JimmyHoffa2222 and Ohf Ark must have hit a permanent acid trip back in the 1970's.

I'm a EE at OSU, and have yet to witness people sitting on the floor, professors who don't speak english, or crumbling liberal arts buildings (in fact, the English building is the most majestic-looking, in my farked-up opinion). The fact is the biggest problem on campus is logistical, and that's only because the damn greeks stand in the middle of the [expletive deleted] hallway or classroom aisles chatting about facebook.com or some other nonsense, leaving those of us with a future (and no social skills) to find alternative passages. This problem gave rise to The Great Oklahoma State Tunnel Network which, as recent test have shown, were built by the Vikings around 900A.D. as an attempt to discover a route back to Iceland (as no waterways had yet been made to link Oklahoma to the rest of the world).

Anyway, the OU and OSU football programs are more tradition than athletic programs. As an OSU student, I can honestly say that "Boomer Sooner" was a rallying cry which brought many a stouthearted Okie a smile during the dust bowl/depression years. In fact, many Sooners will say OU football actually brought Oklahoma, led by Bud Wilkinson, kept all Oklahomans determined to live through those troubled times. For more information on all things OU, visit a convenience store or a van down by the river.

For these reasons, I applaud T. Boone Pickens. He is a good man, and if I were to meet him, I'd shake his hand and begin following him, singing "It Had To Be You" until he called the cops.

I thought that T-Boone Pickens guy died a-riding on that missle, a-waving his hat around on the way to the number six dance...Harumph.

/OSU "grad"
//woke up in the end zone once...not an athlete - thankfully, not a game day.
///escaped Oklahoma a decade ago.
////Pickins does a LOT of good.
/////sports & athlete haters don't see the big picture
//////big picture consists of:
A) winning games means free advertising/branding
B) free advertising means more people come to OSU
C) more people come to OSU and pour money into the local economy.
D) more money in local economy means current students can sit in chairs
E) seated students are happy students
F) happy students drink more
G) drunk students get naked
H) naked people have sex and babies
I) Oklahomans vote Republican
J) Multiplied Republicans vote-in more cock-jackets like the current admin.
///////has scientifically proven this is Bush's fault
////////would have given the money to the "Help Non-CockJackets Escape Oklahoma Fund."

btw, EE is to be pronounced "double-e".

Also, we have a stadium which is only partially constructed -- no end was in sight. Now, perhaps, we will have this stadium finished and the union laborers building it can -actually build it- or biatch about low pay and go straight to hell.

Also----the DOW hitting 11,000 is not a "psychological barrier". It's a representation of money.

I have never understood why US educational institutions spend so much time and effort obsessing over athletics programs...but this just takes things to insane new levels.

/used to run a university volleyball club here in Australia that survived on practically $0.00 funding.

Fark this shiate. I live in this town and they're permanently shutting down one of the major arteries of the city to make way for this "athletic village." The athletics department already gets obscene amounts of money compared to every other department on campus. Shcmidly would personally fellate Pickens on an hourly basis if he could as it is.

They're creating an "athletic village" but they're farking up the entire town in the process, including buying up and destroying a home owned by the same couple for over four decades. And they couple won't even get the price estimated for the house. They're getting something like ten thousand dollars under. OSU doesn't even care enough about helping these people recoup their losses.

/I'm a pascifist
//I'm a pascifist
///I'm a pascifist
////Or so I'm having to remind myself

Honest question: would your collective outrage have been the same had a "regular" person donated a comparable portion of their net worth to the same cause? Or is it just infuriating because the amount donated by Boone is enough to actually make a difference?

Also, in regards to Canook's insightful treatise on American universities, there is a ridiculous amount of scholarships out there for just about every demographic. And trust me, you don't need to worry about the genius kids. The money is there for them to go. Maybe not to Harvard, but to somewhere. And for those who aren't geniuses (or maybe just poor test takers), there are loans. If someone wants it enough, they can go to college, end of story.

Also also btw... people like natjoy are what we, in Redneckworld, call "gay".

SPORTS is over rated in this country. Why is this country so focused on football, baseball in schools and in life in general? We're falling behind other nations in science, math - but it's okay you dumbasses will blame outsourced countries like China, India for your woes while you parade proudly with porn & beer and think you're "macho" when some rich kid in China employs you to work in their store here stocking shelves in USA - Fark should relocate to the west coast, the stench of southerners is far too great on this website.

dstaggs isn't a nice person.

