(07-12-2014 06:45 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (07-11-2014 08:52 PM)10thMountain Wrote: Again, Texas is the only state with more than 2 public P5s
Nobody else has more than 2 and it's not a coincidence
You keep saying this, but why isn't it a coincidence?
contrary to Aggie "logic" the reason it is not a coincidence has nothing to do with athletics or population or recruiting it has to do with academics and the formation of university systems and higher ed in general
in general most states either have one or two "flagship" universities one originally dedicated to humanities, liberal arts, professional programs and the like and another dedicated to ag and "mechanical" studies and any other was a "normal college" for teacher training........some states it was two distinct universities like Michigan and Michigan State or Iowa and Iowa State and some it was one like tOSU, Florida, MN, WI and the like
those were generally the schools that had a full athletics program since the normal colleges enrolled a much larger % of females and female athletics were mostly non-existent
again The State of Iowa is probably the best example of this with Iowa State and Iowa and then UNI which was the "normal college"......those are the only three public universities in the state and UNI only recently because of the growth of the university was allowed to focus on research as well as undergrad studies
others like WI or Nebraska have a single large research state university and all the others were either normal colleges or dedicated to undergrad studies for most of their early history and thus athletics were not developed
in the case of Florida UF is the single university that was originally the flagship and Free Shrimp U was a girls school for 40+ years until after WWII when soldiers returning home started going there
also in most states you have either one BOR for all the universities or you have a BOR for each system.....Iowa has the single BOR system as does Georgia (with the University of Georgia the original "flagship and land grant university" combined into one)
over time as populations grew and cities and regions grew there would be changes in schools and some would be bumped up and called flagships (Free Shrimp as an example).......others would just be elevated to "research" while the single original flagship stayed the same (like UGA the flagship and GaTech, Georgia State, Georgia Regents as research)
states that are notable exceptions to this overall scheme are California, Texas and NY
in the 60s California had "The California Plan" and that merged all state universities into either the UC System or the CSU System........while Cal Berkeley would still the the "flagship" of the UC System all UC System schools are treated equally and California is the only state where all the UC System schools are considered "land grant" (I believe because they run all land grant activity through the system offices not Cal and UC Davis originally a Cal ag research station would be the university that would be the "land grant" university in most other states)....CSU schools do not offer PhDs or Doctorates for the most part with a few exceptions (SDSU) or in conjunction with a UC System school and there are two BORs the UC and the CSU
there was also a de-emphasis on athletics at many of the schools in both systems
in New York Cornell a private university is actually the "land grant" and that portion of the university is actually state funded as are a couple of other portions of the university
all state universities in NY are in the SUNY System and they do not have a flagship they have research, doctoral and on and on and the emphasis on athletics is small overall with only Buffalo a state D1-A school and all under one BOR
in Texas there are 6 university systems (Texas, A&M, Tech, UH, north Texas state, and Texas State)......all but one have a flagship.....the Texas State System that was originally made up of many of the states normal colleges has no flagship and Texas has 4 independent state universities Stephen F. Austin, TWU, TSU and Midwestern......each system has a BOR and each independent has a BOR
even with a flagship for each system some systems have more than one research university, UT Austin, UTD, UTA, UTEP and UTSA as an example and nearly every one of the state universities in Texas has at least a couple of doctorate or PhD programs and athletics emphasis was left up to the universities and BORs
so really the reason that most states have only two state D1-A universities is because at the beginning there was either a Land Grant Ag and Mechanical major university and an Arts, Liberal Arts, Humanities and Professional program university in each state and then normal colleges and in some states there was just the single major state university and then the normal colleges
so the normal colleges never had a focus on athletics and by the time many of them changed to other missions athletics was far enough along that the attempt top put a focus on it was seen as not worth the money and effort or possibly as taking away from the "flagships"
only in a couple of states did things change significantly and that was California that shifted around all universities and changed up athletics dramatically at many of them and took away the power for schools to try and differentiate themselves with athletics and in Texas where pretty much the opposite happened and specific areas were able to get universities for their areas sometimes with their own BOR either through the creation of a university and a system (Texas Tech) or the state taking over a university and allowing it to have it's own BOR (UH).....A&M and UT were never going to merge into one university system and other universities had broken out on their own or started on their own and were not going to merge into another system as well especially the UT, A&M or Texas State Systems
in Florida with a large land area and high population growth and a single university system they were just trying to keep up with educational growth and needs before worrying about athletics
everywhere else is pretty much small enough that trying to let another university compete at the D1-A level was not allowed until it was way too late for that university to compete and compete well enough to become a "P5" member
and there are only a couple of states with private universities that were large enough, had enough money and had a demand for football to maintain being "P5"
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