I normally am not a liar, especially not for a free shirt. I demand honesty from my donors, who tend to be friends. Likewise, I stive to be honest with the people who give me a shirt for free. Even if the honesty is that I do not like their product, that is what they deserve for going through the trouble to get me the free shirt. However, in this case I must admit I fell below standard.

I saw a table of shirts being laid out on the first day of classes about a few hundred feet from where I found the AT&T shirt. I asked the woman behind the counter if the shirts would happen to be for free. She said they were if I were to attend at least one YSU activity. She tried to get me in the trap that a lot of the credit card companies attempt wherein if I do something for them I get a shirt for free. That is not free, friends. That is payment. However, I grabbed a shirt and I did not go to any event, so I suppose I never earned the shirt. Thus, it is still free.

College sports outside of Division I-A are a drain on the institution. No one outside of the region of a smaller school in will care even if the school's program wins. If no one is caring, not as much money is coming into the school. Large stadiums, equipment, advertising, travel expenses, etc. cost funds that could be going towards academics (which idelly is the stated reason universities exist).

Furthermore, outside of football and men's basketball there is not a whole lot of money to be made. Kent went to the Sweet 16 in basketball and YSU won 4 division II-A football championships (only because of Ohio State's current coach Jim Tressel) at universites that I have attended. Did people outside of the region care? No. There was shock over Kent State getting that far. YSU's victories barely got any press since at that time they were in a lesser division.

I do support Title IX, which requires the women's sports to remain if there are men's sports but would rather the whole enterprise be disposed of at least at universities that I go to. Sadly, I know that is not likely unless I can get into a small private school somewhere, which probably would not have any programs that I would be interested in pursuing.