I’m going to try and be polite about this: please stop complaining about the $44 million High Altitude Performance Center. I really don’t understand why most of you are complaining about it. It’s a good thing for the university and for you.
I think a lot of the public perception right now is that the students will be paying for it through their tuition. Let’s kill that right now. They are getting the money through private donations and the state of Wyoming.
Also, please stop complaining that the student-athletes get special treatment. They bring in a lot of cash and interest for the university and should get these perks. They basically have two full time jobs of being students and athletes. To do the second job they need the necessary tools, this project will only help them.
Let’s move on to why this is good for the community of UW. I’m going to be honest with you, Laramie is not the most ideal city to visit. Shocker, I know, I thought the Buck would bring more tourist families too. One thing that Laramie does have going for it though is the athletics here at UW, and people will come to see that.
Now the big fancy new facilities won’t be what people come to see, but it will be what athletic recruits come to see on visits here. When top recruits see the lavish new performance center, they will have a greater incentive to come here than they do with the old facilities that we have now. Getting better recruits will make teams better, just ask coach Bohl.
When our teams are good, more people want to come and see them. The basketball team had record attendance at their games this year. I wonder if winning the Mountain West Championship had anything to do with it.
The university gets to charge all of these fans coming in from out of town to come and be at their university. Some of these fans might be college students trying to decide where to go for college and having a good sports program could be what brings them here.
I’m also going to guess that you are reading the sports section of the Branding Iron because you are a fan of Wyoming sports. This makes the teams better, I promise.
If you aren’t a sports fan, then I promise you that having a better athletic program will help UW as a whole. If they can bring in more students through interests in their athletics, then this will generate more interest for the other areas of Wyoming. These eyes looking at UW will wander into the other areas of it and see what it has to offer.
If you still feel like this new High Altitude Performance Center is a bad idea then I don’t know what I can do to help. This will be good for not only the athletic program, but for the university as a whole.
