Betting the farm. On a stadium.

How one university is going for broke with a new stadium.

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting story about Colorado State University’s plan to solve all of its problems with a new stadium. The University is, in common with many other public institutions in the US, in a difficult financial position. But the response at Colorado State is a distinctive one – they are planning to build a new football stadium at a cost of $226 million as the way out of the crisis.

So, what’s the plan?

Colorado State is a middling football team in the Mountain West Conference, competing against respectable but not stellar athletic programs. The stadium plan relies on the hypothesis that if the university has great facilities, it will be able to recruit better athletes, sell more tickets and (this is the end game) attract more out-of-state students to help make up for a steep drop in state funding.

“At the end of the day, athletics is part of what drives national attention for the university,” said Kyle Henley, director of public relations and business and community development for the Colorado State system. “We’re a university on the rise and fundamentally, at the end of the day, if we’re not part of that national conversation at the athletic level, we’re missing out on opportunities.”

Yet some sports economists and faculty members who say they’re being stonewalled by the administration are warning against the gamble.

Colorado State President Tony Frank has vowed to keep the process public, and CSU System Chancellor Mike Martin said “the fact that we haven’t publicly debated those folks, doesn’t mean [their economic projections] aren’t relevant to our discussions.”

It’s a bold move but really seems like an extraordinarily optimistic and expensive gamble. It’s hard to imagine a similar move happening in the UK.