Stolen from the Shutdown Fullcast. Say the saudis throw 20 billion to universities to join their new college football conference to tear down the ncaa similarly to what is happening in golf. Who would go? Their obvious choices were: Miami (regain prominence, LIV kinda sounds like a club) Nebraska (same) Houston (yolo) Oklahoma State (frac synergy) Ohio State (doesn’t really give a fuck) Tennessee South Carolina Notre Dame UCLA Purdue UCF Central Arkansas Who else would go?
We (UNC) would definitely be the Justin Thomas and pretend to take the moral high ground by not leaving.
Do universities already have endowment money in Saudi investments? Not sure what the moral problem would be if so
Isn't A&M already funded by the saudis? My prediction is that they'd go, even if they were the only school, just to finally get a championship
Having diversified investments versus being a wholly owned subsidiary would probably be where that moral line is drawn for most.
Some universities have worked to divest their portfolios of fossil fuels, including the University of California system, Michigan and other football powerhouses (like Harvard and Vermont).
This article from 2018 says universities take plenty of Saudi money https://www.insidehighered.com/news...r-collaborations-saudi-arabia-after-khashoggi
I applaud that step, but the cynical side of me says those huge sums (endowments) are entwined with the dirty money somehow anyway. So it's grandstanding to an extent
There’s no way ND would miss the chance to take a ‘holier than thou’ stance of this magnitude by turning the Saudis down
I honestly think the federal government would step in and disallow this. As big as the blowback has been on the PGA, for SA to get into bed with the American higher education system would be even more ridiculous. Still a fun exercise.
I don't care for the idea that unless you do everything, you're just grandstanding (or virtue signaling, to use a more inflammatory term). In my experience that's a libertarian rationale for doing nothing.
USC is the Phil Mickelson in that they should be loaded with money already but are probably broke as shit because of scandalous behavior.