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the horns, the aggies, and the raiders would make that conference unreal....
I say lets go....I am not saying that TECH would beat up anyone in the PAC-10, but definitely they would improve.
I am all for super conferences.....but I really think that a playoff system is more important!
the horns, the aggies, and the raiders would make that conference unreal....
That is the usual Notre Dame fan response when asked about there best bowl win over the past 17 years. No surprise there.
I understand your point, and from my fan's point of view I'd love to stay the biggest fish in the pond by far, but in terms of conference alignment the politics, money situation, and academic standing from a research and funding perspective are far more important than football or anything that fans care about. The reason Texas was interested in the big 10 were the AAU and CIC funding advantages. The Pac 10, with academic powers such as Stanford and Cal-Berkley as well as the possibility of a huge tv contract encompasing the two largest tv market states, is also a very interesting conference in terms of funding and academics. When it comes down to it the SEC want Texas but Texas doesn't feel the academic direction of the conference members aligns with their own. Basically Fla and Vandy are the only big players there and the conference doesn't have a great academic standing overall. Here's an article from the SEC side that explains the basics of how politics and money/academics play a much bigger role than football:
(This is the fifth part in an on-going series examining the possibility of SEC expansion from a business perspective.)
Mention the words “conference expansion” and fans start dreaming of ways to create the world’s greatest football league.Luck_The_Fakers_ “This team is great and it’s in the Southeast.”Luck_The_Fakers_ “Well this team would be a natural rival with Georgia and Florida.”Luck_The_Fakers_ “This team won a national le this decade.”
That kind of talk is fun.Luck_The_Fakers_ But it’s not the kind of chatter you’re likely to hear when a group of university presidents get together.Luck_The_Fakers_ And ultimately, any decision on SEC expansion will be made by the league’s 12 presidents, not by Mike Slive, the league’s coaches, or its fans.
Money will be key.Luck_The_Fakers_ Securing future funds, future fanbases (ie: population bases) and future power will all be goals.
And football?Luck_The_Fakers_ Well, it’s part of the equation, too, but it’s not the 95% of the deal that some in the media would have you believe.Luck_The_Fakers_
Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said this week that academics shouldn’t be overlooked in the current expansion frenzy.
“You’re hitting on the most important part of this deal that people are actually missing.Luck_The_Fakers_ Our presidents are in it not because of football.Luck_The_Fakers_ Let’s be clear.Luck_The_Fakers_ And I agree with them.”Luck_The_Fakers_ Adding more schools from the AAU — more on that group in a minute — “would take us to a whole other level” as a conference.
That’s not just a Big Ten view.Luck_The_Fakers_ Former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan recently discussed just how much of a role academics played in his league’s expansion back in the early 90s.
“I think if you would have asked the people at Florida State about joining, there were some who probably thought, well, (the ACC is) not good enough in football.Luck_The_Fakers_ But if you ask some people in the faculty, they’d say, ‘We get to be in the same league as Duke and Virginia and Carolina and Georgia Tech!”
Even football coaches understand the importance of finding good academic “fits” for a league.Luck_The_Fakers_ “At Wake Forest, we want to be a great football team, we want to win as many games every year as we possibly can, but we can’t sacrifice academics,” Jim Grobe said.Luck_The_Fakers_ “And it’s good to compete against other schools that have the same goals and aspirations.”
In other words, while you and your buddies are debating the merits of Florida State or Texas A&M as potential SEC dance partners, you’d best not be forgetting about academics.
The AAU and The CIC
When you read the letters AAU, you probably think of a mid-summer basketball league.Luck_The_Fakers_ But in the Big Ten, those three letters mean something completely different.
Each of the Big Ten’s 11 schools are members of the Association of American Universities.Luck_The_Fakers_ That’s a collection of 63 of the biggest research-oriented schools in North America.
According to the AAU, the 110-year-old organization “focuses on national and ins utional issues that are important to research-intensive universities, including funding for research, research and education policy, and graduate and undergraduate education.”
Compared to the research spending of top-flight major universities, even the biggest athletic budgets pale in comparison.Luck_The_Fakers_ In 2008, the University of Florida was one of only three schools to top $100 million in athletic spending.
Think $100 million is a lot of cash to spend?Luck_The_Fakers_ Multiply it by five and you have what UF spent in 2008 on research projects.Luck_The_Fakers_ In fact, Florida receives more than $550 million annually in sponsored research funding.
Presidents pay attention to those kinds of dollars.
In addition to focusing on AAU membership, the Big Ten has also created the Committee on Ins utional Cooperation.Luck_The_Fakers_ The CIC, according to its director, was designed to “save money, solve problems, share assets and build opportunity for faculty and researchers.”Luck_The_Fakers_
All eleven Big Ten schools — as well as original member the University of Chicago — benefit from this consortium.Luck_The_Fakers_ Imagine the ability to buy in bulk.Luck_The_Fakers_ The CIC has also digitized millions of books that can be shared across the conference via fiber optic network.
