To the editor:

The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce has protested moving the KU-MU football game to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City this fall. The move would create a financial loss for Lawrence businesses.

Even with the KU-MU game in Kansas City, seven home games remain on the KU campus. This is the same number of games as last season. College athletics is big business. A winning football program puts more people in the seats. The price tag of competing keeps going up with no end in sight. The lure of a guaranteed million-dollar payday at Arrowhead is too enticing to pass up. On the other hand, the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce could possibly coax the KU-MU game back on campus by “guaranteeing” a sellout.

If the football fortunes at KU and MU continue to improve, the KU-MU game played at Arrowhead in Kansas City could become a big regional happening like the Texas-Oklahoma game in Dallas. Add national television to the picture and the financial payoff could be extremely rewarding. The worst-case scenario would be for the Jayhawk football program to revert back to the lackluster days of the 1980s. If the football program is a loser, the Lawrence merchants won’t have many fans coming to the games at all.

The money race is on! Either keep pace with the rest of the Big 12 or lose! If KU fails to keep up, the Lawrence business community will lose a lot more than the revenue from the KU-MU game.

Bill Lytle,

Overland Park