[Vision2020] UI Athletics

[B.C. Strand]

Nick Gier writes

"In response to an earlier post about the AFT call for a return to the 
Big Sky, I did indeed send our piece to Steve Peterson, who said that it 
did not contain any errors. Steve is a former A+ student of mine and 
also has done economic analyses for the union, but I'm a little 
concerned about a social scientist now apparently going partisan about 
IA affiliation."

First, I am curious when you state that Steve Petersen found no error in 
your piece. As we all know, this doesn't necessarily mean that he agrees 
with your conclusions. Did he agree with your conclusions?

Second, how is it that any conclusion drawn by Petersen regarding IA 
athletics are partisan? He performed a rigorous analysis (something I 
haven't seen from other sources) and came to a conclusion supported by 
the analysis. I asked him how much time was involved in doing this work. 
He responded that he had spent several man-months pouring over financial 
records to get the data to build and validate his models.

The results seem to contrary to the desires of many in the academic 
community. I've spent 25 years doing modeling work and have found that 
modeling sometimes points in undesirable directions. The procedure is 
then to examine the model, assumptions and inputs and identify possible 
errors. If the issue is attendance at football games, then test the 
sensitivity of this within the model. Unfortunately, too many times both 
sides in this type of argument are afraid to explore this because they 
are afraid that the conclusion may support the other team.

I received two degrees from Idaho, am affiliate faculty at the CheE 
department, my wife teaches and studies in the Forestry Dept and I spend 
two weeks out of the year trying to raise money for the ChE department 
(including sending my own check). Trust me when I say that I want money 
spent in the best way for education. At the same time, I want to 
acknowledge the positive effect of athletics at UI.

Bill Strand