Why universities invest in luxury while their product deteriorates

The Facilities Upgrade Nobody Needed: Building a $30M Locker Room While Football Fails

The football team went 4-8 last year. The defense was historically bad. The recruiting class ranked 78th nationally. The coaching staff was in shambles.

The athletic director’s solution: A $30 million locker room renovation.

The Logic That Doesn’t Exist

“Our facilities are outdated. We’re losing recruits because other programs have better locker rooms.”

Actually, no. Recruits are going elsewhere because the team loses and the coaching is bad. A nicer locker room doesn’t fix either problem. But building a locker room is concrete (literally). Improving coaching is abstract and difficult.

The Facilities Hierarchy of Dysfunction

Problem: Team loses games.

Solution: Renovate the locker room. (We can point to something tangible.)

Problem: Coaching staff underperforms.

Solution: Renovate the football offices. (We can point to something tangible.)

Problem: Recruiting trails competitors.

Solution: Build a new practice facility. (We can point to something tangible.)

The one thing universities don’t do: Fire the head coach and hire someone competent. Because that requires admitting the previous hire was a mistake, and universities never admit mistakes.

Jerry Seinfeld once observed: “Why do we buy things we don’t need? Because we can point to them.” Universities buy locker rooms for the same reason. They can point to them in a donor presentation.

The Real Purpose

The locker room renovation has nothing to do with winning football games. It’s a donor recruitment tool.

“Look at our state-of-the-art facilities! Your donation helped build this!” (Never mind that the state-of-the-art facilities correlate with worse performance than before they were built.)

The locker room becomes a monument to dysfunction disguised as infrastructure. Players don’t win more games because the toilets are fancier. But the athletic director can show donors something tangible at the annual fundraiser.

Universities have mastered the art of looking productive while being incompetent. A $30 million locker room is the perfect expression of that principle.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.