When Grant Teaff arrived at Baylor University to coach football in 1972, the university’s stadium was in as poor shape as its floundering team. The way Teaff tells it, the bleachers were made of splintering wood and “there wasn’t a blade of grass on the field.” There certainly wasn’t a weight room for his players to train in. Teaff decided his team should have one, even if it was just a concrete block shoved underneath the stadium seats. He needed a way to finance the project, so he asked a well-connected friend and booster named Charlie Jones to ask around. Jones came back to the coach and told him, “I’ve got it, but I don’t think you’ll take it.” Baylor was and remains a Baptist institution, and the Baptist Church is historically opposed to the consumption of alcohol. The money that could fund the new weight room was $50,000 worth of stock in Anheuser-Busch, the brewing company. “I’ll take it,” Teaff said to Jones, without much hesitation. “The devil’s had that money long enough.”

November 9, 2015 ・ From Inside Higher Ed