There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly taunting in the world of college sports rivalries. But Michigan residents might have been surprised to learn that a bit of mocking last month cost the University of Michigan $6,700.
That’s how much the school’s athletic department paid a skywriter to emblazon the words “Go Blue” over the stadium of rival Michigan State University, according to records released to MLive.com on Friday.
But Michigan denies that the Spartans’ stadium was the target of the pricey self-promotion.
“We hired the skywriters to canvas southeast Michigan with slogans and numbers prior to our game last Saturday,” athletic department spokesperson Dave Ablauf said in a statement back in September. “There were no locations targeted.”
Ablauf had previously estimated that the University had paid Oregon Aero SkyDancer $3,000 to $5,000 for the job. But after MLive filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the actual amount was made known. Ablauf said the school’s athletic department had paid for Michigan slogans and mottos to be written in the sky over East Lansing during two days in September.
But Suzanne Asbury-Oliver, co-owner of the skywriting company, told MLive that the Michigan had specifically paid for “Go Blue” to be written near Spartan Stadium on Sept. 14. It wasn’t the first time her company had been hired by the school to do skywriting, but it was the first time the athletic department had asked her to write over East Lansing, according to CBS Sports.
The Michigan athletic department is run on private funding, not connected to tuition or taxpayer money. Athletic Director Dave Brandon predicts a $8.9 million surplus for fiscal 2014, which is relatively consistent with recent years.
