Louisiana Voice

The news out of Baton Rouge last week was certainly uplifting insofar as local health care and medical research is concerned, but also fodder for critics of an LSU athletic program already considered bloated with money.

Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center (OLOL) and the Louisiana Children’s Medical Center (LCMC) combined to commit $245 MILLION over the next 10 years to LSU for medical research and treatment.

The biggest single commitment is $85 million to the LSU Athletic Department to be used “to deploy integrated clinical technology, facility improvements, and educational programming to advance student-athlete health and wellness – essential to sustain the vitality of LSU’s thriving athletic programs.”

Facility improvement and education programming? That $28 MILLION FACILITY, complete with sleeping pods, wasn’t enough? Especially when the LSU LIBRARY roof leaks like a sieve, forcing staff to cover books with plastic tarps. LSU already has more than $40 million in DEFERRED MAINTENANCE across its 15 million-square-foot campus.

LSU paid former head football coach Ed Orgeron and his fired staff nearly $27 MILLION to walk away – $17 million of that to Orgeron himself. And that doesn’t count the $100 million, 10-year contract for current head coach Brian Kelly and the $8.2 million for his ASSISTANT COACHES. One of those is quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan ($550,000), formerly the offensive coordinator for a Louisiana Tech team that went 3-9 last year.

The next-largest single allocation in the combined $245 million package is $40 million to “develop an end-to-end healthcare experience within the LSU Student Health Center and provide in-kind care to uninsured and underinsured LSU students.

Now, with some 35,000 students overall and just a couple hundred at most in the athletic program, how is it that $85 million goes to athletics and “only” $40 million to the rest of the student body? Just askin’.

And with all that money floating around for coaches’ salaries (the figures provided earlier included only the football program), it seems only reasonable that the Tiger Athletic Foundation (TAF) could pony up some of the money for deploying “integrated clinical technology, facility improvements, and educational programming to advance student-athlete health and wellness – essential to sustain the vitality of LSU’s thriving athletic programs,” especially those critical “facility improvements and education programming.”

I mean, what possible facility improvements could they be talking about – over and above what the jocks already have. And education programming? Aren’t there others among the 35,000-member student body who might benefit from some education programming?

And didn’t the OLOL Foundation experience a little PROBLEM with some fraud and money-laundering charges with its former PRESIDENT/CEO not too long ago that revealed some off-the-books support for LSU athletics?

Not that this allocation is in any way related to that fiasco, but I can’t help remembering that old adage from my wasted youth: once bitten, twice shy.

And we wonder why medical bills are so high.