Hold athletic departments accountable

ksuwildcatUndocumented payments. A questionable $500,000 loan. A bank account unreviewed by the university controller that was used to make more than $1 million in payments a year. These and other revelations in the Kansas Board of Regents’ audit of Kansas State University suggest, at best, that oversight of KSU’s athletic department needed to be tighter in recent years. As our editorial today concludes: “Winning sports teams are important to the state universities, boosting fundraising and recruitment as well as school spirit. But if an athletic department behaves unethically or worse, the taint spreads across and beyond campus, and starts to erode public trust in what is a public institution.”

3 Comments

  1. Mr_Kia
    Posted June 23, 2009 at 2:47 pm | Permalink

    Wildcat Athletics is a $48,000,000* a year business.
    9th out of 12 schools in its conference.
    It’s been news recently that some people (Krause, Prince) have been paid wayyyy more than they deserve based on job performance. But universtiy bean counters getting involved in a business of that size that they really know nothing about is not the answer to fixing the problem.

    *2007-08 academic year.

  2. JimJohnson
    Posted June 23, 2009 at 9:55 pm | Permalink

    Since when is their trust in any public institution?

    And who cares?

    About as many folk cared about this topic that cared about this one:

    http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2009/06/few-donating-to-campus-repairs/

    The Government can spend as much money as it wants to, and who the he11 cares?

  3. JimJohnson
    Posted June 25, 2009 at 10:09 pm | Permalink

    What, a Government Institution could be fallible?

    Don’t say!