Stony Brook tries to trick taxpayers into a stadium upgrade.

Hat tip to clodney over at UBFan.com for this one

One would think that New York's decade-old $22 million investment and the subsequent $5.7 million in expansion would be enough for an FCS team like the Stony Brook Seawolves. Well one would be wrong.

In this year's state budget Stony Brook had just over 22 million dollars earmarked for a "computational biomedicine visualization and drug development magnet facility". And really, why wouldn't they? After all biomedicine computational fields are sexy. In fact UB's New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences is a feather in the cap of our university.

The problem is that at the last hour somebody in the New York State Senate changed that the purpose of this $22.2 million dollars. The school tried to put that money towards more facilities upgrades to their football stadium.

If I had to guess I would say that Senator Kenneth Lavalle had something to do with it. Yes it's a wild guess at this point but Lavalle has aimed a lot of state money at Stony Brook athletics over the years.

But wait! There's more!

If you thought it would stop there than you don't know Empire State politics.

There’s another $2 million which magically found its way from academic purposes to Stony Brook Athletics. That money was originally allocated to the SUNY Stony Brook magnet facility but was converted this year to cover an indoor practice facility/exam center.

I may not be a guy who would typically find myself agreeing with New York's Governor but he deserves some kudos for spotting the shenanigans and vetoing them.

To sum things up.

Syracuse (a private school) almost got 250 million in state money towards a new dome. Stony Brook just tried to get Cuomo to pay for their stadium upgrades and an indoor practice facility!

Meanwhile UB, the largest University and the only FBS program in the state is busy going about fundraising themselves for a field house.