By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

The business of sports at KU is business; very lucrative and serious for those with a financial stake in victory and image. Jason Whitlock’s recent column about hip hop culture misses another angle on this feud.

The music he speaks of is a business and he does the business well to quote his favorites.

Rather than culture, perhaps it’s better to speak of the art. It is poetry and deserves some time in the classrooms, even the “gangsta rap”. But extending the art to the field of culture seems more like commercialism. Fashion combined with a portable listening device, combined with mimicked colloquial sayings does not culture make. There’s an active cash register on the end of this media supply chain, credit cards accepted.

The athletes embroiled in this feud must feel a bit out of place in the confines of organic, artful Lawrence. The mythical atmospheres in their ears, the driving messages are alien to Lawrence. It makes Jason’s cultural explanation absurd.

The business of college sports, with their coliseum theme parks and field house theaters, is separate from the academic reality of “the university” and the various “schools” within it. The academics and scholars are too busy to bother with this. I doubt if anyone will write about this from within the academic halls of the university.

A more interesting angle for analysis is to understand how the college sports business works…how does the money move? Who runs the college franchise(s)? How does the marketing of logos and symbols work? And as in any business, how does an unfavorable press narrative affect the business? Should the business owners counsel the offending players (employees) with a balance sheet as discussion material and then fine them based upon the revenue losses?

This ongoing story is more appropriate for coverage in the business section…music, fashion, ticket prices, franchise revenue, capital improvements in sports complexes.