(08-18-2023 07:02 AM)esayem Wrote: (08-18-2023 12:19 AM)AllTideUp Wrote: (08-17-2023 08:29 AM)esayem Wrote: (08-17-2023 06:49 AM)AllTideUp Wrote: Quote:But a source with knowledge of the discussions said the Big Ten did not have serious conversations about adding Florida State, and its top priority remains Notre Dame.
Some commenters have pointed this line out. I find it interesting.
Some will read this and suggest the Big Ten doesn't want Florida State. I wouldn't go that direction with it. We can simply take it at face value that the Big Ten is revolving their expansion plans around their white whale...Notre Dame. Everything they're doing at this point is a cog in that plan.
Secondly, we can assume Florida State has not pressed the issue. The statement is framed from the Big Ten perspective, but it says nothing about FSU's interest in being discussed. I maintain they would prefer to be in the SEC for several reasons. Long term, I think FSU and Clemson will be in the SEC as it just makes too much sense for everyone.
Also found this tidbit quite fascinating:
Quote:With Oregon and Washington headed to the Big Ten, and Arizona, Arizona State and Utah officially joining the Big 12, the Pac-12 had only four schools remaining. The ACC conversations about Cal and Stanford grew more serious. From an outside perspective, there seemed to be few benefits, especially for a league that needed two things desperately: more revenue and a boost to its football reputation. Neither school provided that. Add in travel to the West Coast for only two teams, and it made little sense.
Except to the presidents.
"Cal and Stanford were probably from the presidents' perspective a better target than anybody else in the Pac-12 just because of the academic reputation," one administrator said. "The fact that Oregon and Washington left, OK that's fine, but these are two pretty good brands, so how do we integrate them into the league?"
This is proof positive that some people in high places don't deserve to be there. Or at least they need to do a better job of delegating. Apparently one(at least) of these Presidents literally believed Cal and Stanford were the best targets despite the fact they were basically last on the board.
Just as a side note, if anyone out there is shocked that Stanford and Cal haven't found a home yet then you need to reevaluate your understanding. There is not one thing shocking about that. I could have conceivably seen the Big Ten take them in order to tie the room together, but there's no strong motivation to do that if they don't have to take them.
I repeat...the fact that Stanford and Cal have not been snapped up yet is not shocking. If this surprises you then go back to the drawing board because you don't know as much as you think you do.
More to the point, if this is how ACC leadership thinks then yes, I can fully understand why Florida State wants out yesterday. This is also the limited scope of thinking that got the PAC 12 into their quicksand-like death spiral.
I guess this argument comes down to the fundamental philosophy of a university president. You are arguing it is all about a media payment for football. I believe a university president has other priorities that make that payout quite minuscule. Perhaps academic partnerships with one of the BEST universities on the planet is floating around in their mind. A favor for a favor.
You are NOT thinking like a university president, something I’ve preached here for over a decade.
I've heard the argument many, many, many times. There's nothing new about this line of reasoning, but this is a philosophical or perhaps sociological position. It's more about keeping up appearances than anything else.
Until someone provides hard numbers to back up the idea that being in an athletic conference with a certain school helps partnerships in meaningful ways or guarantees the growth of research budgets then I stand by my statement.
People keep arguing about the scaled nature of athletic expenditures compared to academic expenditures. I don't contend with the nature of that at all. There's an obvious distinction, but no one seems to be able to demonstrate that athletic affiliation has a causal relationship to academic expenditure so it's a moot point. Bottom line is that there is absolutely not one legal, institutional, cultural, or structural reason that the schools of the ACC can't have robust partnerships with Stanford, Cal, or anyone else.
Frankly, it's a silly proposition that any school that takes academics seriously would allow athletic affiliation to affect their decision making on academic endeavors. To make myself perfectly clear, it's patently absurd that any school or collection of schools would limit themselves or forgo opportunities based on athletic affiliation.
