Any school that makes "allowances" for athletes in the academic realm, has absolutely NO ground making academics an issue in conference realignment.

Academics don't matter much if at all anywhere in D1, except the Ivy and Patriot unless the academics are a negative. Don't kid yourself, the B1G would admit Alabama tomorrow. Its not like the B1G went with the best academic schools available last time, they went with the biggest markets (Rutgers is a pretty good school I will admit).

The fact a school is top notch academically is simply an extra factor, possibly to distinguish among equal candidates.

If, conversely, a school with a stellar and selective academic reputation joins a conference with those with broader academic missions the affiliation does ZERO to "sully" its reputation. Denver was in the Sun Belt. Davidson was in the Big South. Stony Brook is in the America East. Rice is in CUSA.

I actually remember someone (from Drexel or something like that) vehemently arguing that Georgia State should stay in the CAA and stuck in FCS because employers would like seeing that a school is a CAA member and that would translate into more and better job offers. That is utterly ridiculous. Below the big three or four conferences and the two leagues that do emphasize academics, there is absolutely no reason or data to back up positive or negative reputation for affilliation with an athletic conference accruing or detracting from graduates of each schools academic program.

Endowment is a bigger factor because it speaks to the school's ability to raise funds.

But with all of this academic talk, isn't it nothing more than people simply being snobs?

(04-04-2013 12:04 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  The CIC does not directly help anyone get grant money.

There's a lot less to that claim than meets the eye, though. Sharing grants across multiple schools is a strong benefit to landing grants, especially the biggest grants. How much help the CIC provides in building research networks between academics in different CIC institutions is basically impossible to put a number on, because there's no telling which of those cross institution networks would have been established anyway, and there's no way to split out exactly how much money was gained because of the cross-institutional research partnerships.

But its inarguable that the research grant income that the President of a big research university sees coming into their institution is greater than the athletic revenue, especially since athletic departments tend to spend what might have been surpluses from Football and Basketball on capital works, coaches and administrator salaries, and of course on maintaining the school's subsidy sports. That means that in a conference where 11 of 12 conference members are members of the AAU, all of them top 12 schools in something, and a large majority of them top 100 research universities ... the academics have a substantial amount of clout in those universities. And in my experience working in academia, academics are mostly a bunch of cliquish snobs.

After all, look at how the Big Ten got Nebraska into the conference ~ Nebraska was about to get kicked out of the AAU, because membership is by campus rather than by university system in multi-city university systems, and the Medical school with its research standing is in UNO rather than UNL ... so they invited Nebraska into the conference just before the vote to kick UNL out was taken. And two of the Big Ten Presidents were on the AAU committee that was looking at which institutions to kick out, so the Big Ten presidents would have well known that they were admitting an "AAU member" that was not going to be an AAU member anymore in just a short while after it was admitted.

(04-04-2013 10:19 AM)miko33 Wrote:  But with all of this academic talk, isn't it nothing more than people simply being snobs?

Exactly. If it were about the public good in the Big Ten, quality of undergraduate education would be equally important as research ... but if its about academic snobbery, dressed up in pretty language, then a school that has excellent undergraduate education but does very little research is just not going to get the same consideration from the Big Ten as a UVA, UNC, Duke or Georgia Tech, all of whom are top-100 research universities.

(04-04-2013 10:56 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-04-2013 12:04 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  The CIC does not directly help anyone get grant money.

There's a lot less to that claim than meets the eye, though. Sharing grants across multiple schools is a strong benefit to landing grants, especially the biggest grants. How much help the CIC provides in building research networks between academics in different CIC institutions is basically impossible to put a number on, because there's no telling which of those cross institution networks would have been established anyway, and there's no way to split out exactly how much money was gained because of the cross-institutional research partnerships.

But its inarguable that the research grant income that the President of a big research university sees coming into their institution is greater than the athletic revenue, especially since athletic departments tend to spend what might have been surpluses from Football and Basketball on capital works, coaches and administrator salaries, and of course on maintaining the school's subsidy sports. That means that in a conference where 11 of 12 conference members are members of the AAU, all of them top 12 schools in something, and a large majority of them top 100 research universities ... the academics have a substantial amount of clout in those universities. And in my experience working in academia, academics are mostly a bunch of cliquish snobs.

