This post allows me the opportunity to comment on a pet peeve of mine: the disdain with which so many people hold the UT football program. You football haters may be quick to overlook the massive benefits of the program - even ignoring the much discuused (and dismmissed) economic benefits to the local economy.

Because of the vast amount of money generated by the non-subsidized football program, a number of students (and others) benefit in their professional training. Video production people. Facilities management. Marketing.

As dismal as is the campus parking situation, football services the debt on every new parking space built on campus in the last ten years. Last year, I ran into the UT women's crew team returning from a trip to the west coast. Who paid for that trip? (Mostly student activities fees - fees which many students consider as the cost of having access to subsidized football tickets.) The women's basketball program couldn't survive if it had to pay for its own facilities - facilities constructed and supported by football and (to a much lesser extent) basketball.

Does your daughter want to be a sports trainer when she grows up? Well, you have to have a football program nearby because all certified athletic trainers have to work in a combat sport for a minimum amount of time to earn the certification; working with the track team won't suffice.

Have you ever enjoyed a student concert? Those musicians are subsidized by football. My church choir has several UT students who are are members of the UT marching band - kids who without the UT football program might be in some other college.

If you don't like football, that's fine. But don't begrudge that enough people do enjoy it to generate enough money to support a lot of good things in this community. And please don't tell me the program is full of thugs or idiots. The much maligned graduation rate of the football program has, over the last twenty years, exceeded that of the general freshman population. Don't use an anecdotal exception to falsely support your own cultural prejudice.

Alice Cooper may not be a vol fan. I hope he's ok with it.

As a fan, I get turned off by Vol haters, too -- not people who just aren't interested in football, but the ones who consider the whole idea of college football a haven for rednecks and wife-beaters. (I've always thought it's hard to find a middle ground between them and the die-hard fans, but once you do it can be both disillusioning and rewarding, just like most of life.) That said, though, there's plenty of reason for vigilance. College football is plenty corrupt, probably always has been. UT's a big program, lots of money, lots of people making money from it, and a substantial enough history of NCAA investigations, violations, and problem athletes to warrant scrutiny, especially from the press and academic watchdogs. I don't think UT's any worse than any other big-time program (or that athletes are any more prone to violence and crime than any other broad demographic), but I also don't think it's a charity for scholarship athletes or T-shirt vendors, either. Considering the state budget crisis, yeah, it's great that the program makes money and subsidizes other activities on campus and some academic programs. But there's also something a little skewed about that that maybe says more about everybody in the state than it does about the UT athletic department. That it's an enormous economic engine doesn't justify anything.