Last week dueling guest columns in the USA TODAY prompted several days of impassioned letters from readers taking sides on the issue.

It wasn’t about gay marriage or bullying or Greek austerity or anything else prominent in the news the past few days.

It was about whether it’s time to stop funding high school athletics.

Arizona is not the only state facing enormous K-12 funding pressure. During the economic downturn the past few years nearly every state either reduced education funding or held funding flat.

School districts across the country have needed to find ways to do more with less and in an increasing number of school districts one of the ways they’ve found is the elimination of high school athletics.

Perhaps it’s time for Arizona, or at least Tucson’s metro school districts, to have the same discussion.

It’s not a topic alien to most high school teachers or district governing boards. Teachers talk about it in hushed whispers in school lounges almost as if they’re Harry Potter and Hermione Granger trying not to say the name of You Know Who.

School board members will quietly talk about it with each other from time to time, though never on the dais as an item on a board agenda.

That’s because this is such a passionate issue that just broaching it in an official way will bring out the proverbial torch and pitchfork hordes who will turn board meetings into such melees that they will make the recent TUSD MAS board meeting brouhahas look like old ladies’ tea parties.

It’s hard to factor the true cost of high school athletics by peering into the byzantine depths of school district budgets. There are some line items labeled “athletics,” mostly accounting for the salaries of athletics administrators and coaching stipends. Coaching stipends and administrators alone cost TUSD $2 million a year.

But buried deep in the budget are myriad costs associated with athletics that get rolled into catchall facility, transportation and supply budgets. When you account for all the miles of athletic tape, the electricity for lights, fertilizer and lawn mowers for grass, wear and tear on buses and dozens of other costs it adds up to millions.

Athletics do generate some revenue through player fees and ticket sales but that income doesn’t even come close to covering their true cost.

Moreover, these days it’s not good enough to just have a team, you must have the best team, and since district funding just covers the basics, most coaches who want to be “the best” turn their players into beggars. They send them out to wash cars or sell cookie dough or the like to raise money to buy new high-tech gadgets and other gear to give their athletes that extra winning edge. Many schools also have large booster clubs that sell shirts and soda and nachos to raise money for the latest Nike uniforms or to fund out-of-state trips for elite teams.

High school athletics is also a billion dollar industry. Not only do schools buy all this equipment from private vendors but other companies make fortunes off of student athletes through the sale of medals, trophies, letter jackets, team photos and so on.

So a school district not only has to contend with parent and student outrage if they broach the subject of athletics elimination, but lobbying from private industry who want to make the sure the athletics gravy train stays on the tracks.

To be sure, there are some benefits to student athletics. It helps build confidence and self esteem and student athletes tend to stay in school and get passing grades because of pass-to-play rules. But other benefits, such as engendering school spirit, have faded in the modern age.

Back in the day, the entire city would turn out for a Tucson High football game. Now the stands are barely half full on Friday nights. The days of raucous pep rallies, school fight songs and huge homecoming parades are over.

Most of the interest in athletics these days has more do with college scholarships than school spirit. Yet even college recruiting has become detached from high schools, save for football. Every sport now has an “off season” club season in which elite players play other elite players. Because the competition in these club programs is so good, top players are more likely to attract college scouts to their club games than their high school games.

We Americans are sports mad and high school athletics is a more than century-old tradition and traditions are hard to break.

It’s doubtful any school board in the region will have the courage to broach this issue if presented simply as elimination.

But what might happen if districts presented the issue as a choice? Rather than a one-sided discussion – to eliminate or not eliminate – what if districts asked voters every school board election what they wanted to fund for the next two years? Give them a choice, $10 million for athletics or $10 million for math and science teachers.

If voters choose athletics, than we’ll know for certain we value it as an important part of high school education.

If voters choose education, though, it won’t be the end of athletics. Club teams and city and county recreation programs are already there to fill the void.

Austerity is here to stay so school districts must squeeze every dollar they get to properly educate our children. Does it make sense to continue to spend millions on grass, lights, buses and coaches so kids can play with a ball after school?

Perhaps high school athletics is a tradition whose cost we can no longer afford.

Today’s twenty somethings, especially those graduating from college this month, who want to lead their nation someday better spend some time figuring out what they’re for and against.

