Fiesta Bowl shenanigans
Posted: March 30 11, 8:40 pm
Fun stuff.
Want to know how a law-abiding citizen can pay state income tax in West Virginia only to have some of those dollars placed into a stripper's G-string in Phoenix by a corrupt bowl official? Follow the money.
Anyone who paid state income tax in West Virginia in fiscal 2007 probably helped pay for West Virginia University's athletics program. Only a handful of universities have truly self-sufficient athletics programs. West Virginia's program is not one of them. Public money must be used to subsidize the department, either through student fees, bond issues or transfers from the university's general fund. So chances are, any West Virginian who dutifully filed a return in April 2008 had some of his or her tax dollars diverted to the Mountaineers athletics program.
That year, the Mountaineers needed a little extra cash. In 2007, they won the Big East football title. That earned them a spot in the Fiesta Bowl. West Virginia fans, disappointed that a loss to Pittsburgh had cost the team a chance to play for the national title, purchased only 7,981 of the 17,500 tickets the Fiesta Bowl requires participating schools to buy. The school had to eat the cost of the tickets as well as pay a considerable amount to bring the football team, band, cheerleaders and various assorted muckety-mucks to Phoenix for a week. The Mountaineers beat Oklahoma on Jan. 2, 2008, but West Virginia's athletic department lost more than $1 million on the trip.
The ticket guarantee money went to the Fiesta Bowl, which later that year cheerfully paid the corporate American Express bill of CEO John Junker despite the fact that one of the charges on said bill was a $1,241.75 excursion in September to a gentlemen's club called Bourbon Street with a bowl employee and a consultant.
Still think the bowls are all about the student-athletes?
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/w ... z1I8yjfpkg