A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
All that extra security for the sacred football game between Montana State University and the University of Montana deterred terrorist attacks on the fans on Saturday, but it didn’t save MSC coach Rod Ash and his assistants from having their jobs axed two days later. According to the Missoulian, MSU expected to compete for a national title this year. Instead, it managed to win just two games and finished with a 54–35 loss to UM.
That's unacceptable at pigskin dominated MSU. Punishment was the order of the day:
[MSU athletic director Peter] Fields said a search will begin immediately and that ideally he’ll have a new coach in place in “10 to 14 days,” though he acknowledged that’s optimistic. All eight assistant coaches were released but will have the opportunity to be evaluated by the new head coach, he said, adding that Cramsey will be the point person for players and recruits who need assistance.
“We have a lot of really good things going here and have to have somebody who’s a really good fit,” Fields said, adding that he “truly believes we should be in the top 10 (nationally) all the time. With the resources we’re putting into it, we should be up there.”
Here’s my question: why the devil is so much money being put into the football program at MSU? How does competing for a national sports title comport with the academic purposes for which Montana’s land grant university was established? How does it further MSU’s academic mission?
Priorities are out of whack at both MSU and UM, driven I suspect by some powerful alumni and other heavy hitters whose highest “educational” priority is entertaining tailgaters and Saturday afternoon stadium whoopers and hollerers with ritual combat that results in wrecked knees and concussed brains. Who benefits from these violent spectacles save the innkeepers, saloon owners, bookies, orthopedic surgeons, and neurologists?
How can anyone of good moral character cheer for this?
Montana has acres and acres, and cows aplenty, but only a million people. We cannot afford to waste money by trying to field college football teams that can run with the big dogs. Yet we do. Something is rotten in college athletics in Montana.