The efforts at getting on top in college athletics keep getting more and more costly. Coaches are paid gigantic sums, and schools build lavish facilities for players to work out, dine, and relax in. The costs spill over onto students who aren’t interested in bragging about how great “their” teams are and taxpayers who think state funds should be spent on something serious (or cut their taxes).

In today’s Martin Center article, Anthony Hennen looks at another college sports expense, namely private air flights. Coaches rack up more than $125,000 yearly in flights on the University of North Carolina’s UNC Air, which was created to help doctors get quickly to remote parts of the state where they were needed and for UNC officials to be able to get to distant campuses. But coaches have taken to using UNC Air to fly around the country on recruiting jaunts.

He writes, “In total, athletics and administrative flights made up about 27 percent of the roughly $725,000 in flight expenses, while about 65 percent of UNC Air’s costs were for medical flights. A service created to expand health care access in North Carolina has expanded into a perk for top officials and coaches funded by student tuition payments and taxpayer money.”

Officials say that using UNC Air rather than driving or flying on regular commercial flights save them time. No doubt that’s true, but what’s so important about that? We might agree that a surgeon shouldn’t spend hours behind the wheel driving to a distant hospital, but so what if a trip to watch a prospective UNC defensive end takes four hours rather than one?

Hennen concludes that the UNC Board should step in: “Were the Board of Governors to exercise its oversight powers, perhaps they could ensure the UNC system serves as a wise steward of the money given by North Carolina’s citizens and students.”