Just as there is a separation of church and state, perhaps also a separation of academia and athletics is needed. Nerds to the ploytechnic, jocks to the gymnasium; those Germans had everything in order.

/slashing for the sport of it

natjoy:

dstaggs isn't a nice person

It doesn't matter when you've no friends to lose.

is there much outrage in Oklahoma about all this?

According to the OSU website they have 229 male athletes & 205 women athletes for a total of 434. According to the same website they have a total of 23,626 students. That works out to be 1.83% of the student population. Athletic programs like this is one of my pet peeves. Not only is the benefiting population so low, its a restricted population. Anyone can join the Business Dept or the Computer Science Dept, even the Women Studies Dept., but only 434 people can join the athletic teams. You also need to have a strong healthy physical ability, ie. You have to be good at football, soccer, golf, etc. Still worse, even if you are physically qualified, not just any 434 people can get in cause of the gender limitations. Men get only 229 slots and women even less, just 205.

165 million for just 1.83% of the student body. His money, but damn if he couldnt have spent it better.

Might as well have just taken it out in $20s and $50s and helped put a few strippers through college

The athletics department already gets obscene amounts of money compared to every other department on campus.

Exactly. The point I was making earlier, which has escaped a lot of people including sandreckoner, is that treating the OSU football program as a charity makes almost (but not quite) as much sense as donating your paycheck to Microsoft.

I sat next to a stripper in P-chem. She slept through every lecture, head on her open notebook, drooling. But she got a C in the course.

/I got a B
//I'm not cute
///Truthfully, no amount of money could make physical chemistry less torturous, but I'm sure our prof could have found some ways to spend the money
////maybe at a van down by the river?

Oh yeah, it's "cool" alright. Nothing cooler than funding the removal of hundreds of people from low income housing to build an "athletic village" at a school where academics are suffering and faculty and staff wages are abysmal.

/OSU alum, staff, and doctoral student

Baron: "Oklahoma State is Division I is almost all sports."

OSU IS D1 in ALL sports.

lol33ta

And trust me, you don't need to worry about the genius kids. The money is there for them to go. Maybe not to Harvard, but to somewhere. And for those who aren't geniuses (or maybe just poor test takers), there are loans. If someone wants it enough, they can go to college, end of story.

The year before I went back to college, I'd asked my boss to pay me partially under the table. I officially made $14-15k that year. 15k to pay rent, bills, insurance, etc. They told me I made too much... I needed to pay about $10k, 2/3's of my income, I didn't even qualify for enough in loans to cover my tuition.
One of my best friends was basically abandoned by his parents by the time he was 16. He was living and working in Cali, his mom was living in Chicago and who knows where his Dad was. According to the system his parents made too much for him to qualify for anything, but neither of them would give him crap. His basic two choices were to join the military or wait till he was 25...

I ran into the same thing when I got married in the early 80s. Wanted to go to school but my parents had supported me the first half of that year and the previous year, so they claimed me on their taxes, which meant no loans for two years even though they were no longer supporting me. No grants or scholarships--again, "income" was too high, even though it didn't exist in my real world.

Really crummy and stupid and counterproductive. I could have been a chemical engineer for the last twenty years.

The first half of the Stadium expansion was constructed using a $70 million donation from Boone Pickens. The second half is currently under construction, funded by student tuition dollars. This new donation will help fund the third and final stadium phase, as well as an "athletic village" that is currently in the process of Eminent Domaining the hell out of every resident north of campus.

Football in general is a stupid religion down here, supported by masses of ignorant rednecks who otherwise wouldn't set foot near an academic institution after the 6th grade.

I do second the notion on academics suffering. I'm in the Mechanical Engineering department (thankfully set to graduate out of here this May) and it's downright pathetic when a class has to wait 3 weeks to get a replacement (obsolete) overhead projector bulb. Or when faculty can't afford to pay their research assistants, which I experienced for a year, all the while looking fondly out at the cranes, sturcture and brick being erected.

Our stadium should not be this high of a priority unless it's going to generate revenue greater than the cost to upgrade it, and that money will go to academics. That being said, Boone Pickens HAS made generous donations to academics as well at the University, not just to the athletic dept. It's just that our current President is running the school like it's a business instead of an academic institution, and he's been under heavy (and justified) criticism ever since he came to power.

2006-01-10 11:13:16 PM loungechaircarebear

"it's a way for smaller schools to make a name for themselves and draw other interest."

