Got 20 bucks in your wallet?

This archived article was written by: Trenton Kinney

When you enter the gym while attending a Utah State University-College of Eastern Utah men’s basketball game what do you notice? The parade of dunks by the extremely talented, and athletic players? Or maybe you the cheerleaders getting ready for their performances in between time outs. Not me, I noticed that our gym is smaller than my high school’s. With a top basketball team in the country, one that is always in contention for making it far in the playoffs, we shouldn’t be in a gym that looks like it was used back in the day when 3-pointers weren’t even around. After reading about the athletic fees in Utah for students attending USU-CEU, I can understand why our gym doesn’t look like the court the Utah Jazz or even the Weber State Wildcats play on and why our baseball team isn’t playing on an all-turf field.
Every student that attends a school must pay an athletic fee. Even if you are a “geek” that spends all of your time sitting around glued to the TV in your dorm you have to pay one. Athletics help schools pay for everything. Students that attend the University of Utah pay $152 towards the athletic programs, no wonder they play in such nice venues. At Utah State students pay $250, UVU $214, Weber State $127, SUU $104 and Dixie $115. Even other junior colleges pay a large amount. Salt Lake Community College students pay $60 and students at Snow College pay $42. Can you imagine how much that money helps with recruiting, venues, facilities, or equipment? Eastern Utah has the lowest athletic fees in all of Utah. Every student has to pay a staggering $20 athletic fee. What can that do for the programs here? All $20 can do is buy two meals for a player. I’m not saying we need to make it over $200, but let’s make it more than a single bill.
Maybe we have the lowest athletic fees because we don’t have all the programs other schools have. When I say programs, I mean we don’t have the biggest money-making program for any college, football. Maybe if we had football, the school would want to raise more money so we could have a winning tradition in something other than basketball.
Now that Utah has joined the PAC 12, football prices will be going up which won’t matter because they sell. If we had football to make this school more money then we won’t have super high athletic fees. I don’t want to sound like a politician and promise you something that may not come true, but I’m going to do it anyway. I promise you that if we had a football team at Eastern Utah, this school would raise a ton more money.
We could be watching the basketball team in a court that looks like it belongs to a pro team, or people could come watch the baseball team on a field that looks like Yankee Stadium, just a little smaller. All this can happen if we raise athletic fees for students, or start new teams at USU-CEU. Something needs to be changed because $20 is just not cutting it. If the U or BYU had $20 athletic fees, do you think they’d be successful at sports? I think not. Everything in this world is about money, I think it’s time for our school to raise more revenue for the athletes.