Washington Post on booster club donations
Author’s note: this is a piece I originally wrote for the Big East section of FanBlogs.com. Most of my football content for the foreseeable future will start either here or there, then migrate to the other site in slightly altered form.
On Saturday, the Washington Post ran a front-page story on the unique tax status of donations to college athletic programs and booster clubs. As I’m sure some readers know (because, if you have season tickets for your chosen university, it likely affects you directly), donations to a school’s athletic fund are considered tax-deductible at 80% of their face value. This involves Tech directly because the big-money focus of Tech athletics has increased greatly under AD Jim Weaver; required non-booster club donations are already in place for club seats in the new South End Zone stands, and when the West stands are renovated, the seats currently occupied by many long-term donors are rumored to become $1500-per-seat exclusives.
The Post gives the topic a mostly-fair treatment, conveying the view that I personally take with my donation to the Hokie Club, and suspect most boosters do as well: “Many donors say the tax deduction is of no consequence to them, that they are proud to donate to schools they love.” The scare quotes around “donation” at a couple points are a bit obnoxious, and given the Post’s known political slant, its exclusive focus on big-money donors in an article about an apparent tax break that all donors receive smells funny to this conservative.
At the end, the article veers into the traditional territory of whether athletics are really integral to the mission of a university, giving author James L. Shulman 3 paragraphs to make his anti-athletics case. (I do, at least, have to give the Post credit for finding an alternative to the usual resource for such discussions, Murray Sperber of Indiana University, known best for his public vendetta against Bob Knight.) All in all, it’s a good read for a bye week.
13 September 2003 / 0 Comments / Tags: football, politics, media