(07-06-2018 02:24 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 02:02 PM)GhentFan Wrote:  Wasn't a Magnolia Conference looked at once upon a time but didn't work out due to the money some schools were making back then?
Would be even more difficult to pull something like that off now right?

I dont know if the Magnolia Confernece was ever a very serious proposal. Lets be real---today no P5 is leaving their cushy P5 meal ticket to be in a new conference. So, any private school conference would have to assembled from schools outside of the P5.

Rice, Tulane, SMU, and Tulsa make a lot of sense together. Add in Navy, Air Force, and Army---you become a bit more far flung----but you certainly would have 7 schools that would be great institutional fits. You need just one more school to get to 8. Given the layout--you'd ideally like make #8 a travel partner for Air Force.

Air Force will not leave the front range schools. Many private schools in that area are in D2 or D3. You do have Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian. Dallas Baptist is already D1 in baseball.

Regis in Denver or even Denver would be travel partners. BYU wants to be in a Power conference.

I just do not see any options unless more private schools in the region adds football, and move up from D2.

(07-06-2018 03:04 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 02:24 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 02:02 PM)GhentFan Wrote:  Wasn't a Magnolia Conference looked at once upon a time but didn't work out due to the money some schools were making back then?
Would be even more difficult to pull something like that off now right?

I dont know if the Magnolia Confernece was ever a very serious proposal. Lets be real---today no P5 is leaving their cushy P5 meal ticket to be in a new conference. So, any private school conference would have to assembled from schools outside of the P5.

Rice, Tulane, SMU, and Tulsa make a lot of sense together. Add in Navy, Air Force, and Army---you become a bit more far flung----but you certainly would have 7 schools that would be great institutional fits. You need just one more school to get to 8. Given the layout--you'd ideally like make #8 a travel partner for Air Force.

Air Force will not leave the front range schools. Many private schools in that area are in D2 or D3. You do have Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian. Dallas Baptist is already D1 in baseball.

Regis in Denver or even Denver would be travel partners. BYU wants to be in a Power conference.

I just do not see any options unless more private schools in the region adds football, and move up from D2.

Oh, I dont know about that. Keep in mind---this small 8 team private school conference would only have 7 conference games. Additionally, Air Force would free up its entire new larger 5 game OOC to play the front range schools since all the Commanders Cup games would become conference games. Something like this would be an ideal fit for AF.

Here’s a slightly different approach where each conventional division is “headlined” by a semi-independent school (bold in headers). It’s essentially a 56 school P5 breakaway as well which includes all SEC and B1G members and then selects from the ACC, PAC, and BigXII.

(07-06-2018 03:53 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 03:04 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 02:24 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(07-06-2018 02:02 PM)GhentFan Wrote:  Wasn't a Magnolia Conference looked at once upon a time but didn't work out due to the money some schools were making back then?
Would be even more difficult to pull something like that off now right?

I dont know if the Magnolia Confernece was ever a very serious proposal. Lets be real---today no P5 is leaving their cushy P5 meal ticket to be in a new conference. So, any private school conference would have to assembled from schools outside of the P5.

Rice, Tulane, SMU, and Tulsa make a lot of sense together. Add in Navy, Air Force, and Army---you become a bit more far flung----but you certainly would have 7 schools that would be great institutional fits. You need just one more school to get to 8. Given the layout--you'd ideally like make #8 a travel partner for Air Force.

Air Force will not leave the front range schools. Many private schools in that area are in D2 or D3. You do have Incarnate Word and Abilene Christian. Dallas Baptist is already D1 in baseball.

Regis in Denver or even Denver would be travel partners. BYU wants to be in a Power conference.

I just do not see any options unless more private schools in the region adds football, and move up from D2.

Oh, I dont know about that. Keep in mind---this small 8 team private school conference would only have 7 conference games. Additionally, Air Force would free up its entire new larger 5 game OOC to play the front range schools since all the Commanders Cup games would become conference games. Something like this would be an ideal fit for AF.

