Let’s say there’s an institution in your town that does quite a bit of good, but gets most of its publicity from the spectacles it puts on for the public.  It just so happens that one day the organization discovers that the place in which they hold these spectacles has been turned, as if by magic, into a humongous pile of fecal matter.  The local news media fall over themselves to demonstrate how dried out and smelly the thing is, and the person in charge of putting on the spectacles, which are really the only reason that anyone outside of your area knows about the organization, threatens to find employment elsewhere unless that turd is replaced with something better.

So, after much hemming and hawing, not to mention shouting and gnashing of teeth, a new palace of spectacles is built.  It’s wonderful.  In fact, it is literally made of gold.  From the sub-basement to the highest peak of the roof, it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

Of course, it cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, most of which is being paid for with your taxes.  And you’re also on the hook to pay, again with your tax revenue, for a lot of the cost of running it and keeping the palace looking good.  But hey, they’re putting on not only the old type of spectacles, but also circuses, concerts, and lots of other fun things, so maybe the place will pay for itself.  Possibly.  After a few years. Maybe.

So one day you take your family down to see a show at the palace of spectacles, and it is indeed gorgeous.  But during a bathroom break, you notice a few cracks in the golden floor.  Looking down one of the cracks, you notice that the glitter of gold only extends down a few inches.  Asking the nearest attendant about it, you learn that it’s only gold plated, because nobody cares about anything but how wonderful the place looks.  You inquire as to what lays beneath the gold, and after much umming and awwing and shuffling of feet, she admits that under the gilding, it’s a big pile of feces, just like the last place.

Down the road, the other big palace of spectacles in the state has lost a lot of its golden covering, and the feces are really starting to shine through.  Imagine your surprise when you find out that the estimate for taxpayer funding to apply a new coat of gold paint, because who in their right mind is going to pay for gold plating these days, is $80 million.  Being the forward thinking person you are, you look at the local palace of spectacles, and estimate that you’re probably going to be on the hook for at least that much in a couple of decades when its gilding starts to rub off and the stench gets too powerful.

So there you are, a taxpayer, on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds for constructing your local gilded turd, and looking at hundreds of millions more over the next couple of decades to keep the shine on it, as well as the one just down the road.  But, hey, they put on such great spectacles!

At some point, people in Kentucky, if not the rest of the country, need to stop polishing and gilding turds so that professional sports organizations don’t have to pay for their own minor leagues.  Public  universities were established so that the children of a state could get a good education without having to go to the Ivy League for it, not so that grown men and women could bounce a rubber ball up and down a court or try to knock each other down while fighting over a vaguely egg-shaped ball.  We can’t afford this anymore here in Kentucky, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the country isn’t in the same shape.

My solution to the problem?  Quit using taxpayer money to fund any sports at the collegiate level.  Force the sundry athletic programs to be self-funded or get sponsorship from private entities such as alumni organizations or local corporations.  That funding should include the costs of the facilities they utilize, especially the opulent stadiums and practice facilities.  If they can’t do that, close them down, sell the stadiums to the highest bidder, and quit throwing good money after bad.

But, DB, you say, we just built the KFC Yum! Center.  Tearing it down or selling it would be a waste of all those hundreds of millions of dollars you were just complaining about.  I’d agree that doing so would be a tremendous waste, but that money’s a sunk cost, and it’s probably already been wasted, so what’s the point of continuing to pay to operate and keep up the stadium?  And don’t forget, in 20 years, we’re going to be faced with the blackmail of “If you don’t refurbish the Yum! Center, I’m going to quit and take my best players with me!”, which is how we got where we are in the first place.  At least, so far, the legislature has had the sense to not commit us to paying to refurbish Rupp Arena in Lexington, but I have little faith that they will stick to their guns in the long run.

Kentuckians need to stop giving into the blackmail, call the bluffs of the athletes, coaches, and athletic directors, and stop slapping a new coat of glittery whitewash on the turd that is collegiate sports.  I’ll gladly vote for $380 million in bonds to refurbish and improve the educational facilities of not only the universities, but also to reinvigorate our trade schools and improve our public elementary, middle, and high schools across the state.  But I balk at the cost of providing a palace for grown people to play and watch games.