Anyone else tired of sports in public schools?

The BBQ Pit
21

Bolding mine

LMAO!!!
OH MY GOD THAT IS SO FUCKING FUNNY!
Thank you for my laugh for the day. WHOOOO! I needed that.

You have no fucking clue do you? Not one.
I’m not surprised, when it comes to Forensics, many people have no idea the amount of funds it recquires. But what does it matter? It’s just a bunch of nerdy kids, too wimpy to play football, talking to each other. Right?
Fuck you assholes. All you assholes who believe that.
FUCK YOU!
You do not fucking KNOW what it’s FUCKING LIKE to hear your coach tell you, “We can’t compete in X, Y, and Z because we have no money.” You don’t know. And you do know why you don’t know? Because sports always have money!
Let’s break it down for a standard Speech event (Not Debate, just Individual events in the National Forensics League):
Entering fee: 200-350
Transportation: 500 for a bus. Or we can have about a dozen parents volunteer. Hmmm, lets say all dozen of those parents paid 20 for gas. That’s 240. So between 240-500.
Clothes: For the season, a 1-2 time cost for proper attire. The cheapest I can find runs around 50. So 50-100. Multiply that by at least 20 kids. So between 1000-2000.
Study Materials: This includes scripts, reference books, magazines, newspapers, and study guides. A set of speech books (to teach the beginners HOW to speak) can run at 40 a book. With at least 20 books that’s 800. The cost for the actual reference material is indeterminable. But it’s a not a small amount.

That’s 2090-3750 for just one competition. The average is 4 League competitions, so that’s not counting invitationals. Minus the fixed costs, it costs approximately 440-850/competition, or 1760-3400.
I don’t have a cite for this, this is how much it costs our school to participate in just one event. We also do Mock Trial (another 2000) Academic Decathalon (3000) and Model UN (2500).
That’s a grand total of $11250. That’s the bare minimum. That’s not even counting the Invitational tournaments we’d like to attend, or if we progress pass the first rounds. (We usually always do)
The district pays for Academic Decathalon, and 1/2 of Mock Trial. The rest is up to us.
We all fund-raise (If you can think of it, we’ve done it) and pay for the course fees, but we can’t do much. We’re just ghetto Antioch, w/o funds or school support.

Well, while I was living in Utah, we had many competitions that were over 100 miles away, and often spanned two days. Yes, believe it or not, we compete for two days, not just an hour. In cases like that, it’s mandatory to stay over the weekend in a hotel. Because in states with smaller populations, it is not a region or county deal, it’s a STATE deal.
Now in California, it is confined to the county, for the most part. But many Invitational meats are two days long. And it is often easier on the coaches, judges, participants, etc to stay overnight. Of course, that’s not factored into my previous estimate.
On Sat I competed in Decathalon. I received a Silver medal in three events (out of 60 students) in my division. My friend Heather, received an award for 7 of the 10 events. Our team placed 2nd in the Super Quiz. The team took 4th place over all. These are huge deals for us. They mean nothing to anybody else. The only thing that matters are our Sports teams who have losing records.
Last night we competed in Mock Trial.
Tomorrow night we are competing in Mock Trial.
Next Tues and Thurs it is the same.
The following Sat we have an IE tourney
March we have MOdel UN, State Qual for IE, Congress, Debate and National Qual for IE.
Guess what? It’s the same small group of us doing all these events. It’s the same small group of us winning these events.
It’s the same small group of us that can barely afford to do it. The same group that is worried because the Principal is threatening to take away our Mock Trial funds for next year. (But he wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing if the football team is losing. Oh wait, they haven’t had a winning season in 3 years).
Do you understand the work and preperation that goes into these events?
DO YOU HAVE A SINGLE FUCKING CLUE?
I work my FUCKING ASS OFF plus maintain a GPA of 4.12. My friend Marty does all of this, PLUS he’s in the band, and he STILL doesn’t get as much coverage as our losing basketball team. He doesn’t get any coverage.
We don’t get jack-shit for our efforts.
So you may ask yourself, why do you we put forth the effort? Well, I guess that’s what seperates us from the jocks. While it would be nice to win, we don’t worry about it. It’s the journey, the education that matters. And while it’s nice to get recgonized for our achievements, we’re used to getting Jack-Shit, so we suck it up.
We don’t compete for the money, prizes, cheer, or fans. We compete because we want to improve ourselves, and prepare for jobs as lawyers, teachers, etc. What we do will actually be worth something 10 years down the road. And in 20 years when we are not as young and fast as we used to be, we won’t bemoan our “glory years”.

