The $62 million dollar question 05/17/2025

Maybe sports programs at schools should be forced to have a bake sale to raise funds.
I suggest Ted Lasso's shortbread recipe.

The $62m question: does a high school really need a professional-style stadium?

         A 10,000-seat arena for a school in Georgia with fewer than 2,000 students raises questions about America’s sporting and educational priorities. The occupants of Phillip Beard Stadium, the Buford Wolves, are not a professional team or even a college one. They are high-schoolers. In the exorbitant world of high school football, Buford’s $62m, 10,000-capacity arena is not the biggest or most expensive taxpayer-funded student stadium in the US.

        When the television cameras pan around the US’s newest sporting temple to show the cavernous stands, elegant brick exterior, VIP suites and massive video board, viewers might believe they are looking at a professional venue.--SOURCE

Oh, how to spend that money INSTEAD....

My husband buys a lottery ticket every blue moon. First a dollar, then rising to two, now a $5 Mega Millions ticket is a tax on the poor we can't afford. We reserve the rare purchase on a billion dollar payout and occasionally after an even rarer week off work, always spent working around the house and catching up on sleep because we are the poor. 

I wouldn't have written that we were poor several years ago or even a decade ago when both children were living at home. Despite a higher household income at this point, we are now poor. Our mortgage hasn't risen but our escrow has thanks to higher home valuations forcing property taxes up and insurance markets reeling from compounding climate disasters. We now spend far more feeding three adults than our family of two adults and two growing, ravenous teens a decade ago. Our medical insurance for two costs more than the family plan did back then. And with today's higher premiums come higher copays, deductibles, and prescription prices.

Everything costs more. I buy the appliances, large and small, and can firmly attest to increases of 75% or more, often with fewer bells and whistles. I contract for the repairs and service for our property. Everything has gone up so all the labor and repair and maintenance costs are up, up, up. We spent $13,000 on a new roof two-three years ago. Gutters for the same straight line, two side roof are over $3,000 as of April. Blaming DOGE cuts, we backed away from that project. BTW, that quote didn't even include rain barrels, the real reason I pushed for a quote.

That rare lottery ticket purchase gives a moment's pause to dream. Mostly we fantasize of escaping to another country. We tug between Germany, my husband's favorite, and the Netherlands, my first choice. I imagine we'd actually settle in the UK amid menhirs and dolmens, a walk away from a rail line that can take us into any large city with its international denizens, city markets, curry shops, and museums. At our age, I dream of a driver chauffeuring us between sites in the big city. Darkened windows, a large comfy, plush seat, a privacy panel, all things I long for as I routinely drive with Lance playing DJ. The Crosstrek's barebones wash-it-down-with-a-hose-after-a-hike features leave a lot to be desired on any journey. As now, that golden-ticket fantasy is always quickly intruded upon by reality.

When I read this article about the $62 million football stadium, even after reading a local source, complete with pictures, I was reminded of my initial thought: How to spend that money instead. I am no stranger to excessive spending on sports as I live within a half hour of the state's premier university, home to the University of Georgia Bulldogs football team. One would have to be a non-American to have missed the ubiquitous fame of this collegiate team. Let's just say it's inescapable. I have known people who move from other parts of the US who arrive with either a love for or a hate of UGA football. Let's admit that stupid chant Goooo Dawg's, Sic 'Em followed by the even more annoying barking is as repulsive as the Philly Flyers' Gritty and dumber than the Atlanta Olympics Izzy.

I spent a weekend away with fellow Dawgs skiing, ice skating, and watching UGA win the Sugar Bowl in 1980. Back then the UGA bulldogs were led by failed senate candidate and former quarterback Hershel Walker, an example of why all athletes should be tested for TBI and stupidity. Let's put it this way- UGA, a prestigious, highly awarded, well endowed, public Southern Ivy university with over a dozen colleges, can put out some real idiots: Hershel Walker, Governor Brian Kemp, Rep Paul Broun, Jr, and Ralph Reed to name a few. Unfortunately the staff has included Henry Schaeffer, III whose support of Intelligent Design, is a disgrace to the science he purports to teach. I can't begin to list all the pro-slavery  Civil War supporting, and anti desegregation governors, legislators, and military men and Klan members the UGA has produced in its 240-year history. So no matter how much money you sink into a program, there will be some real stinkers in the mix. 

