*An open letter to Steven Salzberg:
I don’t usually go off on rants, mainly because I can respect people’s opinions, but excuse me while I unleash my inner Atlanta Housewife on contributing Forbes writer and University of Maryland professor, Steven Salzberg.
Where do I start. How about with the recent comments you thought you’d exhale in a Forbes article about your concerns on how college football is driving academics and universities downward:
"...The culture of football in American universities is completely out of control. It is undermining our education system and hurting our competitiveness in technology, science, and engineering. If we keep it up, the U.S. will eventually be little more than the big, dumb jock on the world stage—good for entertainment on the weekend, but not taken seriously otherwise.
Too harsh? I don’t think so. I think we need to eliminate football entirely from our universities if we want to maintain our pre-eminent position as the world’s scientific and technological leader."
Taking football away of Colleges and Universities is like taking the movie business out of L.A. Like a strict rule of no political talk in the oval office. Like bogarting the joint with Willy Nelson. It just wouldn’t work.
Undermining our education system in the US? If I do recall, head coaches aren’t the ones giving out outdated standardized tests or lecturing students on prehistoric theories.
If you want to attack an education system, why don’t you start with the elementary, junior high or even high school ranks. Kids don’t get into college, take a few classes, and then decide to become a nuclear physicist.
Hurting our competitiveness? Sports, particularly football, is where young kids learn competitiveness. It’s were they learn work ethic and discipline, what many parents fail to teach their kids in their households.
If you want to attack something that’s hurting our competitiveness in 
technology, science and engineering, go after video games or the internet. Go after the parents who let their kids talk to their friends on the computer for six straight hours, rather than having them hit the books.
Eliminate football entirely from universities? Sure, I’m positive the universities won’t miss the millions generated from college football programs annually, not to mention the countless number of jobs they provide. The amounts brought in from donors alone are enough to sustain a university athletic program.
Want to take away football? Midas well take away the entire athletic department. Nothing against the other sports, but does billionaire Boone Pickens donate $165 million to Oklahoma State in 2006 without a football team to spend some of it on? Does Phil Knight, Nike founder and CEO, shed out over $230 million in donations to Oregon? The water polo and tennis teams can still survive without football, sure they can.
"...If football disappeared, we could get our entertainment from another sport, as we do every year after the football season ends”.
Just get our entertainment from another sport? My guess is you’re pretty biased to be throwing out any opinions on football. College football fans aren’t like any other sports fans. You don’t cover your entire body in paint, go shirtless in snowy weather or pay $300 for a pair of season tickets, to 
a college you already pay tuition to, then just say ‘oh well, I guess we could go to the swimming meet.’
The second inception of the Civil War might go down in Knoxville if Vol’s fans had to bear without football in October, don’t let their southern hospitality and kind country music fool you, Salzberg.
Something tells me 114,000 fans in Ann Arbor might be a little disgruntled without Michigan football in the fall. Ever think of what that might do to the economy of a small, already hurt, Michigan town?
I shudder to think of the tense environment Austin would be without Longhorns football. Think of all the guns in Texas!
College football programs sustain towns in SEC country. How about the impact the Crimson Tide has on Tuscaloosa. What would Baton Rouge be without LSU football. Think of the diminished toilet paper sales in Auburn, Ala. You see, the thing is, in those towns, its football season year round.
“The culture of football worship has gotten so out of control that I think the only solution is to get rid of it entirely."
The culture and football programs some universities dish out is what draws many students to their respective college. Maybe it’s not a major draw in your mind, but to most, a social life and an athletic tradition is important. You probably didn’t see a whole lot of that at Yale or Harvard, though.
My guess is your one of the disgruntled college professors looking for a place to throw the cutbacks and place the blame of the failed education system. So you picked the biggest bully in college. The one who’s getting all the pretty girls and all the money. It sounds like you’re a bit jealous of the shiny new contract head football coach Randy Edsall received?
Sure football teams cost money, everything costs money. What about scientific research and labs, hell, even test tubes. Those all cost money. They cost the government billions every year, and universities millions. Sometimes the research doesn’t accomplish or find anything, it’s money well spent, though. Just like money spent on a football program that provides hope, lightens the intense college mode provided by professors like you and gives students and alumni an unblemished form of entertainment.
You did end saying something I can’t agree more with:
“I don’t expect any university to take my advice.”
I’m glad you know that. Now you can shut up and we can move on to anticipating the 2011 college football season.
Photos: Arizona State - Bruce Yeung/Yeung Photography, Army - Hunter Martin/Getty Img
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