Whether you're leaving a league for a "lesser academic conference" such as what Colorado and company are doing or whether you're joining a "greater academic conference" such as what USC and company are doing, none of these institutions will begin or discontinue relationships based on who they're playing football against. From the other angle, none of the old PAC schools will sever relationships with each other simply because their old league doesn't exist anymore. USC isn't going to shun Colorado or Utah or the Arizona schools simply because they left for a "lesser academic conference." None of the Big Ten schools will avoid working with Texas or Texas A&M or Florida because they're in a "lesser academic conference." Nobody in the ACC will avoid working with Rice because they're in a "lesser academic conference." Throw out whatever scenario you like, the principle is the same. All of this should be obvious.
To suggest otherwise is self-defeating. Am I supposed to believe that these university presidents who allegedly value academics to such a significant degree would actually avoid helping their own institutions or avoid furthering the fostering of new knowledge because all those joint swim meets just don't mean as much as they used to? Come on.
Besides, your point is clearly unmerited even in the midst of this discussion. If the relationship were at all substantive then the Big Ten would have snapped up Stanford and Cal at the same time(if not before) they took USC and UCLA. The proof is in the pudding regardless of how high-minded the rhetoric might sound.
I haven't been preaching this for a decade, but I've posed the question numerous times in various forums over many years and still haven't received a satisfactory principle in return...much less hard data that backs up the assertion.
There are countless examples of great schools that don't even sponsor intercollegiate athletics. Do they struggle to rub elbows? Or let's take the Ivy League that doesn't sponsor scholarship athletics...how many of these schools struggle to form solid academic partnerships? What about schools like Tulane or Rice or all the others at the G5 level or lower divisions? Do they struggle to form partnerships because their athletic budgets are minuscule compared to Michigan?
Or what about those vaunted conference academic consortiums? The ones that allegedly pool money and grease the skids? Isn't the Big Ten supposed to have the greatest collection among the Power conferences? Well, when Johns Hopkins joined the Big Ten for lacrosse, they didn't even bother joining the CIC(or whatever the official name is now) despite being invited to do so. The University of Chicago, who abandoned major athletics long ago but nonetheless maintained their CIC membership, dropped out just a few years back. I mean, does the University of Chicago not value academics? Clearly, the far more logical and consistent conclusion is that the CIC or any athletic conference based consortium simply isn't that big of a deal.
More to the point, if the conference consortiums were significant then the presidents would be negligent in their duties to limit applicants only to athletic conference members. How dumb would that be? "Hey Harvard...it says here you're not in the Big Ten so we really just don't feel good about having you in the CIC. Maybe start playing football against us and we can consider having a real relationship."
Academic partnerships are made on substance which is why the university presidents might want to consider delegating athletic concerns to others who know how to leverage those relationships and their unique nature.
I mean I don't really have to argue the point, it's been said by admins for decades that the academic reputation of the conference matters, whether that ends at athletics or not. Academics matter. The Ivy League stopped playing the Big Ten and Eastern Indies, Holy Cross castrated a once proud athletic dept. in the name of academics, GaTech and Tulane left the SEC, FSU declared their academic mission aligned with the ACC and it was an integral part of their decision (I've posted this before), and now we have Stanford obviously going out on a limb (pun intended) to join the ACC over the academically inferior Big XII.
I've already laid out a perfectly reasonable criteria for you to make your point. Show me
hard data that proves athletic affiliation directly improves or impairs research partnerships and expenditures. You have all the time in the world to provide a substantive basis. I'll wait.
BTW, your anecdotal examples not only lack context, they have absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the point at hand. We all know that Presidents, like any political creature or professional academician, are quite concerned with appearances. I already admitted that and there is plenty of room under the umbrella of my position for a nuanced discussion about why one school or league might prefer to play this school or that school...or be a member of this league or that league.
But of course, that wasn't the point. You've ignored the point, once again, in favor of high minded rhetoric. I laid down the challenge that athletic affiliation neither helps nor hinders academic endeavors. You didn't even address that. You moved right on into why a school might want to play football against this school or that school. You did not address in any of those anecdotal examples how any academic endeavor during those time periods or since was directly affected by those athletic decisions. Please respond to the challenge in context if you're going to bother to do so.
