One of the things I loved about Reed was that it had no formalized teams. There were plenty of sports, and there was even a Reedie that went to some national competition in squash, but none of those distracting teams sucking up everyone’s attention (and money). UT Austin, on the other hand…

Morris has wrestled with some of these things, and engaged in an unfortunate experiment with scholarships in an effort to be more competative in Div II. Ultimately, though, we managed to arrange to move to Div III, which eliminates the scholarship issue and has made our teams more competative. I personally still have grave doubts about the wisdom of the resources and energy sucked up by the really expensive sports (esp. football), but it’s a lot better than it was.

…. of course to those of us who have lived in the Boise area it was even more exciting, if that is possible.

And, I agree with the rest of your post, too. I have watched my undergraduate alma mater transform from a nice university with some inspiring athletes associated (Steve Prefontaine …), to a division of Nike football program with a university attached. Not pretty if you ask me.