I love football, a lot. But I’m under no illusion that, except for a small number of people, it’s worth time or effort. I’m under no illusion that any sports will mean anything in anybody’s future. Because even if you are the best, bodies break. Knees get blown out. Ligaments get torn. Concussions happen. Or you simply get old. Then what? Well, you can always harp about how great you once were.

22

Well, let’s take this a bit further. Should athletic teams then not travel to other cities and stay overnight, since there are obviously other schools they can play against? What about going to State championships - should they stop doing that? Of course not. Thus, one cannot make a generalization like this.

This, and others, sound just a wee bit knee-jerk considering the relative low tone of the OP. Note - Rog668 does not even express advocating reducing athletic budgets directly! He only expresses a desire for an increased budget for debate. And sure you can argue that given a fixed budget, an increase in one means a decrease in the other, true. But that’s not what he pushed in his OP, and people in support of organized athletics who are attacking him just need to calm down!

23

The HS athletic teams that I’ve been around don’t normally do the “overnight in a hotel” thing. It’s rare. The OP speaks of the debate team doing this EVERY weekend. Wow. I hardly think that any school system is gonna want to pony up for hotel rooms for the baseball team EVERY weekend. That’s asking WAY too much.

I’d think it would be fair for the debate team to expect busing and material costs. Even then, busing for sports events rarely exceeds a 50 mile one-way trip. Lodging funds is an unrealistic expectation, especially EVERY weekend.

As I mentioned earlier, lodging costs need to be subsidized by fundraisers and parents. That’s how it works with the sports programs. Isn’t it fair to expect the same from the debate team?

Give the debate team busing within a 50-mile radius and expenses for entry fees and the like and that should suffice.

24

**

In the normal course of a season, no, high school athletic teams should not travel to other cities and stay overnight. They should play local teams. Likewise in the normal course of debate the team shouldn’t have to go on overnight trips every weekend. For special occasions such as state championships or some other event then travel is of course reasonable.

**

What he wants is something that makes little sense to me. I know of no debate team that needs to travel overnight every single weekend. On that same token I know of no sports team that travels overnight on a regular basis. If I were a parent I wouldn’t want my child on an overnight trip every weekend for school. We are talking about high school here.

I might be a weirdo but I took part both in arts and athletics when I was in high school. I have great memories from both activities and I think I learned a great deal from both of them. Personall I’d love to see more kids involved in the arts and in athletics.

Marc

25

Goddamn… Some people. I remember when I was a debator in High School. We had 5 CX teams. Of those 5 we took 4 of the top 6 spots (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 6th) at State including me and my partner in which we got 1st. That is the State Championships folks. Same thing that our school NEVER got in Football. NEVER. Did we get ANY attention whatsoever? None. Zilch. Not even a fucking blurb on the last page of the school newspaper.

We won the State Championship that year. Our football team went 1-9. They were covered in both (at that time) newspapers in Houston. Nothing about us.

We had a budget of 2,200USD. Football team (that went 1-9 remember) 800,000USD, and we were a 4A fucking team. Can only imagine the huge amount of cash for a 5A team.

When our football team went to West Orange for a game the boosters put them up in a great hotel where 19 of the players were arrested for lewd conduct, B&E, and attempted rape of a young housekeeper at the hotel. The debate team got 2 hotel rooms at state for 12 people. Including both of our coaches. I had to sleep on the floor the night before the biggest moment of my life (until that point).

