Osler's Razor

Last Saturday was the first big weekend for college football. There were some intriguing outcomes, and even some upsets. Maryland beat Texas. Howard beat UNLV. And... Liberty beat Baylor 48-45. It was that last one that mattered to me, of course.

It was an embarrassing loss, especially since Liberty is a division below Baylor, in the FCS (or, as I still think of it, I-AA). Baylor hadn't lost to a lower-division school since 1981, and there were some very bad years for Baylor football mixed in there! It was the debut of new coach Matt Rhule, and a tough one.

I'm kind of ambivalent about the outcome. Baylor could probably use a little emphasis on football for a while, after all. Still, it was hard to watch...

Who is paying for that expensive team? A lot of it is coming from students. At Baylor, the undergraduates pay "fees" of $4,430 a year, on top of tuition, room and board. A lot of that is going to subsidize football. It matters, too. I noodled around and couldn't find a school with higher fees-- even Harvard students pay less.


Is this sustainable?