Joe Burrow going viral for deleted clapback at LSU professor
LSU’s new locker room and football facility have been all the rage the past 24-plus hours. Unveiled Sunday night, people have been buzzing on social media all day Monday about the locker room.
Any time a college athletic department spends big money, the critics come out. Many athletic departments function as their own independent corporations, but to outsiders, it looks like a university prioritizing football over education.
One critic of the new football facilities was LSU mass communication professor Robert Mann. He quote-tweeted the official LSU Football account showing off the new locker room. Mann wrote, “Meanwhile, across campus, I vacuum my faculty office with a Dust Devil I bought at Walmart.”
Tigers QB Joe Burrow had a comeback so strong it’s going viral even after being deleted.
“Why, professor, do you feel entitled to the fruits of our labor?” Burrow wrote in a quote-tweet that has since been deleted.
Check out a screenshot of the exchange via @valleyshook and @olmec26 on Twitter:
Burrow has kept up a quote-tweet reply to a tweet pointing out that the locker room was funded by a private donation to the Tiger Athletic Fund:
Also the money we bring into the university could have more than paid for it even if we didn’t have such generous boosters. https://t.co/WeO6sYvI48
— Joey Burrow (@Joe_Burrow10) July 22, 2019
The larger college football programs usually generate a lot of revenue for academics, but football is like any other area of life – you have to spend money on good facilities to have a successful program and continue to make money.
LSU football is completely self supported and gives about $7 million a year to the academic side of the house. The professor should complain to whoever controls that money. They ought to be able to get him a vacuum. Or, he should charge folks to watch him work, then he can be self supporting also.
A&M gets a lot of grumbling from the academic staff regarding athletic spending as well. The way I see it is these kids are usually sacrificing their long term health to play ball/ get a degree & maybe get a shot at a NFL career. Some creature comforts are warranted from those SECN bucks.
I do believe this was all private donations.
It’s the same at all universities. I understand the angst of professors that abhor the variance in spending between academics and athletics, but you can’t bite the hand that feeds you. If it weren’t for athletics, a large number of these professors would be without a job. Just look at the enrollment numbers at Alabama since 2007. It’s not a coincidence.
Glad somebody else “gets it”. When was the last time the marching band, volleyball team, tennis team, golf team, swim team, et al sent a “thank you note” to football for the financial support?
There are plenty of universities that do quite well without significant athletic contributions.
In general, it is also very much incorrect to suggest that a significant amount of the academic budget comes from athletics.
LSU brought in $56,000,000 in profit from the football team in 2018. I am sure there are “plenty” of universities doing well without athletic contributions but LSU would not be one of them.
Well that $56 million isn’t all going into the university, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be close to the largest funding source for LSU. Given state budget issues, I’m not sure I’d say LSU is doing well, and they would certainly notice if athletics went into the red, but it’s inaccurate to represent the university as primarily dependant on athletics.
Since I can’t respond to your comment below I will do it here. If you look back at my post I never said LSU was doing well. You pointed out that plenty of universities do quite well without the athletic contributions, however, LSU would not be on that list. Also if the profit from the football team isn’t going to the university where is it going? Lastly, no one claimed the university was “primarily” dependant on athletics, just that they do play a part.
LSU Athletic department contributes more to the school via scholarship money (required) than it donates. The amount that athletics donates to the university isn’t enough to make or break the university.
Most of the profit from the football team is going to the other athletics programs that are operating at a loss.
Awesome so it is still being used by the university. Got it – thanks!
That isn’t a gift/donation; it’s what they owe and are obliged to pay.
1) Athletic departments run budgets separate from universities.
2) They have money to spend and they can’t pay the players, so this is just a form of player compensation.
Im sorry but thats how it works. I would think that most of the time the football program is going to get more focus than cleaning a professors room, thats just how it is. In a perfect world there would be enough money and time for everyones needs to be met
Almost all the people who actually pay for college athletics clean their own office, office building, yards, parking lots, and shoulder of the road in front of their buildings…. and some of them do it with a broom, because they know a dust devil isn’t an efficient investment. Socialism is what makes people not understand what efficient investments are.
That makes no sense at all. No professors are paying anything for college sports, unless they are fans and choose to donate to a booster organization. LSU sports gives millions to the academic side of the house, while taking nothing. Not sure what socialism has to do with anything here.
I think he’s implying that the people that donate or generate the funds for football probably don’t have someone to clean their offices because it’s not a wise investment. And I’m guessing the socialist comment was because of the national trend in higher education to demonize capitalism.
That doesn’t make any sense either. People that make a good living have others clean their offices, and it is a very wise investment in their time. The guy making $100 an hour can pay someone $15 an hour to clean their office. They almost all do. Having $100 an hour people doing $15 work is a terrible investment.
You’re talking about large corporate offices. The mom and pop shops (small businesses) usually clean their own stores or have their own employees do it.
…and I’m not saying the professor should be vacuuming his own office. Just trying to make sense of the original comment. I would actually be shocked if the university doesn’t have a facilities dept that doesn’t take care of vacuuming offices. Maybe they just don’t do it as often as the professor likes.
I’m guessing the janitors clean the offices that aren’t shut and locked. Based on my experience, professors don’t have (or need) large carpeted offices, so I’m not really sure where the dirt devil is getting used.
If I pass by a convenience store, I see employees emptying trash cans and doing cleanup. I gather that is because they make about what a janitor does. When I go by a car dealership, they have hired people just for that. I gather that is because the salespeople make more or work off commission. If you can’t afford to hire a janitor, I doubt you can afford to donate to a university.
This professor must teach Redistribution of Wealth 101. In other words, I didn’t earn any of that money, but I am entitled to it anyway….
Would somebody PLEASE donate $99.99 to get this professor a decent vacuum? :-)
Understand all sides, but Burrow should exercise a little humility and be grateful for HIS opportunity. If he doesn’t make it as a pro or spend time on his studies, he may be the one cleaning the office. Just saying…
Burrow already has a degree from Ohio State and is working on his Masters now. He won’t be cleaning offices.
You missed my point. Is it impossible for people to be grateful anymore?
Burrow is the one who has worked like a dog since his middle school days to develop his particular skillset for which he is now being rewarded with an opportunity to invest further in his skills at a top-tier university that benefits from his work both monetarily and in reputation. Thanks to Burrow’s hard work in high school, LSU can win more games and generate millions of more dollars, and so they’re doing everything they can to ensure that he keeps performing and improving to keep up the revenue stream.
As someone who is in academia, a full professor complaining about a lack of resources/hardship is freaking hilarious. You’re making 6 figures to teach a few undergrad classes and publish something every once in awhile. Get over yourself.
I understand the anger towards this kind of spending at schools that lose money on sports, but at schools with enormous revenues this is a simple investment in ensuring that revenue will continue to flow in.
While it’s a vastly different situation than at SEC schools like LSU, I went to undergrad at Xavier and you can see the effect that basketball program has had at the school. Put simply, you probably would have never heard of the school if not for the vast investment in the program to ensure it could become a power. Compare it Regis University in Denver, a similarly sized Jesuit school in a significant city with a comparable academic reputation that you’ve probably never heard of. When people at Xavier complain about the money spent on the basketball team, I point out that it leads to what is essentially a free, two-hour commercial on national tv 30+ times a year, as well as a national reputation in something positive. Beyond that, the program makes way more money than it spends now and makes donations to the academic side of the school. When money needs to be spent on renovations, it should be viewed as an investment in that and not just money taken from the library