A Tale of Two Universities

[CajunFun]

"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:

Oh, and Dr. Savoie will go down as at least our 2nd best president. Hell, he might even surpass Dr. Stephens before he is done.

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.

[ZoomZoom]

And now they have a hack president in Ruston. His tenure at NWST wasn’t that great, something some Rustonians fear.

If Ruston needs votes to survive athletically, anything short of a med school here the answer should be no. And they laughed at NLU selling out.

But then again, the attempted takeover of LSUS was a misstep they never recovered from.

[zeppelincajun]

These discussions are always fun. Although I can’t help but see this as a little disingenuous. Any longterm benefits of athletics are consistently written off as anecdotal. However, now that we are talking about the supposed demise of an athletic department and its effect on a university we are discussing a rumor generated from basically barroom conversation as having enough validity to draw conclusions.

[Boomer]

These discussions are always fun. Although I can’t help but see this as a little disingenuous. Any longterm benefits of athletics are consistently written off as anecdotal. However, now that we are talking about the supposed demise of an athletic department and its effect on a university we are discussing a rumor generated from basically barroom conversation as having enough validity to draw conclusions.

……Don’t Doubt Doc Fun nor his Latin language uses….how bad are these $ cuts gonna be?

[CajunFun]

These discussions are always fun. Although I can’t help but see this as a little disingenuous. Any longterm benefits of athletics are consistently written off as anecdotal. However, now that we are talking about the supposed demise of an athletic department and its effect on a university we are discussing a rumor generated from basically barroom conversation as having enough validity to draw conclusions.

You make good points.

So give us some examples about the long-term effect of athletics... of a university that put athletics first, and academics later.

I will give you the first that comes to my mind: Notre Dame. One of their presidents said, "We're going to build a university that the football team can be proud of." But they're a private school, in a very unusual situation.

There are a few schools who— quite cynically— built up athletics, with the express goal of investing it in substantial academic growth.

But for every one of those we might find, there are a dozen who did it the other way 'round. The latter, of course, are hard to find, because no one hears from them anymore...

[CajunNation]

†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.

Semper ubi sub ubi

[60swerethebest]

From our engineering timeline on our website. Pretty much as Doc says.

In 1920, Dr. Edwin L. Stephens, president of the university, organized departments that would eventually develop into colleges. The new engineering department was part of the College of Liberal Arts.

Between 1930 and 1940, the addition of faculty members and course offerings enabled SLI to form four branches of engineering: chemical, civil, electrical and mechanical engineering.

In 1940, the College of Engineering was officially designated, and Parker Hall was completed in 1940 for engineering and industrial arts classrooms. It was named after John M. Parker, a former governor of Louisiana who initiated a severance tax to benefit education in the state.

The graphic is a sketch representing engineering from the University's 1956 L’Acadien Yearbook.

Dean: George Griffin Hughes, B.S., M.E.
Department of Engineering Faculty:
Professor of Electrical Engineering: Hiram Russel Mason, B.E.E., M.S., E.E.
Professor of Civil Engineering: Carl Harold Kindig, B.S., M.C.E., D.C.E.
Associate Professor of Applied Mechanics: William J. Starr, B.S., M.E., M.S.E.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering

[Boomer]

You make good points.

So give us some examples about the long-term effect of athletics... of a university that put athletics first, and academics later.

I will give you the first that comes to my mind: Notre Dame. One of their presidents said, "We're going to build a university that the football team can be proud of." But they're a private school, in a very unusual situation.

There are a few schools who— quite cynically— built up athletics, with the express goal of investing it in substantial academic growth.

But for every one of those we might find, there are a dozen who did it the other way 'round. The latter, of course, are hard to find, because no one hears from them anymore...

…..Someone through the years mentioned that we were the most Catholic public school in the country….anybody know the validity? At onetime maybe the highest % of French speaking students and faculty?

[USL]

"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.

100% Agree. Academics 1st. I'd rather pay students that bring in research money than athletes who cost us money. Athletics were never profitable for us in the past and will only be more costly in the future.

[ZoomZoom]

Sure miss the old Tech troll BlueDog (or something like that) God rest his soul. LCF use to drive that mutt crazy.

[CajunFun]

…..Someone through the years mentioned that we were the most Catholic public school in the country….anybody know the validity? At onetime maybe the highest % of French speaking students and faculty?

I dunno. But back when we played Notre Dame in the NIT, someone looked down at the ND bench and saw two bishops and a cardinal. He figured we were cooked.

I thought we should have brought a banner:

Notre Dame: 4,329 Catholics
USL: 11,419 Catholics

That would've shook 'em up.

[Big Buds]

Sure miss the old Tech troll BlueDog (or something like that) God rest his soul. LCF use to drive that mutt crazy.

I believe it was BLUDAWG. Can’t remember…but I hope he is having an awful weekend.