(01-31-2018 06:19 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(01-31-2018 05:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  Schools were flush when Title IX was approved, and the cost of athletics was a lot less. I know I was alive and there and functioning as an adult when it happened. Just look at the red ink in just the Texas schools presented in the OP. They aren't atypical.

Actually schools weren't flush at the time of Title IX being adopted. There was a recession going on, the college draft deferment had ended the year before and college enrollment dropped nationally.

It was the fact that colleges were in tight circumstances that lead to the abolition of "laundry money" and football scholarships became capped for the first time.

The school's weren't hurting. Raises for faculty were hurting. The rifts in the military after the drawback in Viet Nam had a lot of returning veterans retooling for private life.

And your take on capped scholarships had more to do with the stockpiling of athletes who would never see playing time, but were given scholarships to prevent the competition from using them than it had to do with the economy.

If people thought that football first schools today were out of control, they just didn't live through the late 60's and early 70's. U.S.C., Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, and so many others had stockpiles of football players on scholarship. That was hurting the game.

Saban is an anomaly compared to the practices of the football giants of the 60's and 70's.

And, as far as the recession goes, the nation had really been in one since the end of Korea. Viet Nam was the only respite from it and during those years the national debt rose from 205 million in '63 to billions by the end of the Nixon administration. Between Viet Nam and the Great Society Program of LBJ we managed to borrow for the first time from Social Security placing in jeopardy the long range viability of what had been a state mandated savings program thereby eliminating the largest nest egg the Federal Government held in reserve, and blowing the debt through the roof.

Those who profited were the major corporations, the backers of the Federal Reserve which collected interest and bought influence with the proceeds, and of course the educational research wing benefited as well. Dow and Dupont did quite nicely.

So after the artificial stimulus that cost 55,000 American Lives and spent us into a massive debt what we called a recession in the early 70's was not even a hangover.

But those on the government dole who had profited from the inflation sure thought so.

Kids today can't remember 18% APR's. I was so happy to refinance a home at 8% I could have busted with excitement.

But in spite of $2.00 gas the average American still could afford a home, eat decently, and expect good health care. I hardly call today flush! Heck, if I was depressed a six pack of Michelob was $2.25 and that was expensive beer.

Enrollment was fine. Higher Ed was propped up with all kinds of government perks. Pell grants were born a short time later. Government student loans were made available and at ridiculously low interest rate. So the Profs got their raises and COLAS became part of the vernacular and bureaucrats everywhere lived fat enough.

When people actually owned and operated family businesses, when those businesses sustained them and paid for their children's educations, when the legal bureaucracy wasn't finding ways to dip into everyone's pockets like the Sheriff of Noddingham, when Bell telephone ran secure lines free from robo calls and scamsters, when government wasn't telling me what to do and when to do it and trying to keep me from instilling some values in my children, and when a ticket to the Auburn / Alabama game was $8, I call that time not only flush, but rich and idyllic when adjusted for the inflation rate of today. The value we had so outpaced what we can afford today there is no real comparison.