There are numerous reasons to complain about student fees. Most of them are clichéd and not worth the level of publication they get in the opinion section of college papers.

Sixty-two dollars for recreation? There are plenty of people who pay more money for gym memberships they don’t use.

Five dollars and 50 cents for Music/Theatre? Creative bookkeepers could probably turn that into a tax write-off and at some point every student has heard $6 worth of Schubert as they pass the Fine Arts building.

Even the $40 dollars that ASUW takes every semester so that they can play “Mr. Smith goes to the Union to hammer out how much money the Voodoo club gets for their spring mixer” is defensible to the point that it forces an extra two cases of beer’s worth of sobriety on each member of the student body.

What is not defensible is the $77.50 that the Athletics department takes from us so that we can all enjoy the fine product they put out every semester. The price went up from $65. The extra $12.50 must be to pay for the chance to see the football team get their heads handed to them by Nebraska.

In the last three years, the combined records of the football and men’s basketball teams are 53-82. Why just the records of those two teams? Let’s face it; the athletics department pushes them the most. They are the most marketable sports and they are the primary teams at Wyoming. At 53-82 the combined powers of the football and basketball teams is laughable, at best. However, once you strip away the non-conference games, which are largely made up of rec-league teams and intramural squads, the Cowboys football and basketball team are 19-53. That is a .358 winning percentage. Good for a batting average, bad for the combined records of two teams. I would think those two squads could get 19 combined wins if they switched and played each other’s sport. At least the games would be more interesting that way.

Finally, for those who drink just enough before these games to think about a miraculous upset, consider this: The Cowboys football and basketball teams have played a ranked opponent 21 times in the last three years. They are 0-21 in those games.

In that time the students were charged $65 dollars a semester until this year when they were charged $77.50. That means that in three years, students have paid nearly $22 for every conference win that the two Cowboy teams have had.

Does anyone go to these games? No. What reason is there to go? Public intoxication is discouraged, and the student section’s tradition of yelling a two-word phrase after the PA encouraged us to chant “first down” was taken away. I can see why the athletic department went that route. If the team is going to lose you might as well make sure the students who fund this debacle are restrained from having a good time.

Students should be given a free beer for showing up but instead we get a clip of the four mediocrely impressive plays from the previous year with the assertion that what is running on the screen somehow stands for what it means to be a Cowboy. I sure hope finishing 7-6 with a win in a bowl game sponsored by the state of New Mexico doesn’t represent what being a Cowboy is all about. I know for sure that battling to be the first team out of the Mountain West tournament doesn’t.

The amount of money that I will have spent to watch the Cowboys be terrible over the course of my collegiate career would have been enough to buy season tickets for the Denver Nuggets for one season. I could have bought two bottles of 20-year-old bourbon for that money or more than 30 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Instead, I have three years of futility and the hopes of a new coach in the basketball program. Larry Shyatt may have what it takes but he’s walking into a hole so big that one has to wonder if a George Bush was involved in digging it. Christensen has made some good moves (though cutting out the first down bleep chant in his first year was not one of them) but the best news the Cowboys have had on the gridiron is that the conference elite are leaving.

I sure didn’t get $415 worth of entertainment from Wyoming sports in three years, and I wouldn’t bet that same amount that I’ll get $150 worth of entertainment next year.

By the way, I’m well aware that the logical response to this is to wonder if Student Media provides students with $16.50 worth of news every semester. Maybe. Maybe not. But we certainly don’t discourage you from drinking while you read, and our policy on the first amendment actually encourages you to yell as many profanities as you like. You can even email them to our opinion editor if you like.

Tom Hesse

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