Ain’t it a shame?

You know tough times are here when athletic supporters — I mean big college boosters, not jock straps — are hurting for cash.

The New York Times reports that the $165 million T. Boone Pickens donated to the Oklahoma State athletic department “so it could remake its facilities into a Shangri-La for Cowboys sports” isn’t worth what it used to be.

Pickens has lost money, and so has the fund the funds were invested in. As a result, work on the Cowboys’ earthly paradise has been held up.

(That’s Pickens grinning in the photo above between grinning OSU athletic director Mike Holder, left, and school president David J. Schmidly, who’s working on a grin, in better days.)

Other jock plants have been affected, including Rutgers and its $102 million in football stadium renovation, and Kansas, where major donor Tom Kivisto had pledged $12 million for a recently opened football complex.

But Kivisto in July was booted from his CEO post at SemGroup, which has gone belly up, and there are investigations into exactly what happened and what Kvisto had to do with it.

The Kansas athletic director wouldn’t discuss whether Kivisto had fulfilled his pledge, but did say, “Tom has been a friend to this university for a long time.”

Too bad he wasn't a better friend to his shareholders.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/sports/21boosters.html?_r=2&ref=sports&oref=slogin&oref=slogin