Wait, now UW football needs even more money to keep up with The Big Ten? I’m tired.

We’re going to pay for Washington’s move to the Big Ten.

At least we’re going to be asked to. Repeatedly and with increased urgency if the past two months are any indication. Speaking as a Husky fan and alum of the school, I have to admit that I’m getting tired of hearing about how much (more) money Washington needs to keep up with the Joneses.

“The Big Ten is an arms race in itself,” coach Jedd Fisch said.

This was on Sept. 9, five days before Washington faced its in-state rival in a non-conference game played at an NFL stadium. Fisch had been asked about the $1 million contribution he and his wife had made to kickstart the school’s campaign to raise $300 million over the next five years.

“We’re going to need it all,” Fisch said of that $300 million. “We’re going to need it and then some because if we want to compete with the greatest programs and the top teams, we see what they’re doing.”

On the one hand, I respect Fisch for being very blunt about what he sees as a financial imperative facing the program.

On the other hand, I’m beginning to feel like the mark who’s sitting in front of a carnival game at the midway aiming a water pistol into the mouth of a clown, inflating a balloon as a gravelly voiced barker urges me to keep pouring my money into this game if I’m serious about winning a big prize.

You see, I’m old enough to remember 16 months ago when I was told that Washington absolutely had to move to the Big Ten otherwise it would be relegated to a lower rung of college football’s food chain. My opinion that Washington should stick with the conference it had been in for more than 100 years was deemed stupid, and it would have meant Washington would become a farm team for those schools whose conferences were hooked into more lucrative television deals.

Well, since Washington left the Pac-12, the Huskies have lost two athletic directors and one football coach to other jobs, and now I’m hearing in fairly explicit terms just how much financial ground the Huskies have to make up in their new conference. Instead of providing a financial boost, it would seem the move to the Big Ten has amplified the pressure.

Perhaps this confirms the truth of an observation made by the rotund urban philosopher Notorious B.I.G.: mo’ money, mo’ problems. As in Washington needs to go and get mo’ money or it will have mo’ problems.

The fact that I’m beginning to roll my eyes makes me question my own passion.

I’ve always felt like I was a good though definitely not great Husky fan. I graduated from the school in 1997, and later joined three of my college roommates in buying season tickets, which we kept even after three of us were living out of state.

We never joined the Tyee Club, but after the COVID-impacted season of 2020, I voted to donate my share of the season-ticket expense to the athletic department’s general fund. I’ve gone to both Rose Bowls Washington reached since I graduated and I was in New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl last season, and the win over Texas was one of the most emotional experiences as a fan.

But I am also feeling like the loyalty I hold toward my school is being leveraged to fund an enterprise that has become a professional sport in everything but its name.

There is no earthly reason that I should know that Michigan’s new locker room cost $7 million, yet I do. The reason I know is because Fisch mentioned the price tag during that same press conference. He also talked about his hope of getting zero-gravity chairs for the locker room as well as Normatec boots. I had to look those up on the Internet to learn that they’re compression boots that help athletes recover. The ones I saw cost $700 a pop.

The implication is clear: If Washington wants to compete, it needs to raise more money.

Just this week, Washington announced a new division of its athletic department that will … ummm … “increase revenue opportunities and business partnerships within the shifting landscape of collegiate athletics.”

The description doesn’t get any less unwieldy in the second paragraph of the press release which stated this new department, Dawgs Unleashed, will “operate as a centerpiece of a collaborative group of internal and external units.” I read that release four times and I’m still not entirely sure what the division does. I just know it has something to do with developing marketing deals and influencer opportunities so players will get paid.

Some people will wonder whether a public university should be paying people to create what are essentially private marketing deals that the players – and their agents – could get on their own.

I’m of the opinion that train left the station a long time ago, though. After all, in most states it is a college coach who is the highest-paid public employee, and while you can say that demonstrates how skewed the priorities are, the reality is that it demonstrates how skewed the economics are.

College athletic departments are their own multi-million, perhaps even multi-billion, businesses, and they operate as their own island within the larger university. You simply can’t operate a modern college football program in the same way you do a history or physics department.

I am, however, tired of hearing about the specific economic challenges that these college athletic programs are facing. More specifically, I’m getting tired of the expectation that fans should feel compelled to make up the difference.

Even the Mariners don’t talk this much about money, and while we may complain about how much they spend on the team, they’re not hitting us up for money to help cover the costs. The Seahawks don’t point to what the 49ers are spending and announce a Kickstarter campaign.

Perhaps this is a tipping point for me: the moment I become the old man who decides the new music is too loud. I am turning 50 in about a month.

I’m still going to watch the Huskies play even if the games start at 9 a.m. Pacific. I’m going to buy hats and T-shirts I don’t need and it would take profound illness or abject poverty to keep me from attending a Rose Bowl game that Washington was invited to.

But I’m opting out of the financial hysterics. I’m not going to obsess over TV ratings or broadcast contracts, and while I do hope that Washington’s new coach finds a way to get those $700 compression boots in every locker, I’m not going to compel myself to invest in that particular effort, either.

This has become a professional sport, and it’s time the schools started acting like it.

Danny O’Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger, but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He’s covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com.

This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 10:12 AM.