Smaller school? OSU has about 25,000 students, is in the Big 12, and is massively successful in sports. (Something like 3rd nationally in all-time NCAA championships.) The fact that OU (the other major public univ. in OK) has historically dominated us in football is still a major problem to some people, though.

2006-01-10 11:15:04 PM Baron-Harkonnen

"Oklahoma State is Division I is almost all sports."

Not almost all sports. All sports. Same as the rest of the Big 12.

2006-01-10 11:17:03 PM Baron-Harkonnen


"Dear Jerk: I was in the OSU football locker room several years ago, before practice. By locker room standards, it was a palace; stereo booming, huge TVs, nice carpeting, wide open seating. Then you go around around a corner into like a cramped hallway. That's where the lockers for the black players were.

I call bullshiat."

So do I, unless by "several years ago" he means the 1950's.

Tiber1, It's unfortunate that you and your friend's situations worked out like that; I guess when I was responding to Canook, I was only considering "kids." You know, fresh out of high school 18 year olds without real jobs and nothing preventing them from going to a cheaper community college or state university first before pursuing a more expensive education. As for your friend, this may be naive, but what's wrong with waiting until you're 25?

GoSpelunking, I'm afraid my realm of experience is somewhat limited to now, but there are lots of resources for college bound students to find grants and scholarships - many of which are not income dependent.

It's odd to see so much criticism of such a generous donation. The guy is quite a philanthropist (rtfa) a 165 mil for public works projects can do a lot to stimulate a community's economy.

Too bad this guy didn't go to college in a city with more than 40 thousand people in it so that they could find something to use all these buildings for in the off-season. 165 Million is probably half the city's tax base ffs.

"Also, fark cancer research."

For all the OSU folks in the house, there are a bunch of hilarious Red Meat-style cartoons about this issue (featuring Boone and president schmidley) at http://boonestate.com/

I just discovered them recently and have been laughing ever since.

StillH20 - thanks for that link...good to see that there are people there doing something to bring attention to this. Seems to me, the real issue isn't the recipient of the donation, or athletics in colleges - it's the use of eminent domaine to build, what even in the athletics department should be recognized as extraneous. I don't know how or why eminent domaine has resurfaced, but I in the year or so since it started popping back up around the country - i haven't heard a single worthy application.

natjoy: Oh, that website doesn't even represent 1% of the attention that's been brought to this issue. It just happens to be the most humorous/entertaining attention, in my opinion. The eminent domain stuff has been dominating local (and to a lesser extent, state) headlines for a couple of months now. The university administration has really given itself a black eye, but I'm sure from their point of view it's nothing that $165 million can't easily overcome.

StillH2O, you should also add that eminent domain HASN'T been used. The university has said it MAY need to use it, but hasn't had to, yet.

Dio Wildfire, of that initial $70M gift, $50M went to academics. Only $20M went to the stadium. Also, athletics DOES benefit academia. The largest increases in student enrollment have followed good athletic years (i.e. Final Four, etc).

True, SKC, but the issue (and thinly veiled threat) in this kind of situation is always that it will be used if people don't sell "voluntarily", and if/when it's used they'll usually get even less money. So eminent domain is still very clearly the issue at hand whether it's been used yet or not.

I go to college in Oklahoma currently, and if he had divided that money up among the major universities in the state and used it for academic purposes, or even PARKING at my school, it would have been put to better use. Our sports teams all do fine on their own. Cashflow-wise that is.

Personally I would have used that money to do two chicks at the same time...

"And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, 'cuz chicks dig a dude with money."

If my math is correct that means Booner could've done 660 chicks at the same time with that money. It would take a lot of Viagra, but everyone would get to keep their houses.

So he gives the money to OSU.

OSU spends it on athletics.

Then other people (construction, advertising, sources of whatever else athletic costs) have the money.

They spend it on stuff they like/want/need. Taxes go to various governments. More money flows around in Oklahoma, helping small businesses.

I say that's better than it sitting in a bank account.

Still no cure for cancer

Because everyone knows that Pickens held the cure. If only he had given it all.

But what would we do with all the ribbons then?

rwellor: Now back to your Cliff Notes on Ayn Rand silly boy...

Hysterical

Well that's awesome. The money COULD'VE been used for more useful purposes like, oh I don't know, alleviating tuition costs and fees for students, updating computers, you know...things that benefit the entire student population as opposed to a small fraction of them.

But dammit this is America and we likes us sum FOOTBALL mmhmm.