So all you people who complain and bitch about football being better than Debate, Speech, or whatnot can go outside and play hide and go fuck yourself. Why don’t you syphon off some of that fucking money and give it to somebody that is actually going to do something with their lives instead of some meathead fucking football player who has a better chance of getting a 2x4 shoved up his ass by a crane than make it into the NFL.

I am a better person today because I was a debator. The only thing I got from football was bad knees.

26

The following aprtial quote is revealing:

That’s right. Boosters put them up. Not school money…booster money.

Don’t you bitter ex-debaters get it?

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Yeah they get it. Especially the part that the outlay by the boosters was over the $800,000 budget. If the football team can’t live within their meager $800,000 budget why do you expect the debate team to live within a $2,200 budget?

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OIC, schools don’t put money up for football teams at all.
Fuck you.
You are such a fucking, stupid asshole.

29

Firstly, where are you guys getting figures like $800K and $1M for high school football teams? I suspect…strike that…I KNOW that you are are being intellectually dishonest here. Now granted, high school football teams usually have the biggest budget of all extracuricular activities, but that is explained by:

  1. Higher costs for equipment (how much does debate equipment cost?)

  2. Higher numbers of student participation (I know of many HS football teams with 100 man rosters)

  3. Football is often a money-maker

In fact, a profitable HS football program often subsidizes the budgets of the other sports.

Secondly, you can’t help but recognize the tradition of HS sports. Our local HS has a 103 year tradition of fielding a football team. A lot of the money comes from boosters that fondly recall their own happy experiences on the team.

You guys have no right to be bitter about the booster contributions. That’s private money from private citizens, and the last time I checked, in this country, we are free to spend our money as we wish. If a rich industrialist chooses to donate one million dollars for an upgrade of the local HS football stadium, then that’s his choice. Who’s to say that the same rich industrialist wouldn’t also be willing to donate to the debate team if he (or she) were lobbied?

Thirdly, you seem to continue to ignore the fact that I and others have been trying to beat into your head that schools don’t normally budget for loding expenses for ANY EXTRACURICULAR ACTIVITY. Please re-read that last sentance as many times as needed in order to digest that fact.

Look, I have nothing against the debate team. Good for them! But hey, let’s get real here. If you want things to change, the first step is to take action to raise private funds in support of your chosen activity. You’ve got to get out there and make it happen. No amount of whinning on an internet message board is going to change that reality…and it’s NOT the fault of the football team.

Oh, and another thing. Please allow me to observe that such an accomplished debater should be ashamed of themself for stooping to name-calling…hope that isn’t one of the techniques that is used in debate competition…

30

If football is such a money maker, why do they need school funds at all? Shouldn’t they be able to pay all their expenses with ticket sales, parking fees, and fundraisers?

Nope, the expense is FAR more than the money made. When I went to high school, ticket sales for home games weren’t enough to pay for the electricity required to light the field. Sports suck up a LOT of money, and have nothing to do with education. They should be separated from public schools, if someone wants to set up a private school with a good sports program, they should feel free to.

31

I guess depending upon the popularity level of a particular HS football team, you’ll have wide variances in funding levels.

I’ll tell you this though, the public HS where I’m at uses ZERO (that right, $0) school funds for the football team. The program is totally self-supporting, and in fact, it helps to subsidize the other sports at our HS (according to our AD).

I’ll grant though that this is probably a best-case scenario, and I’m sure that there are plenty of other schools that do depend on substantial dollars from the school budget…although I still dispute some of the numbers being tossed about in this thread.

…am I’m still waiting on an explanations as to why the debate team can’t go out and get financial support from other than the school budget…especially where lodging costs are associated…

32

High School Football uses a large amount of money to fund their programs. I have spent the last two hours searching for cites on this very piece of information, and sadly have not been able to find a single statistic on the Internet to back this piece of information up. (The closest thing I did find was an article on Privatizing schools, which claimed that “over $1000 per player is spent per year to field a football team”. This article gave no specifics so I will not link it.)

Now then, my earlier statement said that my High School Football budget was $800,000USD. I have no proof to back this up as I remember my football coach talking about it with another school staff member. So for the sake of argument let’s say that the Football Budget at my High School was 1/10th of this. $80,000USD per year of football is spent.