“By almost any metric — investment in research, number of top ten academic programs, national rankings and enrollment — the CIC universities are very similar,” said Barbara McFadden Allen, the group’s director.Luck_The_Fakers_ “This helps us move together on projects and initiatives in ways that would be difficult for a more disparate group.”
If and when the Big Ten expands, Allen said the league will “be bringing in a university and not a team.”
Michael Hogan, the incoming president at the University of Illinois, has thought about possible Big Ten membership while serving at his last school, the University of Connecticut.
“Part of what appealed to me about it was, there’s an academic counterpart to the Big Ten, the Committee on Ins utional Cooperation, which is based there in Urbana (Illinois).Luck_The_Fakers_ It brings together presidents and provosts to share ideas on the academic side, including sharing programs that make them widely available to all students in the Big Ten.Luck_The_Fakers_ It’s a nice match of the academic and sports part of the ins ution all across the board in the Big Ten.”
Starting to get the picture?Luck_The_Fakers_ The presidents of the SEC do.Luck_The_Fakers_ They’re surely aware that their own league lags behind the Big Ten in terms of academic reputation.
According to the latest rankings provided by “US News & World Report,” the average Big Ten university ranks at #50.Luck_The_Fakers_ The average SEC school comes in at #91.Luck_The_Fakers_ On average, Big Ten schools receive and spend more than $500 million in research funding each year.Luck_The_Fakers_ In the SEC research funding reaches only about $227 million per school.
Then there’s the whole 11 to two lead the Big Ten holds in AAU memberships.Luck_The_Fakers_ Only Florida and Vanderbilt are in that club from the SEC.
In short, the Big Ten is a league of massive, big budgeted schools that focus on graduate degrees and academic research.Luck_The_Fakers_ The schools of the SEC are solid, spend well in research, but focus more on the undergraduate side of things.Luck_The_Fakers_
That’s something for fans to think about when trying to hash out which schools are most likely to receive SEC invitations (if any).
The SEC’s presidents are trying to take steps to close the gap on the Big Ten academically.
Part of ESPN’s television deal with the SEC forced the network to partner with the league in the creation of the SEC Academic Network.Luck_The_Fakers_
Launched last August, the online network features “content from every (SEC) ins ution ranging from research, innovation and economic development to community partnerships, civic engagement and service.”
“The commitment to highlight the accomplishments of SEC member ins ution academic programs was a key component of our new television agreements,” Slive said.Luck_The_Fakers_ “This network will provide our 12 ins utions with the ability to create and distribute academic and other non-athletic programming through the world on a regular and full-time basis.”
In other words, it’s a PR wing designed to push and improve the SEC’s academic brand.Luck_The_Fakers_ But good advertising isn’t the only step the league’s presidents are taking.
In 2005 the SEC created the Southeastern Conference Academic Consortium.Luck_The_Fakers_ Consider it a very young version of the Big Ten’s CIC.
According to a 2006 press release, the consortium was created to “bolster teaching, research, public service and other educational activities” at SEC schools.Luck_The_Fakers_ It’s goal is to “provide opportunities for schools to work together to enhance and share academic resources.Luck_The_Fakers_ All 12 SEC member schools will work together, outside of the athletic realm, to create a cooperative environment for all students.”
If you’re bored to tears, you shouldn’t be.Luck_The_Fakers_ This is how conferences expand.Luck_The_Fakers_ This is how schools decide which league they will join.Luck_The_Fakers_ Take Texas, for example.
Targeting Texas
Make no mistake, Texas is the prize that the SEC has its eye on.Luck_The_Fakers_ The Big Ten is looking toward the Lone Star State, too.Luck_The_Fakers_ And Washington’s athletic director Scott Howard recently said, “I’d be surprised if our (Pac-10) office is not in contact with them.Luck_The_Fakers_ I’m sure those conversations have happened and are taking place.”
Texas is big.Luck_The_Fakers_ It’s got the television markets, alumni base, name brand, huge facilities and A-1 athletic programs that conference commissioners lust after.
The school also fancies itself to be a Harvard on the Colorado River, which appeals to university presidents.
To hear former SEC commissioner Harvey Schiller tell it, Texas was ticketed to join the league back in the late 1980s.Luck_The_Fakers_ “I spent some time with (Texas athletic director) DeLoss Dodds and he really wanted to join the conference.”Luck_The_Fakers_ Unfortunately politicians got involved and the deal fell through.Luck_The_Fakers_ That’s how Schiller recalls it anyway.