Not only that, you didn't address the substantive examples I provided that revolved around academic partnerships within the context of athletic affiliation. Whether Johns Hopkins wants to work academically with the consortium that is the CIC has nothing to do with whether Georgia Tech plays football against Alabama and Auburn or not. A relevant comparison would have included whether or not Georgia Tech continued academic partnerships with SEC schools when the left. So on and so forth up and down every single one of your anecdotes. These are 2 distinct subjects and you continue to conflate them.
Not to mention, you bring up Georgia Tech and Tulane as though either one of them wouldn't accept an SEC invitation if it was given today in the year 2023. Again I ask, what does any of that have to do with academic endeavors at any of the schools in question?
(08-18-2023 07:02 AM)esayem Wrote: Your opinion might be that it does not matter, but everyone in the position to make a decision clearly thinks the opposite.
What opinion exactly? When did I state that academics don't matter? Again, you're conflating.
There's very little opinion in the presentation of the fact that the Big Ten academic consortium would be foolish to pass up a partnership with Harvard over the fact they don't play in the same athletic conference. Do you disagree?
Let's consider the vaunted AAU for a moment. It contains over 60 schools between the US and Canada that are considered excellent in general. The Big Ten schools clearly partner with the Ivy League schools under the banner of the AAU regardless of any athletic affiliation. Do you disagree? Where's the opinion in bringing this sort of dynamic to light?
If athletic barriers are irrelevant as it pertains to the AAU membership (or any other academic alliance for that matter) then what makes one think a school like Stanford being added to the ACC would have any impact on what sort of research they partnered on? Any AAU school is already in cahoots with another. They don't rub elbows at those meetings? They don't do each other favors?
It's not lost on me that you presented this sort of conference partnership as the basis of a quid pro quo. I already stated, however, that it doesn't matter what the scenario is...the operative principle is still the same. That operative principle being that if Stanford values their academic work more highly than their athletic endeavors then it would make no sense to compromise in any way their academic endeavors in exchange for ACC(athletic) membership. The same goes in the other direction for the ACC schools. If any of them desire partnership then the sky is already the limit regardless of who plays football against who. No one in this scenario needs access to athletic prowess in order to form the basis of any partnership.
BTW, that operative principle is doubly true for schools like MIT, Emory, or Carnegie Mellon seeing as how none of them sponsor major athletics if at all.
And certainly to the overarching point that schools spend far more money on their academic budgets as opposed to athletics, why would any school alter their approach to funding or potentially risk any shred of credibility whatsoever by basing their academic decisions on which conference wanted them or didn't want them? What sort of favor is Stanford supposed to give the members of the ACC in exchange for athletic membership that the whole premise of this argument portrays as of lesser importance in the first place?
(08-18-2023 07:02 AM)esayem Wrote: You're arguing with me like I said academics are the only factor considered when issuing an invitation. I never said that; you are twisting my argument into that by citing Stanford not being in the Big Ten. The Big Ten is out of Monopoly money—look at Oregon and Washington. FOX knows they have to figure out how to increase the deal and add more slices next negotiation. They have probably told the Big Ten to STOP because they're in a precarious position ~2030. I can smell unequal revenue distribution next go around.
What's the relevance here?
I'm not arguing over the premise of academics being A factor. No, it's you who are twisting my argument. If you want to understand my argument better then go back to your initial contention with my first post.
Quote:I believe a university president has other priorities that make that payout quite minuscule. Perhaps academic partnerships with one of the BEST universities on the planet is floating around in their mind. A favor for a favor.
Your initial premise was that athletic payouts were minuscule when compared to academic priorities. Now, in this latest paragraph you've switched your story. Now it's about whether the Big Ten has enough money from Fox. Now, we all know Fox isn't paying to broadcast forensic debates so we must be talking about athletics here.
At this point, you are free to debate with yourself. Should the Big Ten add Stanford and Cal because the academic partnerships are of superior importance to media payouts? Or is the Big Ten limited in their ability to engage in academic partnerships because Fox isn't willing to pay money for Stanford and Cal football?
I find it odd that the presidents of the ACC would prioritize academic partnerships, but the presidents of the Big Ten wouldn't do the same. Thus was my point.
Anyway, once you've decided which position you are taking, get back to me and we can continue.
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College football realignment (Adelson): What's next for ACC, Florida State?
ACC 