Of that $80,000USD a full $10,000USD is brought in from tickets, concessions, and other profits (t-shirts, hats, bumper stickers and the like). So that gives us a figure of $90,000USD.

This money is used to pay for the following in a 10 game season ignoring any playoffs or long distance trips to outlying areas which is indicative of small town football:
Uniforms (jerseys, pads, balls, practice equipment, etc.)
Insurance
Transportation Costs (players, coaches, trainers, medics, band members, cheerleaders, dance squad, chaperones, bus drivers, fuel costs, etc.)
Security (police, EMT’s)
Facility Costs (upgrades, electricity, weight rooms, etc.)

Now with this factored in, the 90K seems small doesn’t it? A successful football program is not just the players and their equipment, but with a whole host of other costs as well.

I bring up my other statistic from my previous post:

I know this to be fact as I was the treasurer of the squad, and have no cite as I am working from memory. The district gave those funds to us, and on top of that we raised another $2,000USD in fundraising for a grand total of $4,200USD. (I am rounding off slightly.)

The money is used to pay for the following in a 10 tournament (normally it was more) season:
Equipment (case lists, document reproduction, magazines, books, etc.)
Insurance
Transportation Costs (students, coaches, chaperones)
Facility Costs (When hosting a large tournament and entire wing of the school was open during a weekend)
Entry fees (ranging from $25-250USD per student, per style)

High School Debate is an important facet of life for many students. Most debater’s spend more time working on their cases than football players spend practicing as any ex or current debater on this board will tell you. We work hard day in and day out all year instead of 10 weeks as does the football team. It is more enriching and intellectually stimulating than football could ever hope to be.

Years later my wife and I still argue over cases that we had while in High School. A good friend of mine (who is much older than I and a former debater himself) talk about our cases with a smile. I use the skills that I learned in debate to this day. Note taking, study skills, and public speaking only being the top of the crop.

What does football offer? Teamwork, camaraderie, violence, injuries, and the like. You also get the satisfaction of being able to break the rules and get away with it. You pass classes without having to work for it. You get to be popular without doing anything but throw a little ball around. You get all the money and do the least amount of work.

Some of you might be thinking “How does robgruver get to say all of this? He doesn’t know squat!”

Well folks, I am about to tell you a story that I have only told a couple of people in my life. My freshman year in high school I was the starting quarterback for the freshman team (basically the rookies.) I was very good at what I did, and quickly moved up to the Varsity squad as starting quarterback. I was popular, had the girls and was able to get away with anything I pleased. In the last game of the season I was hit on a blitz that tore the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (blew my knee out). I would never play ball again, and still have pain to this day.

Shortly there after I got into the academic sports (debate, speech, drama, academic decathlon) and started seeing exactly how under funded we were. I speak from experience when I say that if we had gotten even a small portion of the monies that the football team received we would have been able to go to nationals.

Am I bitter? Yes I am, and I believe I have the right to be. With the time and effort I have spent on this post I hope you understand a little as well.

For more information on Debate, and how you can help see the National Forensics League homepage at http://debate.uvm.edu/nfl.html. Also contact your local High School for more local help.

One last note:

Agreed, but I refuse to apologize. Welcome to the pit.

33

Let’s not forget that more students are killed by playing football every year than by student-on-student violence.

34

Well…we sell (on average) 6,000-9,000 tickets per game at $5 per…then you have concessions, programs, souveniers, game ball ticket sales, 50/50 ticket sales, etc…let’s say we are bringing in at least $40,000 per game times 5 home games per year = $200,000. Then we get part of the gate from away games, I’m gonna guess another $20,000…each of the players have to pay to play at $40 each times 80 players, another $3,200. Throw in 2 or 3 fundraisers, as well as yearly donations, and I’m safely gonna guess our football team generates $300,000 yearly in revenue.

The stadium was built years ago out of the pocket of a wealthy local benefactor, and a few years back they raised $2.2M in private money for upgrades and renovations…no problem. Oh, and the weight room…again, private money, and it’s better than many that you’ll find at the collegiate level.

