You know what they say: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Well, I, and my fat belly in college from the Rocky Top Grill beg to differ.  Man, chicken with mashed potatoes and spinach casserole and a coke.  Mmmmm.

But I digress.

It has come to my attention recently (which isn’t very hard to do seeing as I have seen the entire internet), that the University of Tennessee Athletic Department, in a cost-cutting move sure to save MILLIONS, has decided to recind their previous offer to the ushers at basketball games of a free hot dog and a coke for a job well done.  GVX broke the story on Monday.  Now, normally I’d give GoVolsXtra crap about this type of “reporting” of issues that don’t really seem to pertain to sports, but I’ll give them their props for this particular story, as it is painting a picture of the UTAD that I think is beautiful.

From the article:

In the past, ushers for basketball games were each given a voucher for one hot dog and one Coke, which retail for about $7, according to David Elliott, assistant athletic director for event management.

“It was something we’ve been doing over the past few years to show our appreciation,” (director of public relations for UT athletics) [Tiffany] Carpenter said.

So, there’s two ways to read this.  Well, really there’s only one.  “We would not like to show our appreciation anymore.”  I mean, c’mon Tiffany Carpenter, director of public relations for UT Athletics, what’s the deal?  (By the way, if you’re totally fine, give me a call).  Ms. Carpenter must have gotten her degree in public relations from the University of Tennessee to even utter a PR-nightmareish phrase.  You don’t say that you used to do something positive when talking about taking that thing away now.  No one cares that you used to be nice if that means that you are no longer nice.

The same PR department is supposedly also saying that the cost cutting measures of limiting the number of ushers through the games as well as the you know, not giving out of awesome hot dogs will save the UTAD $80,000.  I suppose it’s sneaky language in that there is no timetable set for exactly when the $80,000.00 pledge goal will be reached, and at this point, it seems like it’ll probably be within about 27 years.  As many in the comments of the article pointed out, the actual cost of a hot dog and a coke is probably closer to $1.00 but not even quite that high even factoring in the price of the cup that the coke would likely come in.

Let’s do some quick monkey math: $1.00 times 80,000 ushers’ free meals equals $80,000, but that doesn’t seem right.  We don’t have 80,000 ushers.  It must be that $1.00 times 80,000 home games (1 usher per game) = $80,000.  Hmm, that seems more likely.

Either way, Tiffany Carpenter, welcome to the world of 21st century scrutiny, where I, anonymous blogger can sit back behind my keyboard and a veil of secrecy, and criticize every word that comes out of your mouth while not being accountable for anything that I say.  But I will say this, UT isn’t paying me $80,000 a year to do this.  Wait a second…