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"Kansas taxpayer dollars should not fund athletic projects" GoPowercat's Tim Fitzgerald takes on KU fans in 'Daily Delivery'

Sportswriter and publisher of GoPowercat Tim Fitzgerald got into a series of Twitter debates regarding Kansas taxpayer dollars and athletic spending over the weekend.

The series of debates was sparked by a video Fitzgerald uploaded on Friday, May 12, 2023, to his YouTube channel GoPowercat where he talked about the funding situation with the KU football stadium.

In the video, Fitzgerald called out the David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium for having “awful” areas for the public, claiming when K-State played their the last time parts of the stadium didn’t have functional plumbing.

Back in October of last year, KU announced plans to “transform” the football stadium in 2023. However, it was how this transformation would be funded that stuck out to Fitzgerald.

“The athletic department seems to be attempting to push this through clandestine,” Fitzgerald said. “And it’s just kind of odd how they’re going about it. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t consult the impacted parties involved. Why you would fund it all through your endowment program that is set aside from the state FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) laws. They don’t have to reveal a damn thing.”

Fitzgerald pointed out that athletics didn’t talk to the students, faculty, or anyone about the project according to an editorial in the Daily Kansan student newspaper.

This project will cost $335 million overall, with $50 million being funded by a grant.

Fitzgerald went on to compare the differences between athletic funding for K-State versus athletic funding for KU.

“When Kansas State does a major athletics project, one, it’s entirely funded by donors or the athletic department’s revenues,” Fitzgerald said. “They don’t seek any state funding. If there’s an adjacent state project to the athletics project, they’re not intertwined. The funding for the state project has no impact on the funding of the athletics project. These seemed to be tied together. Without the state funding, they don’t want to do the athletic project, and that just seems a little bit off.”

Due to the number of responses Fitzgerald received over the weekend from KU fans, he again decided to address the issue on Monday, May 15. In his Daily Delivery, Fitzgerald pushed back against the three biggest arguments he kept hearing including the fact that K-State gets money from Koch Industries, the fact that K-State athletics accepted a bond from the state of Kansas for a building project back in 2010, and the fact that K-State received a grant for places like Weber Hall and Call Hall.

In the video, Fitzgerald reasoned that Koch donates a lot of money to K-State and they higher a lot of graduates from their engineering program, and that’s all their is to that. He also reasoned that bonds are far different from grants as bonds have to be paid back with interest, meaning the state gets even more money, which in turn helps Kansans out, unlike in a grant where the school would get taxpayer funded money that they would not have to pay back. Republican Senator J. R. Claeys from Salina said in a tweet that this isn’t true, however.

With the last argument made, Fitzgerald noted that Weber Hall and Call Hall were academic places. His big issue is not with funding academics, but rather that he believes taxpayer dollars should not be used for athletics.

After the video, Fitzgerald still got push back, most notably from Sen. Claeys.

This pushback that Sen. Claeys was giving, led to people pushing back against him and other Kansas Legislators.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to share, and subscribe. You can also help support independent journalism in Kansas by buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/kscon.

Ian Brannan

Ian Brannan is an independent journalist who founded The Kansas Constitutional in April 2022. His work focuses on issues including abortion, Convention of States, drug policy, education, government, LGBT issues, media, and more. He is also the co-host of the Rainbow Rabble-Rousers podcast.

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