From taxes to spending to Medicare to national defense to global warming to gay marriage to abortion to school funding to drug prohibition to illegal immigration and to every other conceivable issue of national importance that might arise over the next 50 years of their lives.

And after thinking long and well about them, they need to stake out their positions and stick with them forever, never wavering in their conviction, never changing their mind about any of them.

Ever.

Because if they do, they’ll be a nasty, dastardly flip-flopper. A vicissitudinous vacillator who can’t be trusted to decide what color shoes to wear let alone make decisions about whether college loan interest should be tax deductible.

Nope, we Americans want our political leaders to be immutable ideologues whose positions are pure with nary an ounce of irresolution anywhere in their past. Because, afterall, how could any good American trust someone who changes their position on important national issues like some weather vane turning with whichever political winds they think will blow them into office?

At least, that’s apparently what we want considering the content of most campaign TV ads these days. Campaign managers seem to think labeling a pol a flip-flopper is akin to calling him a puppy drowner. And who would ever vote for a puppy drowner?

That’s ridiculous, of course, but that’s what American politics has become – ridiculous.

Reasonable people change their mind. Situations change. New information arises. And reasonable people use the new information to re-evaluate what they think or believe and then amend their thinking or beliefs.

Abraham Lincoln changed his mind about slavery. Ronald Reagan changed his mind about taxes (several times). Strom Thurmond changed his mind about segregation.

We all change our minds as we age. We get smarter. We think better.

We used to think we looked good in leisure suits and feathered hair. Now we think better.

We used to think Eddie Murphy was funny. Now we think better.

Moreover, our culture changes its mind as it ages, too.

We used to think women were chattel and subservient to men. Now we think better.

We used to think a high school diploma was all the education you needed to prosper in America. Now we think better.

So why do campaign managers think opponent politicians changing their minds about an issue is such a mortal sin?

Who are we to question President Barack Obama’s moment of clarity this week about gay marriage? Or Jesse Kelly’s apparent epiphany about protecting Social Security?

If we don’t believe they’ve really changed their mind then we shouldn’t call them flip-floppers, we should call them liars because that’s what we really mean.

And if politicians don’t have the courage to call their opponent a liar, then they should keep their flip-flop aspersions to themselves.

Well, now that the Legislature and governor have agreed on a state budget we finally know where most of the sales-tax windfall from the improving economy is going to land – the state’s savings account.

That’s not what the 750,000 people who voted in May 2010 to increase their sales taxes were told was going to happen with the extra $1 billion a year the new tax would bring in through May 2013.

They were told most of it would be spent on education and some on social services and state police.

But the Republican-dominated Legislature this session decided to take half of that extra money, about $450 million, and drop it into a savings account rather than give it to schools, or CPS investigators, or highway patrol officers.

See, they’re worried about July 1, 2013, the month after the sales tax increase sunsets, when the Republican’s ill-timed, poorly conceived tax cuts passed last year start going into effect, creating the proverbial double budget whammy.

So rather than give voters what they wanted (heaven forefend), they’re saving up the money this year to pay for the tax cut.

Schools, which were to benefit from the lion’s share of the tax increase, will get a paltry $100 million this year, about $80 million for K-12 and $20 million for the universities.

That’s half what the governor wanted but $100 million more than the zero Republican budget writers proposed in February.

While it’s something, and certainly not a budget cut, as schools have had to endure the past four years, it’s a far cry from the $400 million more the schools and universities could be getting if legislators had spent the revenue as voters intended.

The 2010 tax increase, Proposition 100, passed by a 2-to-1 margin. The state’s teachers led the Yes on 100 effort. If they don’t want to see their budgets eviscerated further next fiscal year and beyond as the tax cuts go into effect, they will have to mount a new campaign to renew the tax increase.

The Legislature is certain not to do it since a two-thirds vote for any tax increase is required. That leaves only the voters and their only chance to vote on it is this November.

Holding out hope for a new batch of more reasonable legislators to be elected this fall is foolhardy. Clean Elections and the state’s broken primary system will ensure that a majority of tax and public-school hating Republicans will control the Legislature next year, irrespective of redistricting.

A reasonable Legislature would vote to extend the tax increase another three years and repeal the tax cuts and wait until the state is on firmer economic footing before deciding whether to repeal the former or instate the latter.

But, as we’ve seen the past few years, reason has no home at the Arizona state capitol.