obsession for sports has made it so central to college culture that it has become a bit unbalanced.

Never forget that it is a non-profit unit, and that those guys out there are just students, many of them teenagers. Chill out a little bit--I am around college students all the time and they tend to be unreliable, immature, forgetful, self-centered, and they bring to campus a much bigger sense of self-entitlement and inflated self-esteem than we ever did 20 years ago. They are just kids, in essence. We may be expecting too much out of them, sometimes--similarly, we may be expecting too much out of sports in general in this culture--too much in terms of good feelings and the peace and justice we so much yearn to find in our lives. As such, sports has become a sort of therapeutic device for many Americans. (including, sometimes, me!)

Enrollment, and selectivity: well, those figures sound impressive. does it really improve selectivity? If so, how would one prove that assertion? Sounds dubious to me. If we go to the final 4 and 1000 more kids apply that is great. How many of them would really improve the quality of the student body? After all these are kids choosing SLU because of a basketball team??

Many have said "I will give to sports but would never give a plug nickel to the school." Sorry guys but that attitude stinks. Just an opinion. But that is an indication that our values are somewhat skewed. This should not surprise anyone--the values of American culture at this time are horribly skewed.

PS--when things get way out of control and we produce uneducated, self-centered "competitive" shark-athletes, the logical end-result is someone like a Terrell Owens.

peace, brothers

[Box and Won]

I've often wondered the same thing about what it would be like to go to a school that had football. It was the only thing missing from my college experience, and the only sport that I wish we still had. It would have been fun to attend the SLU hockey games back in the 70's, but there is just nothing that compares to football.

Schools like Villanova and Dayton can pull it off - I wish we had never disbanded our program.

[kwyjibo]

I agree that an on-campus practice facility would have been a better project at this time. It could have been used to build a better base from which to launch an arena campaign in another dozen years or so (about when there is at least a rational argument that Kielvis has seen better days).

For the record, UMass-Dartmouth is not even close to Ivy League. It is a small public university with a modest academic rep. My point was that people go to all sorts of universities and colleges and beauty schools and are proud. Near all of the people I know are proud independent of sports success. My wife is a UMass-Dartmouth grad and she is quite proud (and she does not want to go with me when I suggest we go see UMass-Dartmouth play football).

I also apologize for being snippy in my previous post.

[Box and Won]

No worries! In my post, I thought you were referring to the Ivy League Dartmouth in New Hampshire - didn't know there was a UMASS-Dartmouth.

[kwyjibo]

I don't doubt that building an arena (or any project) brings in different donors or money but, to repeat, the point is that it does absorb SOME money that would go to other projects. It is precisely those other projects that would serve the university community better.

For the record my opposition to the arena is about the scale of the project and NOT that I have different subjective preferences (I would favor large abstract kinetic sculpture personally). The arena is mucho expensive and because it is so expensive that even small fractions of that money can be spent better to meet the needs of the broad university community. I further argue that the money could be better spent even to meet athletic needs.

Nearly every alleged benefit of the arena is either easily refuted (home court advantage) or not unique to building an arena (improved athletic success, excitement, goodwill). The fact that building an arena has automagically been linked to instant success, unmatched recruiting power, unparalleled joys, and goodwill only goes to show how deeply the snakeoil has been drunk. But eventually that snakeoil has to come out the other end and its gonna be messy. After the arena starts losing money each year the argument soon becomes, "Hey we spent all that money, we need to throw more money (operating and renovations) at it in order to save ourselves a lot of embarrassment."

Thank you very much for getting the Arch joke.

[slu72]

definitely seems to be the key sport at the large state universities. For whatever the reason, school pride, the party atmosphere, the spectacle of seeing +90,000 fans in school colors it definitely is the gem of college sports. That said, I also think a solid winning hoops program can do the same for a school, albeit on a smaller scale. Just look at Duke, UNC, KY for examples. I know in Lexington and Durham football games are just warmups for the hoops season. Duke and KY could drop football tomorrow and most supporters would not give a hoot. We've just got to build a winning tradition at SLU, like Gonzaga and X, winning cures all ills.

