Mctruck says it all: "Having 'winning' teams should help selling."

Amen to that.

And Allie still doesn't get it. College is and always has been about competition -- academic AND athletic. Remove athletics and the sheer will of young men and women will keep it alive. In 1873, before athletics were included in the curriculum, students from Cornell and University of Michigan planned to meet for a football game. These extracurricular activities were run by students, and "by the 1890s, at many colleges, alumni groups joined with the student organizations to create formidable programs over which the college presidents and faculty exercised relatively little control" (Education Encyclopedia).

As Mctruck says, "Over the decades of sports in colleges, it's something that just won't go away and never will."

Amen to that, too.