Is the school spirit really that bad???

<p>Slorg: You forgot to mention that the $250 is over a FOUR YEAR period.</p>

<p>It's still $250. Spreading it out doesn't change that fact.</p>

<p>250 dollars is still 250 dollars, but 250 dollars over a FOUR YEAR period seems pretty much negligible to me. do the math...how much do you have to pay per day over the four years to equal the 250 dollars? its pretty much NOTHING! and i'm more than willing to pay that for the benefits the school will get out of it</p>

<p>I'm proud of being a Triton even though we don't have a football team.</p>

<p>Ok, can you please send me $500? If you spread it out over 8 years, it's negligible!</p>

<p>The period doesn't change a thing. That logic is what gets people snookered by financing deals and into debt.</p>

<p>slorg...</p>

<p>it depends on what you'll do for me. if you give me TWO football teams then i will haha!! of course the period changes things...thats why we all have credit cards...to spread out what we owe. this is what makes it possible to own what we have; its a lot easier that way. but of course you have to know what you're capable of paying back. (250 dollars over 4 years is definitely feasible; 250 dollars would hardly put you into serious debt). we're ALL in debt; are you saying you're not planning on ever using credit cards or things of that kind??
we're not simply going to give the money for NOTHING; we're getting a football team in return. there will be LOTS of benefits once the football team is established</p>

<p>slorg, you say you don't watch or play football, so obviously you have no interest in having a school football team. you said you would only be willing to have a football team if it was free; however, nothings free. its understandable that you wouldn't be willing to pay any amount of money (however "negligible" it would be) to have a football team established. all i'm saying is that to those who DO want a football team, 250 dollars over four years is really a small price to pay; it's practicaly nothing compared to what we'll get out of it.</p>

<p>you're looking at this in a very narrow way....</p>

<p>enlighten me then...</p>

<p>Credit cards should almost never carry debt. The interest rates are way too high. I have a credit card, but I always pay the balance in full. Always. Keeping a balance doesn't just spread out what you owe; it increases what you owe by a ton.</p>

<p>What exactly are the tangible benefits of having a football team? Are they worth $250? No.</p>

<p>I play basketball very frequently with my friends. I also watch basketball on TV very often. I wouldn't even pay $25 in order to have a UCSD basketball team.</p>

<p>$250 is a huge amount of money. It's like a week of a minimum-wage, full-time job. I think we look at the value of money differently. I'm so stingy that I always drink water at restaurants. Soda, especially, is where fast food joints' biggest profit margins are.</p>

<p>Spreading out what you owe doesn't change the fact that you owe it.</p>

<p>of course it doesn't change the value you owe (it actually increases it), but it makes some things more managable to pay. i'm sure you'll agree there are some things that you can't possibly afford to pay immediately in full.</p>

<p>well of course the benefits of having a football team aren't "tangible." unless you like to get off by touching the football players haha. the thing is...to me, it is DEFINITELY worth paying $250.</p>

<p>wow...you wouldn't even pay $25 dollars for something which you would participate in??!! (what if it was spread out over four years?? haha jk)</p>

<p>i guess we do have a VERY different value of money. i guess it just comes down to the fact that you don't want to spend any of your money if you can help it. </p>

<p>by the way, i don't drink soda at restaurants either. but that's just because i don't drink soda at all; its not because of the price. at least we have something in common haha.</p>

<p>Taking out loans for a house makes sense in four ways. First, you're building equity (unlike the football team). Second, the interest rates are much lower (unlike a credit card). And third, you can enjoy the product while you pay for it (so the extra interest can be thought of as rent). Fourth, real estate has historically gone up in value over time (so this can be considered a leveraged investment).</p>

<p>There's usually no point in financing something you can afford (like $250). Just like there's no point in getting insurance for cheap things. They are both unnecessary -EV proposititions.</p>

<p>I obviously didn't mean tangible's definition of "capable of being perceived by the sense of touch." I meant it as "capable of being appraised at an actual or approximate value."</p>

<p>And I'd pay $25 if I was on the basketball team. The problem is that I'm not good enough at basketball.</p>

<p>Honestly though, I'd rather save for retirement than have a football team.</p>

<p>well what you said is really what it comes down to. 228 (that's the actual value of it; i don't know why we started saying it was $250) dollars is affordable...especially over four years.</p>