[billiken_roy]

doctorb said, "Many have said "I will give to sports but would never give a plug nickel to the school." Sorry guys but that attitude stinks. Just an opinion. But that is an indication that our values are somewhat skewed. This should not surprise anyone--the values of American culture at this time are horribly skewed."

i too tend to DONATE an excessive percentage more to billiken basketball than saint louis university in general (less current tuition and room and board).

why? many reasons. first, i am one of the admitted billiken zealots that you apparently dont like. after my family then my career, i admit that nothing garners my passion more than the billikens. where does the academic aspect of saint louis university the school rank in my passions? wrongly, somewhere above "days of our lives" but below the st louis zoo.

why is that? well a number of reasons. while i truly value the education i rec'd while at saint louis university almost 25 years ago, i have never gotten over the lack of hand holding and assistance that slu did not give me while going to slu (while completing my senior internship at WIBV Radio, only then did i find out the chances of getting a job out of college in the metro st louis area writing and producing radio or tv commercials was slim if any. shouldnt some advisor have told me that?). maybe i was in the wrong department, but i got little if any career or academic guideance while a student and upon graduation got zero placement assistance.

while i am sure being able to type "1982 B.A. St Louis University" on my resume, has assisted me throughout life. Plus, surely the teachings of the likes of Avis Meyer and Paul Brockhaus have given me knowledge, style and grace to get me through the average dinner party, the truth is, if i had to pick one or the other, i am not sure if the Dale Carnegie course hasnt given me more to be successful in my career than my degree from SLU.

ok, fast forward 20 plus years later. just this week, i had four interactions with saint louis university. first, margo, of the billiken club, calls me to discuss my options for donating my annual pitance to slu athletics. not to solicit, but to help me understand how to best donate the money to not only help slu athletics but to maximize my points as a booster. she spent what i consider an extremely generous amount of time to deal with my questions. and to insure i had it clear when going home to present to the budget master, she followed that up with an e-mail. top notch hand holding imo.

now on to my nightmare with my son. theo is going to be a sophomore at slu this fall. back in may, we turned in all the applicable paperwork to the slu financial aid office for them to sign on one line to enact his student loan for the 2005-2006 year. basically they just need to sign one line on the us bank form that confirms he will be a student and indeed needs at least the amount applied for tuition and room and board for next year. nothing that couldnt be accomplished in less than a minute. bring the student's account up on the computer, see he is registered and owe's X amount of dollars. sign the form and fold and put in the postage paid envelope to us bank. well last week we followed up for the 6th time since then if it had been completed yet due to the fact that us bank has sent us 6 reminders already. everytime we call slu, we basically get the impression we are really bothering them and they will only get to it when they are ready to get to it.

interaction number 3 - my wife as a nurse at slu hospital, is entitled to tuition reimbursement for any dependents at saint louis university. when we got our statement of account last week, it showed the expected tuition reimbursement wrong. i told her to call them and get it straightened out. she litterally was on hold over an hour (she actually baked a cake while holding). when the very indignant lady came back to the phone, anita reminded her she had been on hold for an hour to resolve. the lady made no effort to apologize or explain why, just very curtly asked what anita wanted. anita went into the problem. the lady puts her on hold again, comes back and tells her she's right. (duh we know that's why we called). anita asks if she will send out a new statement with the corrected info. she says no, just change it on our records and send the check. hangs up.

interaction number 4 - my son was on campus buying some of his books yesterday. he had taken along a form from our car insurer asking for a represenative from the school to sign off saying that last semester theo had at least a 3.0 gpa. this form is worth a small fortune to us with him being a single male under the age of 25. he heads to Dubourg hall to get what i assumed would be a ten second interaction. there he was met by regina, queen of the insurance forms. regina said that she would not sign the form because she doesnt sign forms based on the last semester. she bases it on cumlative gpa. and thanks to theo's fall chemistry grade, that would put it slightly below that mark. theo tried to show her on the form where it said "immediately preceding semester". she refused to even look at the form and told him she does her job how she wants. and all but kicked him out of the room.

theo then got his academic advisor to sign the form. still why was he treated as such? i phoned her supervisor and told him about the interaction. his response, "fax me the form so i can see it for myself". i.e. they just cant believe our insurance company is only concerned with the immediately preceding semester. when i asked why queen regina had to act the way she did? her supervisor totally defended her actions because "she has a lot going on".

now judging from above, tell me again why i should support the school and ignore the athletic department?

[billiken_roy]

slu72 said, "the party atmosphere, the spectacle of seeing +90,000 fans in school colors it definitely is the gem of college sports."

there are only 6 colleges that averaged 90,000 fans per game last year. plus keep in mind, we are talking about 6 or 7 games a year. here is the top 118 schools that played college football and their attendance records. the list is definitely bottom heavy imo.

