A Tale of Two Universities

[Turbine]

Authement shut down gymnastics (trampoline) wrestling and weightlifting.

[Cajunrunner]

I suspect that he also reduced school support by the amount that a sport raised in outside contributions; though my only "proof" there is that Coach Lancon prefered that donors made in kind gifts rather than monetary donations.

I've heard that as well, which would make sense why Coach Lancon would ask outright for things like new hurdles (I remember that being a thing when I was there), rather than the money to purchase them. How fricking sad is that?

A Track & Field program that was actually known on a national level, and perennial conference champs for a decade, had to ask for a donor not for money, but to outright go purchase equipment instead.

I know there were many Cajuns diehards who were ____ed at Coach Girard for going down the road for LSU, and there was a bit of back and forth once she got there, but she had to deal with the same ____. She obviously got tired of it and went get a payday. We were lucky to hang on to Coach Robe back then.

[VObserver]

I remember helping raise money for hurdles and for a 90 meter javelin. There may have also been donations of other equipment like vaulting poles, shot puts or disci.

Coach Lancon was Robe before Robe got here. He was a great coach and a better man.

[Gumbeaux]

My avatar approves this post.

[CajunRebel]

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… "

I was thinking about this post:


In a way, all of our presidents were 'the best'… because each served at different times, faced different problems, and created progress in different ways. Even Lethar Frazar, a Huey Long hack, tripled the number of buildings on campus in his brief 3 years.

People here still bash Authément. When Ray became president, we were broke.* But he had a crazy idea, that we would grow into a serious university. And he had an iron will. He focused our ridiculous resources on computer science, then biology, and later engineering, disciplines where we had some talent, and which had great upsides for research funding. He also built our first research park (LSU copied us); a University Art Museum (LSU copied us); he, with the help of Al Lamson greatly expanded the Foundation (LSU copied us); he pioneered new PhDs; he created the UL Press; he created Francophone Studies; he hired Ernest Gaines, and created numerous other things that are contributing to our current successes.

To do this, Ray underfed athletics. There just wasn't enough to go around. But don't miss the fact that he didn't starve athletics. Also, don't overlook the fact that he took the risk on going 1A in 1978, while all of our rivals went 1AA. To my mind, these decisions imply that he understood that athletics would be important... but they wouldn't be first. Athletics would have to wait their turn.

I have been arguing with you knuckleheads for years: Which comes first, academics or athletics? Some of you obviously majored in tap-dancing at UL, because you keep coming back with, "You can have both."

No. No you can't. You can't have both, not all the time.

Because Ars longa, ludo brevis est.† Nobody wins at sports all the time, teams go from being world-beaters to also-rans, sometimes in a single year. In contrast, strong academics have a very long half-life… and success in one area bleeds over from college to college, and everything rises. By investing in academics first, you create a solid foundation for athletics.

So athletics has to come later.

Behold Louisiana Tech. I read the new post about Tech downgrading athletics, and my first thought was, That will never fly politically.

But then I realized, it may not matter. Tech may be in so much financial trouble that they have no choice.

Some of you have argued loudly, "Winning solves all problems." I suspect Dan Reneau, Tech's president from 1987 to 2013, agreed with you. Because while Ray was doggedly bending our finances to build academics, and holding the line and underfunding athletics, Reneau did the opposite. He invested Tech's money in athletics, and underfed academics. For a while, he succeeded: Tech kept taking big risks, and they kept winning.

Until they didn't.

Now the chickens have come to roost. The money they bet on athletics didn't pay off in the long run. Winning didn't solve all of Tech's problems. It's not clear that winning solved any of their problems, not in the long-run.

Because after Reneau left, things started to slide. Now Tech is in deep financial straits, their athletics have declined, and their once-proud engineering program is also in disarray. And the fact that there is even a rumor of cutting Tech athletics, suggests that the deficit may be too much for even Jim Davison to cover.

Tech borrowed against their solid academics, believing that winning in sports would get it all back later. We see what happened. Tech bet wrong.

And now, tough choices will have to be made up in Ruston.

*I have recently come across information that a lot of UL's troubles of the 1960's and 1970's may have been the result of our decision to desegregate in 1954… including our lack of political support. Desegregation may have also cost us the New Iberia airfield; and it is even possible that the NCAA death penalty resulted from the same decision.

†The quote is Ars longa, vita brevis est: Art is long, life is short. I substituted 'ludo', 'the game.' As for 'ars,' you will remember that in the 1950's all of SLI was 'liberal arts,' sciences included. The Ray P. Authément College of Sciences was only created 50 years ago. So by 'ars,' I am suggesting all academics.

I think everyone here is missing the bigger story. Over the past 30 years the State of Louisiana has slashed the hell out of higher ed funding and I don't think people understand just how bad it has gotten. I found this graph that shows a 38% reduction from 2008-2018. However, I'm pretty sure there were major cuts before 2008, and I know for a fact that they are cutting another $250 million next year. So the actual level of cuts since Authement and Reneau started is far higher than 38%.



With cuts like these, why is anyone surprised that so many Louisiana universities are having such deep financial struggles?

Back in the day, a Louisiana university could thrive by just focusing on education. Today, that's not good enough. You have to be in the revenue generation business as well. If you can't generate revenue, you're going to decline as an institution.

Thankfully, we are better positioned to do this than most other La universities. We have NIRC and other research revenue, good real estate that is ripe for development, lots of student housing, etc. These cuts will weaken us, but they won't devastate us. Most other La schools won't be so lucky.

To my knowledge, Tech is going to be one of the universities that doesn't have that revenue to fall back on. It is hard to make money in a small town. I think this is why Tech is so worried about their athletic future. G5 athletics will always need to be subsidized. Tech might not have the resources to subsidize it AND keep the lights on.

[HoustonCajun]

I think everyone here is missing the bigger story. Over the past 30 years the State of Louisiana has slashed the hell out of higher ed funding and I don't think people understand just how bad it has gotten. I found this graph that shows a 38% reduction from 2008-2018. However, I'm pretty sure there were major cuts before 2008, and I know for a fact that they are cutting another $250 million next year. So the actual level of cuts since Authement and Reneau started is far higher than 38%.



With cuts like these, why is anyone surprised that so many Louisiana universities are having such deep financial struggles?

Back in the day, a Louisiana university could thrive by just focusing on education. Today, that's not good enough. You have to be in the revenue generation business as well. If you can't generate revenue, you're going to decline as an institution.

Thankfully, we are better positioned to do this than most other La universities. We have NIRC and other research revenue, good real estate that is ripe for development, lots of student housing, etc. These cuts will weaken us, but they won't devastate us. Most other La schools won't be so lucky.

To my knowledge, Tech is going to be one of the universities that doesn't have that revenue to fall back on. It is hard to make money in a small town. I think this is why Tech is so worried about their athletic future. G5 athletics will always need to be subsidized. Tech might not have the resources to subsidize it AND keep the lights on.

"so many Louisiana universities". Therein lies the problem that needs to be addressed!

[Policarp]

Are the cuts.....true cuts? or as politicians do it. Cut = A decrease in the annual increase

[CajunRebel]

Are the cuts.....true cuts? or as politicians do it. Cut = A decrease in the annual increase

True cuts.

[ZoomZoom]

Politicians will never shutter a university in Louisiana. Nor will they merge, since the higher up the food chain, those folks tend to come out of the monster politics is. Most know the skeletons.

[SlickRick]

I HOPE UL isn’t this stupid.

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