Folks in Texas remember things a bit differently.Luck_The_Fakers_ Former University of Texas president Robert Berdahl told MySanAntonio.com in 2007 that at the time he was unimpressed with the SEC’s academic reputation.
“We were quite interested in raising academic standards and the Southeastern Conference had absolutely no interest in that.”
If the former Texas prez is to be believed, we might not be talking about the SEC possibly wooing the Longhorns now had the league agreed to boost its academic standards some 20 years ago.
Academics play a role, folks.Luck_The_Fakers_ A big role.
Politics Play A Big Role, Too
Go back to the early ’90s and everyone seems to have a different take on how that wave of expansion took place.
According to Schiller, the SEC didn’t want Texas A&M and balked at a “take ‘em both or you get none” stance from the Texas state legislature.Luck_The_Fakers_
Meanwhile, Vince Dooley was pushing for Georgia Tech to earn an SEC bid.Luck_The_Fakers_ Florida supposedly wanted both Florida State and Miami to join.
As you know, in the end, Arkansas and South Carolina were the only schools to come on board.
But in Texas, the powerbrokers say that Texas A&M and LSU officials had been angling to bring the Aggies into the league as early as the late ’80s.Luck_The_Fakers_ As the story goes, after talks with Miami fell apart, LSU athletic director Joe Dean called A&M AD John David Crow and told him that LSU would sponsor an entry bid from A&M.
Dean said at the time that he believed Texas was “headed north” to the Big Ten or Big Eight (now the Big 12) and that A&M was the “most logical addition to the SEC.”
Unfortunately Texas legislators weren’t going to let the state’s two biggest schools split.Luck_The_Fakers_ So that meant a Texas and Texas A&M package deal to the Big Eight.Luck_The_Fakers_ But the politicians weren’t done yet.
Baylor and Texas Tech had powerful allies throughout the state legislature and, according to some, threats were made to Texas and A&M officials.Luck_The_Fakers_ If they tried to jump from the old Southwest Conference without the Bears and Red Raiders riding shotgun, both schools would see their state funding cut.
Presto Chango, the Big Eight grew not to 10 teams but to 12.Luck_The_Fakers_
The lesson here is that in many cases, targeting just one of a state’s schools can lead to political headaches.Luck_The_Fakers_ There’s been much talk that Texas and Texas A&M would still be bound together by politicos today (though officials from both schools seem to be fine with the idea of going in different directions).Luck_The_Fakers_
History would tell us that any deal for Texas might not just be a combo package with A&M but a super-sized meal that includes Baylor and Texas Tech, too.
Want Oklahoma?Luck_The_Fakers_ You’ll likely hear a howl from Oklahoma State grads in that state’s legislature.Luck_The_Fakers_ Ditto Kansas and Kansas State.Luck_The_Fakers_ Double ditto in the case of Virginia Tech and Virginia.
The above information isn’t sexy.Luck_The_Fakers_ It’s not fun.Luck_The_Fakers_ And it doesn’t make for good sports bar conversation.Luck_The_Fakers_
But it will play a role in any expansion decision the SEC makes.
Academics and politics will be involved.Luck_The_Fakers_ Just take note of what Missouri Governor Jay Nixon told the Associated Press this spring:Luck_The_Fakers_ “I’m not going to say anything bad about the Big 12, but when you compare Oklahoma State to Northwestern, when you compare Texas Tech to Wisconsin, I mean you begin looking at educational possibilities that are worth looking at.”
A governor ripping one conference while talking up another.Luck_The_Fakers_ Academics and politics, folks.Luck_The_Fakers_ Academics and politics.
(To read Part One of this series, click here.Luck_The_Fakers_ For Part Two, click here.Luck_The_Fakers_ For Part Three, click here.Luck_The_Fakers_ And for Part Four, click here.)
http://www.mrsec.com/2010/05/expound...ore-specifics/
That Eliot thing is ing annoying.
What is with that Luck_The_Fakers_ thing??? You can't even read the .
I have no f'n idea. That macro went renegade and is triggering when there isn't even an ellio t mentioned.
If u want to skim it the link would be better
Looks like Colorado is supposed to make a major announcement tomorrow. I think they're trying to undercut the efforts of Baylor to get into the Pac-10 and beat them to the punch. There is another option for Pac-10 expansion that would include adding Colorado and Utah.
In addition to that, the Nebraska boards are blowing up saying that going to the Big 10 is a done deal. Take it FWIW. I don't believe it.
Last edited by TFloss32; 06-08-2010 at 05:16 PM.
main priority is to add the 5 big 12 south teams - baylor and +colorado. If texas ends up going big 10 or something then im sure pac 10 has other options with teams like utah or byu or something.