2004

Rk School G Total Average

1 Michigan 6 666,149 111,025

2 Tennessee 7 746,507 106,644

3 Ohio State 6 629,257 104,876

4 Penn State 6 618,665 103,111

5 Georgia 6 556,476 92,746

6 LSU 7 638,462 91,209

7 Florida 6 530,453 88,409

8 Southern California 6 511,373 85,229

9 Oklahoma 6 507,189 84,532

10 Texas 6 498,566 83,094

11 Auburn 7 581,597 83,085

12 Florida State 6 497,047 82,841

13 Wisconsin 6 494,209 82,368

14 Alabama 7 573,092 81,870

15 Notre Dame 6 484,770 80,795

16 South Carolina 6 482,200 80,367

17 Clemson 6 478,000 79,667

18 Nebraska 6 466,153 77,692

19 Texas A&M 6 446,988 74,498

20 Michigan State 6 441,613 73,602

21 Iowa 6 422,382 70,397

22 Arkansas 6 409,275 68,213

23 Virginia Tech 7 455,805 65,115

24 Washington 6 388,423 64,737

25 California 5 320,095 64,019

26 Purdue 6 381,292 63,549

27 Arizona State 6 375,846 62,641

28 Kentucky 6 374,002 62,334

29 Virginia 6 368,963 61,494

30 UCLA 6 363,092 60,515

31 Missouri 6 357,424 59,571

32 Miami (Florida) 6 354,803 59,134

33 Brigham Young 6 350,849 58,475

34 Mississippi 6 350,237 58,373

35 Oregon 6 348,352 58,059

36 West Virginia 6 339,269 56,545

37 North Carolina State 6 337,200 56,200

38 Texas Tech 5 264,116 52,823

39 North Carolina 6 314,750 52,458

40 Maryland 6 308,463 51,411

41 Arizona 7 350,774 50,111

42 Illinois 7 340,381 48,626

43 Kansas State 7 338,833 48,405

44 Colorado 6 287,368 47,895

45 Minnesota 6 285,438 47,573

46 Georgia Tech 6 280,902 46,817

47 Oklahoma State 6 280,832 46,805

48 Utah 6 264,670 44,112

49 Mississippi State 7 306,545 43,792

50 Boston College 5 215,952 43,190

51 Pittsburgh 6 249,599 41,600

52 Iowa State 6 249,106 41,518

53 UTEP 6 247,256 41,209

54 Memphis 5 205,874 41,175

55 Kansas 6 246,399 41,067

56 Louisville 5 202,657 40,531

57 Fresno State 5 198,885 39,777

58 Connecticut 7 275,129 39,304

59 Air Force 7 266,302 38,043

60 New Mexico 5 186,408 37,282

61 Syracuse 5 185,341 37,068

62 Hawaii 8 294,404 36,801

63 Oregon State 5 181,672 36,334

64 San Diego State 5 179,976 35,995

65 Stanford 6 215,650 35,942

66 Washington State 4 139,531 34,883

67 Army 5 159,816 31,963

68 Navy 6 186,099 31,017

69 Rutgers 6 185,966 30,994

70 Wake Forest 6 184,575 30,763

71 East Carolina 5 153,418 30,684

72 Baylor 6 183,518 30,586

73 Boise State 7 213,493 30,499

74 TCU 6 176,477 29,413

75 Southern Mississippi 5 144,821 28,964

76 Vanderbilt 6 170,832 28,472

77 Northwestern 6 170,449 28,408

78 Indiana 5 141,887 28,377

79 Colorado State 6 163,776 27,296

80 South Florida 6 162,361 27,060

81 Northern Illinois 5 135,260 27,052

82 Marshall 5 129,664 25,933

83 Toledo 5 120,124 24,025

84 Tulane 6 136,976 22,829

85 Duke 5 112,524 22,505

86 UNLV 5 109,352 21,870

87 Louisiana-Lafayette 5 107,006 21,401

88 Cincinnati 5 106,275 21,255

89 Troy 5 106,140 21,228

90 Houston 5 105,834 21,167

91 Alabama-Birmingham 5 103,032 20,606

92 Central Florida 5 99,761 19,952

93 Utah State 4 78,000 19,500

94 New Mexico State 5 91,506 18,301

95 Southern Methodist 5 88,530 17,706

96 Louisiana Tech 5 87,740 17,548

97 Bowling Green 5 87,114 17,423

98 Nevada 6 103,882 17,314

99 Tulsa 6 101,434 16,906

100 Idaho 4 66,478 16,620

101 Temple 6 98,736 16,456

102 Wyoming 6 98,477 16,413

103 Western Michigan 5 79,983 15,997

104 Ohio 5 79,893 15,979

105 Akron 5 79,243 15,849

106 Rice 5 78,926 15,785

107 Miami (Ohio) 5 78,712 15,742

108 Arkansas State 4 61,307 15,327

109 North Texas 5 75,921 15,184

110 Central Michigan 5 75,216 15,043

111 Louisiana-Monroe 4 58,869 14,717

112 Eastern Michigan 5 71,937 14,387

113 Ball State 5 71,498 14,300

114 Middle Tennessee State 5 66,938 13,388

115 Kent State 5 64,384 12,877

116 Buffalo 5 60,923 12,185

117 Florida Atlantic 5 53,921 10,784

118 San Jose State 5 32,395 6,479

Source:NCAA.org

[DoctorB]

Roy, are you really trying to convince me about university incompetence and intransigence?? HA! I suppose you should now contact some North Koreans and try to convince them there may be something wrong with their government.

