To the editor:

My wife is a “die-hard” Kansas University basketball fan and alum. Last year, she finally got me to attend a KU basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse. We spent $35 apiece and three hours of our time to watch a game. I kept wondering, if the 15,000 people had spent three hours of their time and $35 to actually do some good for our community what would we have accomplished? That would have been $525,000 and 45,000 hours of labor. In economic terms, we are talking about $975,000 spent to watch a game. How many people could we have fed or homes could we have built?

I love sports, but I play sports, I don’t watch them. As America grows fatter and we spend more on entertainment than we do on education I wonder about “American values.” In a capitalistic society it appears our values are where we spend our money. We spend more then $12 billion a year on entertainment. Much of that goes into watching sports. We give lip service to education, but what we really care about is sitting on our fat butts watching other people play games.

David Butcher,

Lawrence