Oh well, it's his money and I guess he gets to spend it how he wants.

With that kind of cash he should be able to bang his way to through the cheerleading squad.

If I had that kind of cash, I'd love to do the same thing for my school. I could see the headlines now, "UNT wins national championship, 3 students show up to watch".

IceBurg_Mike is my hero. We've found a literate Farker!

fark this dude and fark football.

Face it, it is his money, and he can do with it as he wishes.

I love jealous farkers, so fun to watch.

So what does this mean if Okie State still sucks in football?

In 2000 years, we'll have better looking colliseums than the Romans ever did.

Fact he did not have to donate one red cent. But he did make a donation, and you people are childish and jealous that he can do what he wants with his money. Yes it is his money, not yours, or the lazy bums, it is his.

For everyone saying that money is "wasted" on athletics programs, you do realize that at division IA schools, big football brings in an obscene amount of money to the school at large.

loungechaircarebear: like Las Vegas. sure, some of the casinos on the strip are downright silly. billions of dollars to create fake jungles and shiat. but do you really think the city would be as robust as it is today if those billions were spent on libraries? that's just the way it is, folks.


I donno, a billion dollar library would be pretty damn cool...

A few things...

~ The donation allows Oklahoma State to spend less money on athletics then it otherwise would... thus, allowing it to spend more money on academics. If my rich OK oil uncle gives me 5k, and says I must spend it on a family vacation... that will help my overall budget, as I no longer will need to put anything aside for the vacation (which I was going to take regardless). So, while it might look better... at least to someone willing to complain about a gift... to have given the money towards something like my kids college education... the gift would still be a huge help.

~ A successful athletic program generates an income for a college... especially a highly successful football team. Michigan sells 100,000+ seats per game... Texas made 15+ million from the Rose Bowl. If OK State can use this donation to push its athletic (football especially) program to elite status... it will greatly help the *entire* school. There is also the benefit of long-long term success... and the future donations that would generate (someone hears about the school winning football games, decides to check it out... goes to the school... and 45 years later builds the school a new library).

~ A great deal of the money will end up helping STUDENT/athletes... women's field hockey, tennis, bowling, etc... the stuff we don't watch on TV... the stuff a student does to make the college experience more fulfilling and enjoyable.

~ Had this "asshat" given the money to... say, a (university) art museum or theater group or music department... or some other such nonessential 'luxury' activity... few would have complained. But because he gave the money to SPORTS... he all of a sudden is wasting money. Well, I've never seen a valid reason why those other activities are more valuable to society. The best I see is... the geeks that were in the HS band are still jealous of the popularity the football team got... and thus, seek to denigrate the athletic experience. As if sportsmanship, teamwork, fitness, etc... aren't valuable life experiences. Newsflash... playing the tuba or Willy Loman in a play... is no better then having played Left Tackle or Point Guard.

~ Further, had this "asshat" just kept his money... or wasted it on strippers... leaving it all to his children... ... no one would have said a word. Instead, he gave a good sized chunk of it to a school... and, no question... his generous gift will make OK State a better place. If you've taken the time to COMPLAIN about the gift... you are a clown.

you can tell who the liberals are in this forum, god forbid you could spend the money you earn on whatever you want...


I know this is hard to understand, but try to stick with me here:

Criticising how someone spends their money does not mean that I think that people shouldn't be allowed to decide how to spend their own money.

is it really that difficult to get?

ArizonaThief

Texas made 15+ million from the Rose Bowl.

Actually, the Big XII divvied that 15+M equally amongst its schools. That's just how the conference works.. (somebody correct me if, God forbid, I'm wrong)

Furthermore, Thief, marching band was alright, and hardly conjures hatred for the team (except amongst the commies - ironic??) - it even got me six rows from the front at the 2004 Cotton Bowl. (best losing rally ever)
I still play the trumpet from time to time. It's enjoyable, but I would trade all my musical 'ability' to throw a ball like a man. Hopefully I never have a son to share in that shame :-(

Baron-Harkonnen
Xyphoid

I was in the OSU locker room exactly once, so excuse me if I don't know all the place names. I was there to photograph a standout lineman named Washington, in 1984. I have no idea if their clubhouse is still de facto segregated, but it was then.

Coincidently, I also photographed T. Boone Pickens around that same time. Something about an oil company takeover in northern Oklahoma.

Which reminds me, this thread shouldn't be about how Pickens spends his money. It should be about how the scumbag aquired his wealth. (corporate raids)