Read my Beer and Circus post. It is saying in different words precisely what you so eloquently are saying: there are some things desperately wrong with today's universities.

The fact that you do not want to give to SLU, in light of those complaints, supports perfectly my point. If a cause is deemed worthy and worthwhile, people get in line to give. If they perceive the cause to be ponderous, overbearing, bureaucratic nightmares, then they tend not to give. TA-DA!

[Box and Won]

90,000 or 30,000, it's a great sport and is often a fun experience. I've been to games at Mizzou and Northwestern, and they are an absolute blast.

[billiken_roy]

is that we shouldnt be giving to the arena, we should be giving to the general fund or specific accademic projects.

my point is that while the athletic dept is far from perfect, at least i typically get greeted with a smile and kind words. at least it appears they are trying with what they have to work with. thus worthy of my donation.

if other campus issues want my donations. then they need to change the way they treat me and i assume they treat everyone else. your cause is noble, but the internal problems i listed, dont seem to be ones that would be "cured" with more fundings unless it is fundings to send the offenders to that same dale carniege class that i spoke of before.

[MU88]

A few points. First, the 3 highest ranked Catholic schools in terms of academics are ND, BC and Georgetown. Funny, all of these schools have significantly higher athletic budgets than SLU. All three play football too. All three have higher endowments than SLU too. Further, all three have a much higher percentage of athletes on campus. In fact, SLU has one of the lowest percentage of student athletes in its student body of any Jesuit school. A school like Holy Cross or even Gonzaga has more athletes. Is there a connection? Maybe. BC has exploded as an academic and athletic school and it can be traced to one pass 25 years ago.

There are so many misconceptions about athletics on a college campus. The Ivy League schools are pretty good academics institutions. They also offer around 30 sports that all of their member play. Have these sports hurt their academic funding? One could make the argument that ther sports success in the early 1900s enhanced their academic reputations. It certainly has helped ND. Once considered an average school, ND has become an elite institution in the past 40 years.

Overall, if you look at the names on a list of the top academic schools in America, the same names will appear on the lists of the top athletic schools. The Big Ten, the Ivy League, UCLA, USC etc are all athletic powers too. In other words, successful universities are successful in all of their pursuits.

As for football, don't get me started. The foolishness and misinformation surrounding football and its costs are legendary. At a school like SLU, a $7 per credit hour fee would fund non-scholarship football, women's crew (which has 60-100 members)for Title IX reason and provide a surplus of over $1,000,000 for the school. And, that number does not include one cent of revenue from ticket sales or sponsorship. Add an endowment of $40 million and SLU could play 1-AA scholarship football and break even without selling 1 ticket. Provide a $75 million endowment with the student fee and SLU would be able to fund a 1-A team with 85 scholarships without a financial worry.

After crunching the numbers, there is absolutely no reason why SLU, Marquette and DePaul cannot start non-scholarship football if they wanted. Some people can debate the quality of non-scholarship football, but Harvard and Drake who are ranked in the lastest Street & Smith poll or Cornell, who made the 1-AA title game a couple of years ago, non-scholarship football can be of a very high quality. Further, for MU and SLU, it would add much need males to the student body and give the schools an opportunity for a real homecoming and way to get alums back on campus. More alums on campus means more donations which means improved academics. Silly me, I thought better academics was a worthwhile goal.

