As the anniversary of the crash that took 10 members from the Oklahoma State University community nears, questions concerning travel plans for athletic teams are rising.
A travel task force has formed to help create a plan for teams required to travel. One of its goals is to create a plan that will not only make travel safer for athletes and officials, but to make a plan that could apply to both the conference and possibly the NCAA.
Although the official plan has not been released, the OSU men’s basketball team has already used a plane owned by the Great Plains travel group. The team recently used the plane to travel to Texas Tech and to Iowa State.
Departments across campus are having to be budget-conscious and watch the bottom line. However, the limits of budgets shouldn’t dictate how a policy like this one will be written.
To use the plane the team has been using for the rest of the season, it would cause a $100,000 budget excess. But when dealing with the lives of our team members and members of the OSU family, should money and budgets be a determining factor?
Even if chartering a plane would cost more, isn’t that money well spent? Safety come at a heavy price, but it isn’t an area where saving money should become an issue.
A little more money being spent on travel is far better than having to pay for another tragedy with the lives of 10 OSU family members. If we were to learn anything from our past experiences, the lesson should be how costly a tragedy really is.
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