Tag Archives: football

local news, Sports news

WT student body speaks: Let’s build it

wt stadium

Can’t we just once settle something without discussing the validity of the vote?

West Texas A&M University’s student body — or a small fraction of it — has voted narrowly to endorse the construction of a new on-campus football stadium.

WT enrolls about 9,000 students; of that total, fewer than 1,600 of them cast ballots on the idea. What’s more, it passed by 68 votes. Hardly a smashing mandate.

Hey, there’s no rule that said it had to pass by a larger margin among a larger pool of voters. Correct?

One of the issues appears to be the timing of the construction and the notion that current students will be exempt from the proposed $152 per-semester fee increase that will be levied on future students to help pay for construction of the unnamed stadium that’s estimated to cost about $26 million.

No worries, says retiring WT President J.  Pat O’Brien. The school will use reserve funds that comprise fees contributed by current WT students. Thus, he said, the current student body has “skin in the game.”

I want to applaud the university for asking the students to decide whether to support this idea. It’s going to be their financial burden to bear and it is only right to ensure that the school has the support of the student body before proceeding with construction.

I also lament the lack of turnout among the student body. I get that students are busy. They have lots on their minds, particularly the upperclassmen and women who are planning their post-university lives.

However, the size of the turnout really doesn’t matter. We elect presidents of the United States of America often with barely more than half of those who are eligible to vote.

As for whether today’s student body has “skin in the game,” that’s an unavoidable circumstance. Today’s students cannot be expected to hang around longer than they need to just to pay for a major construction project.

My hope now is that the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents signs off on the project and that the school can build a stadium that will make the students proud.

 

Uncategorized

No instant replay in baseball … please

The National Pastime is about to undergo a change that few baseball purists will like.

Guaranteed.

I’m one of them. What will we dislike? It will be the introduction of instant replay cameras.

OK, I know what you’re saying. Football has it. So what? I hate it in football too. It slows down the game. It tries to replace the human element with machines that help humans decide whether they’ve made the right call.

Now it well might be baseball’s turn.

Baloney.

I’ll now stipulate some important points about the game I used to love. I detest the designated hitter rule; I hate watching baseball played indoors … on carpets; I cannot stand watching batters suit up with body armor as if they’re taking part in a medieval joust; I’m not even that crazy about pine tar or batting gloves.

I’m old-fashioned when it comes to baseball.

Now we have the prospect of one of the game’s great traditions — the rhubarb — giving way to technology. The rhubarb occurs when the manager storms out of the dugout to get in the ump’s face; he’ll turn his ball cap backward so he can get right up to the ump’s face to be sure he get sprayed with spittle while yelling things like, “Bleep you, you bleeping blanket-blank!” When he says the “magic word,” which of course is “you,” that gets the manager tossed from the game.

Now we well might see close calls decided by someone sitting way up yonder in a control room. They’ll play back the event and someone in that control room will determine if the ump made the call.

I’ve long wanted technology to give way to the human element. Of all the calls umps — and refs in football — make during the course of a game, they get 99-plus percent of them right.

Let ’em make the call. And if they get it wrong, let the manager storm out of the dugout and kick a little dirt on the umpire’s shoes.