[billiken_roy]

mu88 said, "the 3 highest ranked Catholic schools in terms of academics are ND, BC and Georgetown. Funny, all of these schools have significantly higher athletic budgets than SLU. All three play football too. All three have higher endowments than SLU too."

not saying you are not accurate with the above statement, however, i attended a luncheon last fall where father biondi claimed only notre dame and boston college had larger endowments than slu. what is your source that also puts georgetown above slu?

[Box and Won]

Outside of the Ivy League, are there any other institutions that compete in football at the 1-AA level that don't offer scholarships? I have to think that the academic appeal of the Ivy League schools more than makes up for the lack of scholarships. Do the schools that compete in the Patriot League (Holy Cross, Lehigh, Bucknell, Fordham, G-Town, etc.) offer scholarships.

I think your recommendation is an interesting one. SLU vs. Marquette or DePaul or any other Catholic schools in football would be unbelievably cool to watch. Could we pull it off?

[Box and Won]

I think you're right about that, Roy. I seem to remember seeing that too. Georgetown is ranked ahead of us in the U.S. News academic rankings though.

[cheeseman]

Roy, I abhor ineffeciency and an inability to be sensitive to others you are dealing with. All people have to say is I am sorry you were on hold for an hour and a new form will be sent in the future but for now, I have made the change and there should not be any problems - by the way my name is ..... so if you have any problems please call me. The insurance thing was just stupid and your son getting his advisor to sign was smart and where he should go in the future. The supervisor is the problem - if he would have said I am sorry you had this experience and I will look into the matter - by the way could you fax me a copy of the form so I can see it and can make sure we can corectly address the matter in the future. As Pogo said - we have met the enemy and it is us!

[billiken_roy]

cheeseman, i will tell you this, the level of "meaness" in dubourg hall is horrible. if these people all hate their jobs this much, let them all go work elsewhere. but imo, unfortunately, the help we got from his advisor is the exception not the rule. for the amount of money saint louis university is asking a student to pay, you would think everyone we encounter would be treating us like we were royalty not scum. and that is how we get treated.

[billikendave]

Lehigh, Bucknell and most of the Patriot league has gone scholarship. Especially with the addition of Army and/or Navy. The league was originally designed to compete at Division 1 without scholarships and was designed to be true student athletes but actually has slowly become scholarship again. Mostly due to pressure from alumni and coaches/ADs whose jobs were on the line.

Great book by John Fienstein - The Last Amateurs - details the Patriot league basketball season a few years back. It also talks about scholarship v. non-scholarship and the disparity.

[SLUMS81]

Interesting discussion. An acquaintance of mine used to be a member of the sociology department at Washington U. The Sociology department was eliminated several years ago because it could not generate enough grant money/income to pay for its own bills. This was at a university with a multi-billion dollar tax-exempt endowment.

Can the SLU endowment fund be used to fund academic departments within the university? If the endowment is considered sacrosanct, then money contributed to the endowment fund is not going to benefit any one individual faculty member or department within the university.

Money contributed to the arena will produce a direct, tangible asset for the university. I do not know what my annual contribution to the SLU annual fund accomplishes.

[TheA_Bomb]

What I find amazing about B-Roy's post is that his wife baked a cake?!? Roy what is this thing you refer to as......baking? I seem to vaguely remember my mother doing when I was a lad.

On another note, two years ago I was at the Auburn v. Alabama Football game along w/ 87,000 other screaming fans in the stadium plus thousands more outside. People get there a week in advance as tailgating is allowed all over campus that weekend. As my uncle (an AU alumn) and I were at Toomer's Corner listening to my sister and the rest of the AU Band play the 3rd iteration of the Auburn Fight Song he said to me, "I know you went to a great school but I wish you wouldn't have missed out on this!" I was thinking it before he even said it as a lifetime AU fan I love it but I am not a Tiger like I am a Billiken and will never have that same experience. I had a great time at SLU. 10PM Sunday night Mass is unique, everyone hitting Bull Feathers w/ ashes on their head after Ash Wednesday Mass is surreal, the Pope coming to town was amazing but I will never have that experience of bigtime football. The closest we can get is bigtime basketball build an arena let us have our fun let us win! I'll be there to try to relive it as much as I can.

"War Eagle, fly down the field

Ever to conquer, never to yield.

War Eagle, fearless and true,

Fight on you orange and blue,

Go, Go, Go...

On to vict’ry, strike up the band.

Give ‘em hell, Give ‘em hell

Stand up and yell, Hey!

War Eagle, win for Auburn

Power of Dixie Land!"