News item: Major university sports programs and booster clubs in the U.S. of A. last year raised $1.2 billion, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. And in this area at least, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can boast, we're Number One. Yes, the total over yonder on Highway 54 was $51 million.

Athletics Director Dick Baddour reported to the university's Faculty Council recently that the $51 million figure wasn't cash he hauled directly to the bank, that it involves wills and all that, and that the figure wasn't perhaps what it seemed. In addition, to add a little perspective, the total raised for athletics is indeed a fraction of what the university puts together for academics. And Baddour noted that money had to be raised for everything from facilities in several sports to the contracts for basketball coach Roy Williams and the relatively new guy in town, Butch Davis, a fellow charged with rescuing the football program so that it can regularly whup up on Notre Dame. (Truth is, this year the Fighting Irish might be at risk from St. Mary's, but that's another story.)

Anyway, it may be that a few faculty members are worried about the university's image being tied to a top ranking in athletics fund-raising. Is that really, you know, something of which to be proud?

Absolutely, we say. In fact, after decades of hand-wringing about the escalation of athletics, the occasion of the university's top ranking in this particular category is reason for the academic crowd to adopt the clearly successful fund-raising strategies of the booster club. Maybe the academic side has tried to be too dignified. Let's have the folks from Arts and Sciences and what-all try to appeal to the same emotion that drives sports fundraising.

For example, the sports folks hitched a lot of fundraising to landing expensive coaches (men's basketball and football head coaches get about $2 million a year apiece) who could lead the Tar Heels to the promised land of championships. And they talked about the need for palaces for competition, which may mean putting millions more into football facilities, for example. They cautioned that if contributors didn't come across, the athletics program might slip into decline, and a not-so-secret memo detailed the gravity of the situation:

"In our view," it said, "the world faces many potential crises, in this order: war, flood, famine, Heels go 5-7. We gotta get Butch."

In any case, let's see how we might apply the athletics fundraising strategy to, say, hiring someone for Romance languages:

"The Arts and Sciences division at the university acknowledged today that it is pursuing Pierre C'est La Vie, the noted scholar, to head a division of its French curricula. Toward that end, the university will begin a fundraising campaign to raise an endowment that would cover $3 million a year for C'est La Vie's salary and benefits package. In addition, the university says it will seek from French boosters an additional $125 million to build a replica of the Eiffel Tower on the campus main quad. The replica will include sightseeing stations, tours, a virtual view of Paris and a Starbucks.

"Officials explained that to hire a scholar of C'est La Vie's stature, the university must be prepared to compete with campuses all over the country. 'We heard,' said one official, 'that Michigan offered fresh pastries every morning and said it would build him a chateau stocked with the finest French wines.' Chapel Hill officials, in responding to this offer, called in experts from the muscadine vineyards throughout North Carolina to see how they might compete.

"One high-ranking university official defended the expensive pursuit of C'est La Vie, saying, 'Look, this man is French, for goodness sakes! Do you know how prestigious that would be? And he's said to be an expert on conjugation and punctuation and enunciation and two or three other 'ations. Naturally, when you go after someone like this, you have to be expected to pay top dollar. There is a fairly well-substantiated rumor that he is a distant cousin of Victor Hugo!'

"In short, the university believes that the hiring of Professor C'est La Vie is crucial if we are to keep our French department in the top tier of higher education. If we want to stay 'big time' in Romance languages, we simply have to go after people of this caliber. It is, as the athletics department people put it, absolutely necessary if the university is going to compete in this area."

Next up, we hear, the hiring of a historian with authority in the area of 19th century Texas. The big fundraising challenge -- matching other offers for the Alamo.