After all, look at how the Big Ten got Nebraska into the conference ~ Nebraska was about to get kicked out of the AAU, because membership is by campus rather than by university system in multi-city university systems, and the Medical school with its research standing is in UNO rather than UNL ... so they invited Nebraska into the conference just before the vote to kick UNL out was taken. And two of the Big Ten Presidents were on the AAU committee that was looking at which institutions to kick out, so the Big Ten presidents would have well known that they were admitting an "AAU member" that was not going to be an AAU member anymore in just a short while after it was admitted.

(04-04-2013 10:19 AM)miko33 Wrote:  But with all of this academic talk, isn't it nothing more than people simply being snobs?

Exactly. If it were about the public good in the Big Ten, quality of undergraduate education would be equally important as research ... but if its about academic snobbery, dressed up in pretty language, then a school that has excellent undergraduate education but does very little research is just not going to get the same consideration from the Big Ten as a UVA, UNC, Duke or Georgia Tech, all of whom are top-100 research universities.

The CIC's connectivity is incredibly overstated. Making fiberoptic cable slightly cheaper only goes so far.

I'm not sure academics plays a roll in the overall scheme of things, especially regarding media contracts. It's fan support, athletic success and fan support ($$$).

The B1G Ten, ACC and PAC 12 all take academics into serious consideration no doubt, and some have internal hurdles (i.e. AAU membership for the B1G), but overall it's about how many dollars TV/media can provide the school. It's all about revenue, income and status.

On a slightly related note I was a bit surprised that every school, with the exception of Memphis, in the new, old Big East/AAC was ranked in often criticized US News Best Colleges report.

Academically, the AAC ("The American") does quite well compared to the other non-AQ conferences. It's the "best of the rest" academically speaking of course.

(04-04-2013 11:29 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  The CIC's connectivity is incredibly overstated.

Of course its over-stated. The CIC originated as a fig leaf in the 1950's during a wave of college athletic scandals. Its still a cover story to make an athletic conference more respectable to that large numbers of the research academics look down their noses at anyway. Headlining the CIC in terms of how much grant funding is landed in total by CIC schools is tremendous inflation of whatever impact it might have.

But pinning down how much its overstated would be close to impossible, because its not really about physical investments, its about social networks between researchers. For instance, CIC schools dominate the most prestigious presenters and sessions at the Midwestern Economics conference, but on the other hand all the real top flight researchers present at the annual meetings of the national association, and those same schools would probably dominate even if they were not in the CIC together.

(04-04-2013 11:34 AM)Fireman451 Wrote:  I'm not sure academics plays a roll in the overall scheme of things, especially regarding media contracts. It's fan support, athletic success and fan support ($$$).

The B1G Ten, ACC and PAC 12 all take academics into serious consideration no doubt, and some have internal hurdles (i.e. AAU membership for the B1G), but overall it's about how many dollars TV/media can provide the school. It's all about revenue, income and status.

On a slightly related note I was a bit surprised that every school, with the exception of Memphis, in the new, old Big East/AAC was ranked in often criticized US News Best Colleges report.

Academically, the AAC ("The American") does quite well compared to the other non-AQ conferences. It's the "best of the rest" academically speaking of course.

Well, there's a strong correlation between academics and money/fan support (even if it's not really causation). The most valuable schools tend to be large flagship universities (or their equivalents like Texas A&M, UCLA, Florida State, etc.) which also tend to have better academics compared to other FBS schools. They're very much related.

What I find so funny is these AAU schools relax the academic standards for Football and Basketball players.....you know that way they can keep the athletes on the plantation so to speak, not pay them either but at the same time make money hand over fist.....only difference in now and the past is the field and the court have replaced the cotton fields. These schools COULD CARE LESS ABOUT THESE KIDS and that's is just the truth....just look at graduation rates and some of the majors. I suspect coaches care more than administrators but even that can be called into question many times.....Bottom line, at what level are they preparing these young people (BB/FB Players) to be productive successfull citizens once they leave college....i'm talking about as a whole like are they turning out a SUPER MAJORITY of (FB/BB Players) into rock solid productive citizens or do most times they just discard them like yeterday's news because they are no longer worht antyhing to them.


BTW, this applies to most programs (but not all) but the AAU schools that sponsor Big Time FB/BB...well, they just have nicer plantations I guess. Man, these schools have it made when you think about it.....they roll on the federal gravy train for those research dollars and at the same time run top of the line plantations that also bring in top dollars.

(04-04-2013 10:14 AM)ULdave Wrote:  Any school that makes "allowances" for athletes in the academic realm, has absolutely NO ground making academics an issue in conference realignment.

