Buy the Dartmouth Swim Team on eBay

I can't fathom where people in the administrative ranks are coming up with figures like these for the cost of aquatic facilities. A few months ago, Splash Magazine ran a nice feature article about a club team from Kentucky that built a 10-lane, 50m facility for just about $2.5M a couple years ago. Now assuming inflation has not caused the cost of goods and services to rise 1000% since 2000 (hey, it doesn't cost $20 for a loaf of bread), one can safely guess that a similar, high-quality facility could be constructed at a cost around $3M. No? What's the proverb (or whatever they call those little sayings) "Penny-wise, pound foolish". They're saying that saving $212,000 a year will relieve them of their budget problems? At a school with a multi-BILLION dollar endowment? At bank-rate interest levels (~2.00%) they would make enough in interest in 2 DAYS ($263,000) on their 2.4B endowment to cover the cost of their swim team. Nebraska too... what were they thinking? Cutting a $200-$300K athletic program will solve their problems when they give out $1.1M in athletic department BONUSES??? Or Iowa State spending $11M on a football PRACTICE FACILITY so they had to cut swimming to make ends meet? A joke. Regards, RM

I can't fathom where people in the administrative ranks are coming up with figures like these for the cost of aquatic facilities. A few months ago, Splash Magazine ran a nice feature article about a club team from Kentucky that built a 10-lane, 50m facility for just about $2.5M a couple years ago. Now assuming inflation has not caused the cost of goods and services to rise 1000% since 2000 (hey, it doesn't cost $20 for a loaf of bread), one can safely guess that a similar, high-quality facility could be constructed at a cost around $3M. No? What's the proverb (or whatever they call those little sayings) "Penny-wise, pound foolish". They're saying that saving $212,000 a year will relieve them of their budget problems? At a school with a multi-BILLION dollar endowment? At bank-rate interest levels (~2.00%) they would make enough in interest in 2 DAYS ($263,000) on their 2.4B endowment to cover the cost of their swim team. Nebraska too... what were they thinking? Cutting a $200-$300K athletic program will solve their problems when they give out $1.1M in athletic department BONUSES??? Or Iowa State spending $11M on a football PRACTICE FACILITY so they had to cut swimming to make ends meet? A joke. Regards, RM