Ogden Schools Should Fire Football

The Ogden School District has been cutting back librarians, reading coaches and the entire adult ed program to save several million dollars in the budget.

Times are still hard, I get cutting back, but why cut back things with long term benefits -- reading is an essential job skill, after all. Education gets people jobs. It is why we have schools.

Cut something that's useless, like football.

I don't know how much this would save -- all the coaches, the team supplies, gym and field maintenance, the buses and extra trips out of town and so on must add up to a pretty penny, however. And when you boil it down, all that is just for entertainment. It adds nothing to the careers of the players, and perhaps even hinders them.

It is a huge amount of money to support what amounts to a taxpayer-funded minor league system for professional football, and since when do taxpayers support private business?

Yeah, that's a joke.

I know, football has long rivalries, a key role in the building of school spirit, and many feel it is great fun to watch. It also draws -- especially on the college level -- vast amounts of money from alumni.

And football, let's face it, is part of American culture, a segment of the economy that gets all the money it wants and is practically worshipped. A recent map around Facebook showed that the highest paid public employee in almost every state in the union is a college football coach. Money shows where our priorities lie. (click).

That still gets away from what we have schools for, which is to educate young people, not train them to be professional gladiators. And yet I haven't heard the idea of cutting athletics anywhere in the discussion of the Ogden district's financial problems. If adult ed takes too much time away from educating students, why doesn't football practice?

Part of my thinking along this line is the ultimate waste and destruction of the players, who are physically damaged by playing football as it is played in the US. The Washington Post (click here) has been running a series on this subject the last several weeks, looking at NFL players whose professional careers left them physically destroyed, financially ruined and pretty much abandoned by the NFL.

Last week's pert of the series (clock) was about Reggie Williams, a huge star, so big even someone as sports-averse as me knows the name. Has he, after his glory years of football, gone on to a comfortable career or retirement.

No. He's ruined. (click)

The NFL has the real sweet spot in all this -- it gets to pick its players from masses of young people  trained through a tax-supported minor league system that starts on Ogden High's football field and extends through Weber State University. The NFL produces football games on playing fields financed by taxpayers in the cities in which they are built, raking in billions of dollars in revenues.

And when the players are tossed aside, and their money runs out, they end up in many cases on Medicaid, the taxpayers again picking up the tab.

If the Ogden School District wants to convince me it's serious about cutting spending, let it cut athletics. Keep physical education classes, and intramural sports that don't cost much, and leave it at that.

But fire the coach. Hold some pep rallies to boost math test scores. Make the annual fight with Weber High over who has the best reading comprehension scores.

Do that's I'll believe you are serious about both education AND saving money.