news-record.com

A hotel can be a nice place. The sheets are clean. It's quiet (unless it's by the airport). And there aren't many distractions -- unless you count free HBO and the all-you-can-eat continental breakfast buffet.

That's why nearly all big-time college football teams sequester their teams at hotels the night before home games. Alumni and fans, after all, expect the star quarterback to show up fresh and ready for the game, not sleepy and hung over from a wild night on campus.

But this expense, no matter how tiny it is in the context of massive athletics budgets, seems excessive when universities are facing a financial pinch.

According to the News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. State spent $86,000 last year to put up the football team at a local hotel before each of its seven home games. (The figure includes transportation between the hotel and campus.) UNC-Chapel Hill spent $79,000 before seven home games in 2008. A bit farther south, Clemson spent nearly $112,000 on lodging before seven home games.

Coaches say a team that eats together, gets to bed early and heads over to the stadium at the same time is a little less likely to get stomped on its home turf. The arrangement promotes team bonding, helps players get their minds and bodies right. Any team that stays home before a home game, coaches say, risks having an opposing coach use this stinginess in the recruiting wars.

On the flip side, players at Boise State, the darlings of college football, sleep in their own beds before home games. Legendary Florida State coach Bobby Bowden says these "Friday night sleep-outs" are unnecessary and would give them up if everyone else did. Such is the power of recruiting.

If the state's universities were to do away with these overnight stays, taxpayers would see no direct savings because athletics budgets are separate from university budgets. But with state universities having to lay off employees and cut programs to live within their means, such spending on hotel rooms and chartered buses for athletes is wasteful all the same.