College Greed

By James H. Miller

In three weeks the Packers will play their most important regular season game in Dallas. Because it is on the NFL Network many Wisconsin fans will not see the game. The reason is that the NFL chooses to put this game on its own cable network.

However, last Saturday’s football debacle is a different issue and much more serious. Wisconsin played one of its most important regular season games in years at Columbus and practically no one in Wisconsin was able to see the game. That decision was made by a new operation called the Big Ten Network, who has decided to put a user tax on residents in the upper Midwest. By the end of last week, the spin coming out of Madison by the arrogant prigs who run UW defended the Big Ten Network while blaming the cable companies. Of course that is going to be their message. They are never going to say that the real reason is greed.

Let’s be very candid about this. The difference between the Packers and the Badgers is that the Packers are part of a major business, the National Football League. The Badgers are a public institution subsidized by taxpayers, and that is a huge difference. Let’s restate this — Wisconsin taxpayers subsidize the University of Wisconsin in Madison every year for millions of dollars. The idea that they are just another group of fans similar to the NFL is absurd. UW places the blame on the cable networks. We really ought to place the blame on the administrators who are looking for new ways to take tax money away from Wisconsin residents. Let me pose a question. They keep saying that eventually these Wisconsin games will be available somewhere on cable. That is probably true. But what about people who don’t have cable, or who can’t afford cable? They are still required to pay taxes, but have no opportunity to even see a game unless they want to shell out even more money, whether they can afford it or not, for cable coverage. And how has the University of Wisconsin treated public television? It used to be that football games would be shown late on Saturday night for people who couldn’t watch them during the day. Even that has been eliminated. Again, let me clearly state the point. Football games that have already been played will never be shown again on public television. If that doesn’t explain the whole issue, I don’t know what else will.

Here is one suggestion. Madison officials said that they expect $7 million in the first year from the Big Ten Network with dramatic increases over the years. How about this? Why doesn’t the legislature and governor seriously consider matching that money and simply pulling it out of UW-Madison’s budget and returning it to taxpayers? Then the taxpayers will have enough money to decide whether they want to use it to become Wisconsin fans.