As trying as these times are at LSU, all is well at the heart of the campus, Tiger Stadium. With the football team getting the fall semester off to a roaring start, the financial crisis that’s gripping the school and demoralizing its faculty is not felt in the athletics department. Performance on the field is exceeded only by the bottom line, where revenues have tripled over 15 years. The 88-year-old shrine underwent a facelift in the off-season, and investment in the prime asset continues with plans afoot to increase seating to 100,000 and to add 65 suites, rentals for which were snapped up in two and a half days, at $69,000 per. The embarrassment of riches among the ruins inspired university leaders to come up with a unique revenue-sharing plan by which the athletics department will commit $7.2 million annually for five years to assist academics and, further, will evenly split sports surpluses above $5 million per year. University leaders extolled the enlightened arrangement with accolades usually reserved for Billy Cannon’s runback. Yet the afterglow faded when political commentator and LSU alum C.B. Forgotston, with cynicism born of experience, declared the new deal meaningless because it would enable the Jindal administration to further reduce state funding to the university by that much or more, as early as the midyear budget cuts expected for December. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
