How long will it be until the next Kansas governor stands before his or her people during their state of the state address extolling the virtues of increasing taxes in furtherance of improving KU basketball or returning K-State football to its former glory?
Louisiana, my home state, is doing this right now. Earlier this week, while discussing compensating fired LSU coach Brian Kelly more than $50 million remaining in his contract, Gov. Jeff Landry vowed to intervene in finding the next LSU head coach.
I cut my teeth in journalism covering Louisiana legislators. When it comes to political corruption, the Cajun brand deserves a chef’s kiss. It’s a delightful concoction of one part greed, one part stupidity and a dash of desperately needing their constituents to know they are important. LSU football is often the manifestation of state corruption.
It started with Gov. Huey Long, my favorite and least favorite politician. During the Great Depression, Long decided LSU needed a football expansion and sold it as expanding student housing. Today, Tiger Stadium houses more than 120,000 fans every home game but never housed a student.
To generate more NIL (name, image and likeness) money, Landry spearheaded an effort to tax broadcasters by increasing broadcasting rights fees. Great, stick it to ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC and all of those liberal networks. It starts with an obscene number to the major networks, but smaller universities use those figures to determine their fees, and it trickles down from there until somebody at a small newspaper or radio station hears a high school athletic director say there will be a $1,500 fee per game to livestream football.
I can’t speak for Iola stations; but I know corrupt streaming practices killed dozens of local broadcasters and newspapers airing high school games across North Carolina and Missouri. It will happen in Kansas, just wait.
