“It’s not a perfect bill," said Baton Rouge Representative Steve Carter of his HB 971, a bill which would prohibit some public university athletic teams from traveling more than 375 miles for a game.
He admitted it was ill-conceived, but, he says, he was trying to make a point.
“One of the frustrations I have is that we don’t know what the priorities of this state are. In other words, is it infrastructure, is it higher ed, is it health? What is it? Everyday it changes and we have limited dollars, and higher ed has been cut quite a bit, as you all know," he said.
$870 million dollars of cuts to colleges and universities were realized under former Governor Jindal, during which Carter was Chairman of the House Education committee.
The bill would not apply to football or basketball teams. And LSU would be exempt.
“It looked like I was trying to protect LSU," says Carter, "but this only applies to those universities that accept state general funds that go into their athletic programs.”
LSU is one of only a few universities nationally where athletics show a profit. The other college sports in Louisiana receive a portion of higher education's total state general fund allocation. The total state subsidy to athletics is $49.5 million.
“Is this where these dollars should be spent," asked Carter, "or should we possibly be using some of these dollars for deferred maintenance? Maybe even utilizing dollars to fund more TOPS kids. Or maybe in the event - because we’ve cut back higher ed so bad - we could use these dollars to hire another professor.”
Again, he said, “I’m just trying to make a point.”
Carter voluntarily deferred the measure, meaning that rivalries - and conference contests - such as ULM vs Troy State, Louisiana Tech vs Marshall, UNO vs Central Arkansas, and Southern vs Prairie View, will continue...for now.