I've always loved the idea of the Magnolia league. It feels like a better fit for most of the southern private institutions. The main issue is that most of those institutions don't quite live up to the "Southern Ivy" ideal that was the original purpose of the conference. With a modern approach you may be able to get a western wing together and see if the eastern schools would be interested, although it would be unlikely. I think a modern version would be basically be Baylor, TCU, Rice, SMU, Tulsa, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Wake, Duke, and maybe Miami. The problem is these schools are, culturally very different. Rice, Tulane, and Duke are small, academic heavy hitters. Baylor, TCU, Vandy, and Wake are larger private institutions with a strong athletics focus. SMU is somewhere between the two. Miami could almost be a public school given its location and following, it has much more in common with fellow private USC than it does the other schools. Idk what to make of Tulsa. It is a fun concept though.

(07-04-2018 09:34 PM)Statefan Wrote:  I thought Pitt was private. They get some money from the Commonwealth to knock down the price of tuition, but it's a private governance affair I thought.

Pitt, Temple, Penn State, and Lincoln are independently governed universities that receive state aid to enroll Pennsylvania high school graduates, so they are generally considered "state schools" as opposed to, say, Cornell, where its agriculture school is state funded but it maintains an identity as a private school.

It's all in how these schools are presented. Howard University gets over $200 million annually from Congress, but it still considered a private school because it doesn't answer to a federal or local bureaucracy.

Just for fun...

Below is a grid of the most prominent private schools being mentioned for the Never Happen Private Conference, excluding the service academies. It shows the often used major metrics for P5 comparisons, and it is sorted by number of undergrad students from smallest to largest. Here's the fun... I have snuck in 4 public schools from the P5 in this collection. Can you spot them? A clue is that they operate in some ways like private schools and definitely run in the same circles:

(I can't figure out how to fix the column editing... my apologies. Just read straight across and mind the spaces.)


Institution Students Revenue USNews
Rice 3,824 $39,125,169 14
Wake Forest 4,899 $66,995,224 27
SMU 6,294 $57,193,821 61
Duke 6,449 $100,480,206 9
Tulane 6,487 $42,459,986 40
Vanderbilt 6,808 $80,335,651 14
Stanford 7,032 $125,039,558 5
Northwestern 8,249 $84,279,755 11
Notre Dame 8,480 $132,371,404 18
TCU 8,591 $105,055,587 78
Boston College 9,486 $74,587,091 32
Miami 10,102 $89,135,175 46
??? 13,698 $71,438,008 34
Baylor 14,087 $98,125,426 75
Syracuse 14,324 $91,445,865 61
??? 15,420 $92,962,999 25
??? 17,828 $90,500,869 30
USC 18,070 $113,174,912 21
??? 18,129 $84,831,036 68
BYU 28,012 $67,733,712 61


What do you notice? Not really that much difference in profiles, and BYU looks more like an Iowa State or Virginia Tech than a private school. Below is the full list with public schools in italics:


Institution Students Revenue USNews
Rice 3,824 $39,125,169 14
Wake Forest 4,899 $66,995,224 27
SMU 6,294 $57,193,821 61
Duke 6,449 $100,480,206 9
Tulane 6,487 $42,459,986 40
Vanderbilt 7,032 $125,039,558 5
Northwestern 8,249 $84,279,755 11
Notre Dame 8,480 $132,371,404 18
TCU 8,591 $105,055,587 78
Boston College 9,486 $74,587,091 32
Miami 10,102 $89,135,175 46
Georgia Tech 13,698 $71,438,008 34
Baylor 14,087 $98,125,426 75
Syracuse 14,324 $91,445,865 61
Virginia 15,420 $92,962,999 25
North Carolina17,828 $90,500,869 30
USC 18,070 $113,174,912 21
Pittsburgh 18,129 $84,831,036 68
BYU 28,012 $67,733,712 61


Adding Georgia Tech, UNC, Virginia, and Pittsburgh preserves, and probably creates, significant rivalries of 20 institutions that are all top 100 in US News and almost all R1 research institutions. Two conferences of 10 each, or add the three service academies and graduate one more friend if they invest in football (Georgetown, Villanova, etc) for two 12 team conferences.

Notre Dame, Stanford, USC, and the NC Research Triangle get to call the shots, which they will love. They form Challenges with the other conferences to keeps those one or two important rivalries with public schools.

Thoughts?