<p>and as for the "actual or approximate value" of it...well it's tens of thousands of dollars...and you're only paying 228 dollars of it!! over four years! what a bargain! haha. and i'm sure that all the money you save by not drinking soda more than makes up for the 19 per month you'd pay :)</p>

<p>i'm sure you realize that you don't benefit from sports only by participating in them. you also benefit by watching them. millions and millions of sports fans don't participate in them yet pay extragavant amounts of money to watch them. however, i'm assuming that you'd only pay the $25 if you were actually ON the team?</p>

<p>I hate that logic. Just because something is affordable, doesn't mean you should buy it.</p>

<p>So you believe that the benefits of having a UCSD football team are equal to $250??</p>

<p>Sorry. I thought you meant on the team by "participating." And yes, I'd only pay $25 if I was on the team.</p>

<p>Here's the deal: I can still watch football or basketball if UCSD doesn't have a team. Nothing prevents me from doing that. Even if the benefit of watching sports is over $1000 doesn't mean the marginal benefit of one local team is worth $250.</p>

<p>no well i believe the value of it is tens of thousands of dollars (i edited it :))...of course thats by the definition of being "capable of being appraised an actual or approximate value."</p>

<p>So we've settled that it's affordable. Now tell me, at what point does it mean you should buy something??</p>

<p>When i said "participate" I also meant the activity of watching it.</p>

<p>And, yes, you can still watch football outside of UCSD, but the whole point of this thread was school spirit. A football team would largely help the current lack of spirit. (i know you don't really care about school spirit so w/e)</p>

<p>I agree; the marginal benefit of the team wouldn't be 250 dollars. It would actually be priceless. The amount of exposure the school could potentially get in the future through a football team would have immense benefits.</p>

<p>
[quote]
well i believe the value of it is tens of thousands of dollars

[/quote]

[quote]
it's worth 250 dollars

[/quote]

[quote]
It would actually be priceless.

[/quote]

??? Please explain.</p>

<p>
[quote]
A football team would largely help the current lack of spirit.

[/quote]

Untrue. How would it largely help school spirit if most students don't want a team? For example, Caltech has lots of school spirit but no football team.</p>

<p>Your arguments are illogical. You have not presented any examples or reasoning. You have no sources. You are making numbers up. Plus, I'm right.</p>

<p>Anyway, I believe the lack of school spirit is due the school's segmented and commuter populations, not a lack of football. UCSD has many successful sports teams, and I don't understand why football is fundamentally different from any other sport.</p>

<p>Here's some numbers. Compared to other UC schools, UCSD has the least number, percentagewise, of students happy with their decision to go to UCSD at 43%. <a href="http://www.studentsreview.com/CA/UCLJ.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.studentsreview.com/CA/UCLJ.html&lt;/a>
Many of the complaints stem from lack of school spirit and Div 1 sports, notably football. UCLA, Cal, and Stanford have strong traditions of football and students have pride in those schools. UCSD, for it's size, has no reason to not have more Division 1 teams. If UCSD had a football team, I could guarantee that students would end their complaining about school spirit and social life. It is an important aspect of college life. Many endowments from other schools are attatched to boosters and sports supporters. There's more to college than libraries and engineering labs.</p>

<p>"I don't understand why football is fundamentally different from any other sport."</p>

<p>OK. I am out of this debate.... can you say, "Out of touch?"</p>

<p>Maybe I am out of touch. Can you explain it to me please?</p>

<p>Football is the mecca of college sports. On college campus' across the country it attracts crowds in excess of 100K people. (Michigan, Tennessee, Penn St.) It produces nearly 2/3 of sports revenue on many campus'. The booster organizations are in the millions, with schools like UCLA and Berkeley with 10's of thousands of members. The BCS has a contract with ABC worth something like a half a billion dollars. It increases school spirit dramatically. Many frat and sorority houses shut down during footbal games and there are all types of pre game rituals from the bonfire at Texas A&M to the Tiger Walk at LSU. It increases school exposure and creates ties to the university across the country. Wouldn't it be great to see the UCSD Tritons on TV? It would be awesome to have an on campus facility where we go and watch UCSD battle other schools. This would bring a campus together that is fragmented with the college system. Case in point, Harvard (which the college system was modeled after) sells out all of their games. Is UCSD more ahead of the curve than the Ivies? I don't think so. When water polo and volleyball attract tailgaters from across the country let me know.</p>