Time to pull the plug on the stadium expansion

by: Hopeful

Sun Jul 27, 2008 at 02:07:58 AM EDT

According to state and university officials, the fundraising drive encountered obstacles that were not quite so obvious when Corzine and Lesniak first announced the stadium campaign this past winter. They cited a series of unexpected hurdles, among them a national recession that hurt all types of fund-raising, and the whirlwind presidential election that has swallowed up hundreds of millions in donations that might otherwise have gone to universities or athletics. At the same time, restrictions imposed by Corzine's ethics advisers out of concern for the propriety of a governor asking for cash further complicated the effort.

I'm sorry, but since donations to Presidential candidates are limited to $2,300 ($4,600 with General), I don't buy this story.  Furthermore, here are the total New Jersey political donations in Presidential years:

2000: $60,341,819
2004: $58,165,634
2008: $45,018,637 (so far)

So we can see that blaming this fiasco on Obama and Clinton is just spin.

The bottom line is that Rutgers finally has a decent college football program, and that is nice, but this stadium expansion is just too much. We now face the prospects of serious damage to the academic program.  Some states -- yes, I'm thinking of the South -- have a kind of right-wing socialism where sports entertainment is provided by state funds and corrupt rich patrons.  But New Jerseyans have three professional football teams to follow, even if they are named after cities just over the border, and so funding this stadium further is irresponsible.