On Wednesday, the day of the press conference at the Dole Center, I happened to be in Lawrence, and walked into Green Hall, the University of Kansas Law School, for the first time since the day I graduated 25 years ago. And I walked around the law school, but when I exited from the east doorways, I noticed a stark change in the landscape from my days in law school. An ugly parking garage blocks the view of Allen Fieldhouse from the law school. The main purpose of the parking garage is so that fatcat donors with sweet KU basketball seats can park right next to Allen Fieldhouse.

Of course, I knew they had built a parking garage there in 1989, but I never saw it from a law student's viewpoint until Wednesday. And I couldn't help but remember the lyrics of "Big Yellow Taxi," the Joni Mitchell song that Amy Grant covered: "Paved Paradise, Put Up a Parking Lot."

As I think about that ugly parking garage, I also think of what's behind it - Allen Fieldhouse. And I've had some wonderful moments in Allen Fieldhouse. But there are three events I missed in Allen Fieldhouse in my lifetime that I would give anything to have seen. Three big things I missed.

And the three things I missed were Robert Kennedy's speech at Allen Fieldhouse on March 18, 1968, Bud Stallworth's 50 point explosion against Mizzou on February 26, 1972, and Wilt Chamberlain's jersey retirement at Allen Fieldhouse on January 17, 1998.

I have a clip of Kennedy's speech at Allen Fieldhouse on my ipod, and here are his words I often listen to:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

And on Wednesday, May 26, 2010, we learned, sadly, that America's Gross National Product over the last five years included millions of dollars in basketball and football tickets stolen by KU employees and sold to shadowy ticket brokers.

When I was a young lawyer in Wichita, the WSU Athletic Director was Lew Perkins. And he abolished football at WSU. And he abolished it for one reason: it wasn't making money. And it wasn't WSU's fault that a 1971 airplane crash set their football program back 20 years. But it was never the same. Football at WSU shouldn't have been abolished. But it didn't make money, see. And Perkins was making a cold business decision, and I'm sure it bothered him to abolish football at Wichita State.

And now Lew Perkins' is at KU, and he mainly judges things strictly by their monetary value, and doesn't put as much emphasis on things like loyalty, and institution, and charity and egalitarianism. It's a business, see. Perkins' attitude is a symptom of the bigger problem: the commercialization of NCAA sports.

And I thought, maybe Lew Perkins and other athletic directors could learn a thing or two by recalling Robert F. Kennedy's speech at Allen Fieldhouse.

But I doubt it would make much difference. Today the Gordon Gekko "Greed is Good" philosophy is so prevalent in America, that Robert Kennedy's words seem comically out of place. Both Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were dead within three months of Kennedy's speech at Allen Fieldhouse. But their message, I hope, lives on: some things are more important than money, like right and wrong, and loyalty and fairness and beauty and love.

KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins turned KU basketball and football tickets into a pure commodity to be sold on the free market, laissez-faire, with confidence that the "invisible hand" that economist Adam Smith discussed would make everything right. And that "invisible hand" of the free market that gives back to society, made a fist and knocked KU's two front teeth out. No wonder no one was smiling at the Dole Center on Wednesday as the press flashed pictures. SAY "CHEESE!"