A Big XII South + Colorado merger is the Pac-10's priority. However, Colorado knows that the Texas Legislature is getting in their way by wanting to replace them with Baylor. If Colorado gets an official invitation from the Pac-10, they're not going to wait around. They'll bolt if given the chance.
Oh yeah for sure. It will be hard to split up the Texas teams. They are all tied together somehow. IMO (if the big 12 does dissolve) I would love for Texas to join the Big 10 and A&M to join the SEC while keeping there annual rivalry game out of conference. (much like FL/FLST and GA/GATECH
That would leave too many ooc rivalry games for Texas and under that scenario the rivalry dies. They would drop aggie before sooner.
I would hate aggie to sec because that could open up sec to Texas hs recruiting goldmine. I want aggie tagging alongside us with tech/Baylor becoming irrelevent.
Baylor stalking the Pac 10.
http://barkingcarnival.fantake.com/2...g-court-order/
no way.
huh? other than 2008 for a quick eye blink, was Tech ever relevant?I want aggie tagging alongside us with tech/Baylor becoming irrelevent.
...that had such potential to be good...
They've been in a relevant conference. They can come with us to the Pac whatever or toil in the sunbelt, I don't care. I just don't want Aggie opening up the Texas talent to SEC schools.
Why do you think they would drop the RRSO with OU before Aggie?
the RRSO is by far the greater rivalry and one of the greatest in college sports, and it would be a very difficult decision if it came down to having to pick one or the other....
but I think in the end, the powers that be in higher places in Texas would make sure that the in-state game stays.
I'm not sure how many Texas legislators graduated from OU or have close ties to that school, but I'm guessing it's not very many.
Having the two state flagship universities not play each other on a yearly basis would cause an in-state rift of sorts, imo.
Would you still feel the same way if A&M wanted to go to the SEC and Texas wanted to go to a different conference or would the Texas legislators insist that the two schools be in the same conference even though they could schedule the game OOC.
It amazes me how much power the Texas legislators have in these expansion scenarios.
They will never not be in the same conference. It makes too much sense for them to go together and the Pac 10, Big 10 and SEC would take both in a heartbeat.
By friend in Austin told me that he heard yesterday on KLBJ the jeff ward show that gov Perry (an aggie) prefers the SEC for A&m. He is supposedly meeting with UT & AtM presidents by the end of the week...
No way IMO that UT goes to the SEC.
I would think that it does make sense for the two to be in the same conference, but if one wants to go somewhere the other does not would the Texas legislators allow that.
With UT and S&M in the same conference (assuming that Oklahoma wasn't in that new conference) then UT could schedule the RRSO like it did before the formation of Big 12 as an OOC game.
True, but taking the rest of the Big 12 South may/could be a hinderance.
The meeting is tomorrow to make sure they're on the same page. From the sound of it, Nebraska is going to the Big 10. They've accepted an invitation (Omaha Newspaper). This Pac 10 thing is probably going to happen. The last thing Texas wants is A&M to go to the SEC without them. That's why I think they will fight tooth and nail to make sure that Aggy stays chained. If they split, Texas will be free to go to the Big 10 alone IMO.
I seriously would like to see this happen. I am not a fan at all of traveling to cal-berkeley and stanford and schools like that. The city of Austin might fit in with that crowd and the University of Texas might fit in with it also but College Station and TAMU doesn't. Of course by no means can the rivalry between Texas and A&M die but if there is an agreement that can be made to play a non-conference game with Texas in the Big 10 and A&M in the SEC than I would prefer this in a heartbeat. The game can still be on Thanksgiving and everything and I'm sure the 2 conferences wouldn't mind working around that. Both would move on to better things and conferences that suit the school, culture, and cities while leaving Tech/Baylor and co. to figure out something on their own. (pipe dream I know but this is just my opinion being a student at TAMU and a lot feel the same way). Problem is the legislature sadly wont let it happen
Last edited by DesignatedT; 06-09-2010 at 01:55 PM.
The announcement that Colorado made had nothing to do with leaving the Big XII but rather scholarship reductions placed upon them by the NCAA for failing to meet academic progress rates.
Looks like the Big XII has put forth a date of June 14th (especially for Missouri, Nebraska and Colorado) to decide if the the conference will stay together. Like Kermit said above, a reporter from the Omaha World-Herald is saying he expects Nebraska to leave for the Big 10 as early as Friday (even though a formal invitation hasn't been made public). If the Big XII decides the conference can be salvaged after losing one or two teams, they apparently will target BYU and Air Force as replacements. A lot still hinges on Notre Dame's decision.
Another big problem with taking Baylor instead of Colorado...lots of Pac-10 officials dislike the fact that Baylor has strong religious ties.
Traveling to California would be infinity better than traveling to Iowa. And you would only have to do it once a year.
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