Its not like the Presidents are doing it out of heartfelt conviction ~ they are doing it to avoid political headaches in academic politics.

The same academic snobs who would be generating those problems if a school was admitted that was below an imaginary dividing line between "us" and "them" are also the ones who run classes that Big Ten academic departments are sure to steer their star football and basketball players away from.

The hockey players pursuing an architecture degree who were in our dorms when I was an undergraduate were actual student-athletes, using their athletic skills to leverage access to college degree. They may well have decided among the schools recruiting them in large part based on the quality of the program in the field they wanted to go into. That's just like a lot of college baseball players, many of whom could have gone to play in the minor leagues if they didn't actually want to be in school.

But when you see that half of a college football team is pursuing a major in communications, you can be pretty sure that there are not a lot of academic snobs in the communications department of that university.

When I was TA-ing for Intro Latin American Studies at UTK, it was helping with grading the year following a change in professor, from a professor who taught a puffball intro course to one that was all into the history of the dispossessed etc. etc., ... there weren't any basketball players at all, and I think I saw the last of the football players who were taking that course for their degree in the first semester I was doing that, with the word well and truly out by the second semester and the only athletes taking the class in the second semester being a few baseball players.

(04-04-2013 10:56 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  Exactly. If it were about the public good in the Big Ten, quality of undergraduate education would be equally important as research ... but if its about academic snobbery, dressed up in pretty language, then a school that has excellent undergraduate education but does very little research is just not going to get the same consideration from the Big Ten as a UVA, UNC, Duke or Georgia Tech, all of whom are top-100 research universities.

UVA has a tiny research budget compared with the other B1G schools.

(04-04-2013 11:38 AM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-04-2013 11:29 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  The CIC's connectivity is incredibly overstated.

Of course its over-stated. The CIC originated as a fig leaf in the 1950's during a wave of college athletic scandals. Its still a cover story to make an athletic conference more respectable to that large numbers of the research academics look down their noses at anyway. Headlining the CIC in terms of how much grant funding is landed in total by CIC schools is tremendous inflation of whatever impact it might have.

But pinning down how much its overstated would be close to impossible, because its not really about physical investments, its about social networks between researchers. For instance, CIC schools dominate the most prestigious presenters and sessions at the Midwestern Economics conference, but on the other hand all the real top flight researchers present at the annual meetings of the national association, and those same schools would probably dominate even if they were not in the CIC together.

I don't disagree with anything that you said/are saying. We're arguing shades of grey. However, I think that you are exagerating the uncertainty. Yes, there is some uncertainty, but I feel fairly confident that the current B1G schools + UChicago are the 12 of the 13 decent research institutions in the Midwest.* They would be dominated by inter-connected research anyway. It is the people that ultimately matter. I realize that you made that point, and I don't disagree that discounted fiber optic cable, discounted cloud data, discounted supplies, and discounted E-security are good and improve research quality, which attracts future research funding, and attracts higher-quality researchers, who also attract future research funding. I also don't disagree that the exact benefit is hard to quantify. However, I do think that it is less grey than you are making it sound, and I am certain that the actual benefits are far less than most posters think.

*To clarify, I got the number 12 because I didn't count UMD and RU, because they aren't current B1G schools, and they aren't in the Midwest and I didn't count PSU, because it isn't in the Midwest. So, 14-2-1+1=12.

(04-04-2013 01:17 PM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  UVA has a tiny research budget compared with the other B1G schools.

But its got a lot of academic status as a research school. Remember that academic status is measured by the views of peer graduate schools in the disciplines, and its got a well regarded Law and primary care Medical school, which swings weight with Big Ten Law and Medical schools ... and they have clout out of proportion to their research grant funding because of the appeal of their alumni contributions. Some of those are boosters, but lots of them are actual contributors to the University proper.

(04-04-2013 02:07 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  *To clarify, I got the number 12 because I didn't count UMD and RU, because they aren't current B1G schools, and they aren't in the Midwest and I didn't count PSU, because it isn't in the Midwest. So, 14-2-1+1=12.

Well then, we've got our test. We can do a social network cluster analysis of research projects, and if research between Rutgers and Maryland on the one hand and the Midwestern CIC members is statistically significantly greater than it previously was, we'll have our answer.

Should be able to get an answer by 2020.

(04-03-2013 03:48 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I don't get why people get so hung up on academics. It's about the sports and regional matchups. Who cares if school A is 10 slots higher than school B. It's FB, BB and the other sports. Let's play ball and get over all this foolishness.

