Letter to the Editor in Hartford Courant

So today, a Letter to the Editor I submitted to the Hartford Courant was published. I wrote in to comment on the hysteria regarding Robert Burton and the $3 million donation to UConn football. The online version is available here.

Or just look below.

The front-page article "Does Big Donation Buy Big Access?" [Jan. 30] was well written. However, it misses a few important points.

College athletic departments are not corporations, and the donors are not shareholders. They are just donors. That does not entitle them to any special rights or privileges, any more than someone who donated a large sum of money to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's campaign would now have influence in state government.

It is ridiculous the special status that college athletics are given in this country. If Mr. Burton wants to move his donation from the football team to the school of business, that is certainly his choice. But it is unfair and childish for him to go on a raging rant about how he deserves to be consulted about who to hire and how, and because he wasn't, it is a great insult. He just needs to grow up and face the fact that he isn't the center of everything.