Hey who’s this guy? Don’t act all surprised. I’ve been here before. Anyhow, Rutgers got the go ahead to move forward with plans to expand their football stadium to 56,000 seats. While this is good news for a growing program in a conference that is rebuilding much quicker than anyone expected. It also makes me think back to the summer of 2006, when Rutgers announced it would be cutting several hundred teaching jobs. And in doing so, several hundred courses.

According to The Star-Ledger, a newspaper in Newark, N.J., Rutgers will kill 750 jobs, through attritition, layoffs, and nonrenewal of contracts. Some 400 of the job cuts will affect part-time adjunct positions, but teaching assistants and unspecified other faculty and staff posts will also be eliminated. As a result, almost 800 courses will not be offered, raising the possibility that many students will not be able to graduate on time, even if they can afford to pay the sharply higher tuition and fees.

At least efforts are being made to put some money back into the educational side of things. But $12 million for teachers compared to the $72 million that will go into the stadium seems a bit skewed to me. And I don’t want to pick on Rutgers because I’m sure every school that would have to make these types of decisions would probably follow suit. It just points out that the business of college football is leaning more and more toward the business and farther away from the college. Just like everything else in our society, right?

Whether this is part of the talk of bringing Rutgers into the Big 10 that seemed to fade away after the 2006 season is still up in the air. That would certainly make sense. But with the Big Ten Network going over like a led balloon, the focus of conference expansion seems to be on hold for now until that issue can be resolved.  Hopefully for Rutgers, they aren’t putting all their eggs in one basket.