Does your Miko the Memphis fan personality ever get in to arguments with your Miko the Pittsburgh fan personality ?

(04-04-2013 03:33 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(04-04-2013 02:07 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  *To clarify, I got the number 12 because I didn't count UMD and RU, because they aren't current B1G schools, and they aren't in the Midwest and I didn't count PSU, because it isn't in the Midwest. So, 14-2-1+1=12.

Well then, we've got our test. We can do a social network cluster analysis of research projects, and if research between Rutgers and Maryland on the one hand and the Midwestern CIC members is statistically significantly greater than it previously was, we'll have our answer.

Should be able to get an answer by 2020.

True. It will be interesting.

Btw, speaking of athletic conferences and academic rankings, does anyone know WVU's change in academic rank between this year and last year. I think that they are the only school to ever jump to an inferior academic conference and it would be interesting to see if they take a hit.

(04-03-2013 05:18 PM)10thMountain Wrote:  

(04-03-2013 04:57 PM)GreenMississippi Wrote:  It matters for the BIG and PAC.

For the SEC it matters if you are a state flagship. Multiple C*USA schools have better academics than SEC schools, and several are in bigger metros, but they are not the "capstone" school of the state. If they had it to do over, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State would not have mad it into the SEC, but for different reasons.

Multiple (current) CUSA schools are small private schools with big endowments so the fact that they rank higher than big state schools isn't super surprising.

I'll agree that MSU probably wouldn't make a do over because MS is such a small market state to begin with but not sure about Vandy. They are a great school, great road trip and are competitive in everything and even have occasional good FB seasons. Plus, there seems to be some value in having at least one private member as no major conference doesn't have one.

And Vandy is an AAU school with one of the best medical programs and medical centers in the USA. Know that first hand...

This is a recurrent question on this board. Here is a link to one of my posts from an earlier thread. http://csnbbs.com/showthread.php?tid=605...#pid865302

Basically, there is a prestige element that comes with associating with high quality schools that is very important to university leaders. The association of a school with other quality schools also improves the quality of the student applicant pool that individual schools experience, which in turn increases the SAT scores of admitted students and decreases acceptance rates, both of which tend to increase the overall rating of the school regardless of whether any real improvement is achieved. It also improves the ability of schools to raise money from alumni and other donors for academic purposes. This can be translated into better academic facilities and the ability to attract higher profile professors.

Playing Northeastern South Carolina State Teachers College twice a year in every sport, even if they are extremely competitive, just does not provide the same value by association as playing The University of South Carolina.

Interesting observation: In the past, I started threads about academics being important to conferences where the majority of the fans have opined not so and were quite crude about it. In this thread, I posted a contrary position about academics, and the majority of the posts are stating that they do play a role. Amazingly, the discourse from those supporting the theory that academics are important to athletic conferences have put forward more informed posts that make for great discussion. Those that think academics are not important - for the most part - tended to make crude posts that attacked posters as much as the idea itself. Interesting...

(04-05-2013 08:43 AM)miko33 Wrote:  Interesting observation: In the past, I started threads about academics being important to conferences where the majority of the fans have opined not so and were quite crude about it. In this thread, I posted a contrary position about academics, and the majority of the posts are stating that they do play a role. Amazingly, the discourse from those supporting the theory that academics are important to athletic conferences have put forward more informed posts that make for great discussion. Those that think academics are not important - for the most part - tended to make crude posts that attacked posters as much as the idea itself. Interesting...

Sounds like democrats when you talk about anything of substance.

(04-05-2013 09:10 AM)MemphisTigerFreak Wrote:  

(04-05-2013 08:43 AM)miko33 Wrote:  Those that think academics are not important - for the most part - tended to make crude posts that attacked posters as much as the idea itself. Interesting...

Sounds like democrats when you talk about anything of substance.

Also republicans in the same circumstances ~ those who make their money from loyalty to a political party and those who cheer for the red team or the blue team like they are the sports team they have been cheering for since they were a kid can run into trouble when they grip any particular issue too tightly, since its normal for politics to swing around and the two teams to switch their policy position plays.

But that would be a spin room discussion, now wouldn't it be?

It may be that people arguing that academics are not important are arguing a different question: that academics shouldnt be important. But whether they should be or shouldn't be, they almost always factor in in realignment decisions, even when they don't drive the bus, and sometimes they are a really big deal in conference realignment.