Story by Jim Carty
The Ann Arbor News
April 2, 2006

For months now a handful of old guard University of
Michigan faculty, alumni and fans, headlined by a guy named
John Pollack and always-disgruntled-about-athletics former
school president James Duderstadt, have tried to generate
public outrage over the plan to renovate Michigan Stadium.

The latest volley was a public letter to the regents signed
by 33 mostly retired faculty members last week.

The petition brought a big front-page headline from the
Michigan student paper, which like all student newspapers
is righteously and indignantly opposed to anything the
administration favors.

But on a campus where you could get a hundred folks to
protest against pie a la mode ("a bourgeois perversion of
perfect pastry!"), 33 profs out of 2,700 grouching about
luxury boxes says more about defacto public approval than
anything else.

Pollack, who founded a Web site called SaveTheBigHouse.com
(despite never having attended Michigan and a current
address in Manhattan) will disagree with that, of course.

The Ann Arbor native spent almost a half hour on the phone
Wednesday portraying luxury boxes as a money-driven outrage
against all things good and holy in the world of maize and
blue.

His bottom-line message--stop the luxury boxes and save the
Big House!--sounds so noble until you stop to ask...save
the Big House from what?

Pollack's main point of outrage, leading the executive
summary of a lengthy briefing binder he presented to the
regents, is that luxury boxes would "physically divide
Michigan fans by income, visibly enshrining wealth and
privilege."

Huh?

To present a football game as some grand coming together of
the proletariat, or even the Michigan "family," is to
ignore the reality that football tickets are a luxury item,
just like a BMW, a ski trip or a $12 Zingerman's pastrami
sandwich for lunch (that's not a complaint, Ari, it's worth
every penny).

And are we talking French revolution here or a football
game? At $1,700 for a pair of season tickets on the 50-yard
line, the stadium is already visibly enshrining wealth and
privilege, no?

Oh, but that's OK, Pollack counters, because everyone is
sharing the same collective experience.

So, basically, this is about making sure the rich guys
suffer the same under the broiling sun of August and
September games and the freezing winds of November?

Wouldn't Mr. Lenin just love that.

Do the potential luxury box buyers also have to share their
tailgate spread? Should they be denied hot dogs unless they
buy one for everyone else?

See, the thing about utopian thinking is that utopia, by
definition, is a fantasy.

Let's talk reality, like the fact luxury boxes are good for
the little guy.

Luxury boxes will pay for a desperately needed stadium
renovation, ensure that everyone gets a wider seat and more
bathrooms, and keep ticket prices from continuing to rise.
(Pollack, incidentally, believes that in lieu of luxury
boxes, a ticket surcharge should help pay for the stadium
renovations, so he is in favor of making the little guy pay
more.)

When all the stadium loans are paid off, the boxes will
also help fund nonrevenue sports such as gymnastics,
wrestling and tennis--programs other schools are dropping
whenever budgets get tight--and for upgrading Michigan's
crumbling athletic facilities.

So, unless you honestly believe the world would be a better
place if we lived in the same-sized houses, drove the
same-sized cars and--for the good of the collective
experience--sat in the same football stadium seats, and you
support higher-priced football tickets in the future,
there's no reasonable philosophical or economic reason to
oppose luxury boxes.

There is, however, an aesthetic one.

Michigan Stadium certainly won't look the same with boxes
rising above both sidelines.

Maybe it looks worse, maybe it looks better, but it will
definitely look different. That's a concern, and to be
fair, part of Pollack's argument. He suggests that the new
project would "degrade the historic architecture of
America's quintessential, classic football stadium."

Perhaps...

But does he mean the structure that started out in 1927
with 84,401 seats? The one with wooden bleachers that
didn't include the current looming press box, not to
mention video scoreboards?

Or the one that, in 1949, was expanded to seat 97,239 on
steel bleachers, with a different press box?

Or the 1998 version that added the video scoreboards and
the halo (hmmm, probably not that one, given the halo and
all)?

The truth is, Michigan Stadium has always been an evolving
structure.

What the tiny anti-expansion movement is really pleading
for is to preserve an idea, that of "their" stadium and
"their" experience, the one they've known for decades now.

It's mostly a fear of change and longing for the good ol'
days, with a dash of anti-rich guy sentiment thrown in for
populist appeal.

They have little to no chance of succeeding.

This project, including luxury boxes, will go forward
because it has to go forward.

Michigan already is running its athletic department under
financial restrictions unheard of at most universities
trying to compete in big-time football and basketball.

While pretty much everyone else in the Big Ten has a
stadium full of advertising and a budget subsidized from
the university's general fund, Michigan goes without both,
all while actually buying every one of its scholarships
from the university.

That financial independence is admirable. Not one dollar
that could go to a professor's salary or classroom
renovation goes toward the football team.

But almost every other school in major college sports is
taking in money from all the sources Michigan uses, plus
stadium advertising, plus luxury boxes, plus subsidies from
the general fund.

It's like asking Lloyd Carr to win a football national
title with 70 scholarships while everyone else gets 85.

Adding luxury boxes goes a long way toward leveling the
financial field and allows Michigan athletic director Bill
Martin to renovate the stadium without a ticket surcharge
and stabilize the budget for the foreseeable future.

As long as the project is done tastefully and in keeping
with current Michigan Stadium architecture, everybody wins.

Well, not everybody.

Thirty two professors, one cranky former president, one guy
in New York who never even attended Michigan, the school
paper, and a small percentage of assorted other complainers
will paint the whole thing as the end of the world.

They'll weep for a utopian Saturday afternoon in an
unchanging stadium that never existed, all the while
ignoring budget realities they never have to be responsible
for.

Save the Big House?

Thanks, but it seems like the folks in charge are doing
just that.

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