One might argue that the Dawgs rake in the dollars for the area and the university. But it's the UGA Athletic Department, not UGA, with separate sporting coffers over $200 million. Despite this, UGA students are still required to pay athletic fees. An aside: the current UGA semester fees are four times my total tuition bill for a quarter, more than twice as much when counting by months. UGA was one of the last universities to switch from quarters to semesters. Any surprise given they were one of the last to stop singing pro-Confederacy songs like "Dixie". And they celebrated a week each spring with frats building floats with boys in Confederate uniforms and South Belles in poufy pastel, crinoline dresses. ♫ Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton. Old times there are not forgotten...♫ Look away! Look Away.

That a high school football stadium in Georgia should cost- dare I say it- more than the UGA coach's annual salary is still jaw dropping. The high school is in Gwinnett County, GA, part of the metropolitan Atlanta area, a place we frequent often. We go to Buford Highway Farmer's Market a couple of times a year. The market is in a neighboring county but less than 30 miles away, in other words over a hour's drive away. White flight and increasing international and multi-ethnic communities are a staple of the area. The high school is located in Gwinnett County with a former population of 90% white in the 1990s, now with a better mix overall with a third white, a quarter Hispanic, nearly a third black, and numerous Asian and other ethnic groups filling in the gaps. The town of Buford, home to this mega stadium, beats the trend at half white, a quarter Hispanic, and 15% Black (the national average), so I doubt any arguments can be made about demographic inequality and more about wealth inequality. Every large city has used tax payers dollars to build stadiums for the millionaire, billionaire, villainaires who pay a pretty penny for professional players to dance a dance and take a TBI for the team. In the end, it seems the only thing this $62 million dollar football stadium speaks to is the growing wealth gap between the haves and have nots and who really foots the bill. 

When former President Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, he instituted a policy that state funds allocated for education should not be spent per person but rather towards the institution. Of Georgia's 159 counties, the population remains centered in five to seven major population hubs. As taxes were used to determine school budgets, most rural schools failed to meet the needs of all of their students. There wasn't money in the budget for handicapped children, children with learning disabilities, or even for adequate school libraries. Under Governor Carter, every county Board of Education could access funds to potentially meet the needs of its student population. 

For the first time, blind students did not have to be sent away to the state's only blind school. Handicapped students did not have to miss out on attending classes. Special needs children from the learning impaired to gifted and talented students found they had access to teachers trained to meet their needs. Classroom teacher to student ratios fell. Libraries were stocked and AV labs were set up. Dedicated music and art programs were funded. And sports opened up to many. While not all needs were met initially, Carter started a system of sharing the wealth to better educate all citizens. This benefitted the poorest, the least populated areas, the most rural of Georgians, many of whom do not see the dissonance of utilizing these programs as they voted for Trump and his minions to undo many programs at the federal level that work hand-in-hand with states to serve the underserved.

In the second American gilded age when millionaires and billionaires influence guts public programs for measly tax breaks, a $62 million dollar high school stadium seems a small expenditure for the Zuckerbergs, Bezos, and Musks of the world. None of these men are known for their philanthropy. There are no more Carnegie libraries or Guggenheim and Getty Museums being erected. This stadium was built using funds from the city of Buford's general funds according to the city manager, not the Gwinnett County Board of Education. 

As a Georgian, every year I receive a property tax bill that specifies the amount going to the county, to the city, and another amount to the Board of Education. It sounds like these city residents were taxed by the city to pay for something that is undeniably in the education board's purview. I can't speak to future investment in the community, ad dollars, the number of citizens who will relocate so their kids go to school there, or the traffic mayhem of policing a stadium this size. But I do wonder how much better this money could have been spent in a city that suffers from the same cost-of-living crises we are are all undergoing. And that includes those rising taxes we struggle to pay as housing costs skyrocket and home taxes increase. Add in the resultant soaring home insurance bills. It becomes clear the regular citizens footed the bill. Will the Buford residents be happy paying extra sitting on aluminum bleachers while the elites tower above them in climate controlled boxes with the libations flowing, caterers on hand, seated in their large, comfy plush seats, a glass partition separating them from the formerly middle classes overburdened by the Trump economy. Don't count me in; I'll rewatch Ted Lasso if I want to watch some real football.