So I hope I’ve been able to show you that at least in some cases, the budget of the school does not have to be drained by the football team…a good program can be self-sustaining.

I do have a few problems with a few of the things you said rob:

I’m glad you worked hard on the debate team, but these days, any HS football program worth a darn requires players that work year round as well. They take 2 weeks off after the season ends, and then it’s right back to lifting 3 times per week…and running all summer long…

To each his own. This statement is your personal opinion based upon your likes and preferences.

This is stereotyping…it is not a given that football = get to break rules.

…and so is this. You do not know these things to be true in all places and in all cases.

35

Oh, and another thing…

Our public HS hockey team is entirely on their own. They receive no funding from the school district. Ditto for our Freshman baseball team.

…and I also wonder, given that some of you have educated us as to the stimulating and enriching aspects of the debate team, then why is it that you can’t get debate team alumni, who I’d assume would include at least a few wealthy folks to donate funding? The sports people have good results with this type of thing…why can’t you?

36

…and as if you haven’t heard enough from me yet:

It is not at all uncommon for parents to shell out big bucks for the extracuricular activities of their children. Ask a hockey parent. Ask a figure-skating parent.

Heck, summer basketball camp was a $400 expense.

If I added up the cost of all the gasoline, meals on the run, cleats, shoes, gloves, bats, tennis rackets, special instruction costs, and various fees for all the stuff that my 4 kids particpated in…well…let’s just say that I sacrificed. It’s not uncommon.

But if you really want to give your kids those kinds of opportunities, you’ll find a way…and that includes the debate team.

37

We have, thank you.

38

…and as if I’ll let you off the hook!

39

Really? Do you have any cites for this? According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research (that’s a mouthful), the number of deaths directly due to football in high school for 1999 was 4. The number indirectly due to football was 11. According to one study, Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools: 1996-97, there were 85 murders over a two year period at schools.

40

As with most subjects that come up on the board, everyone seems to only see black and white. No middle ground. I think that both sides have merit, the problem is that there isn’t a balance between them.

Krispy, I’m going to quote a few of your statements, not because I’m singling you out, but because you’ve made the most well argued points.

I’m not sure where you live, but at my HighSchool, I don’t think we could have fit 9,000 people if we had put them down on the field. At best, maybe …maybe 2,000. Now while I’m sure there is some variation on equipment costs, I think it’s a fair statement to say that the basic stuff is going to cost the same no matter where you’re playing. Yes? If that’s true, then you can see that a smaller school would have to have more money coming out of the school budget to support the buying of all that expensive equipment. I think that’s the key point. That no matter what happens, how the season goes, the football team always seems to get a lot of things provided for them. I ran cross country for years. Our uniforms for most of that time were a nice polyester green that were purchased in the 70’s. If we were lucky, we had enough to go around. Even though we had several people go to state, and place there, we never received the attention that the football team got for their loosing season. When I was involved in the drama department, we had to have fundraisers all year long, and call around to local merchants to beg them to place ads in the programs, just so we could afford to put on productions. We were lucky, in that usually we didn’t have to actually rent costumes, we had a good selection of clothing in storage. Likewise, we re-used the same backgrounds, and just painted over them. We received absolutely no funding from the school…none. We had to come up with enough money to purchase the scripts…and let me tell you, depending on what you wanted to do, that could add up to a significant amount. Lord help us if we had to have sound equipment brought in.

This is a broad sweeping generalization here, but of all the “jocks” that I knew in highschool, most of them are still within a 100 mile radius…the “intellectuals” are spread out across the country. For several years after I left School, I’d manage to be able to send money back to be a patron for the Drama dept. As I moved farther, and it was less at the forefront of my mind, it’s harder to remember to send the check off. Perhaps if I still lived there, it would be a lot easier to support the kids.

I have to get back to work, but the point I really want to make is that I think sports can be a good thing. That they can let kids learn valuable skills, and have a sense of teamwork and camaraderie…but I don’t think that other methods of gaining those same values should be left to fend for themselves.