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Oculus Spirit [83070]
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LOL - Great blog on FSU to Big 12, hilarious espeically this
May 10, 2012, 1:49 PM
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part:
If you're one of the many who doesn't think academic reputation matters to conference expansion, let me enlighten you.
Why were Texas A&M and Missouri invited to join the SEC? There were many reasons and one of the biggest was the membership of those two schools in the prestigious Association of American Universities. The SEC not only wanted to improve its collective television markets with the addition of the Aggies and Tigers, it wanted to improve its academic clout.
Why was neither the SEC nor ACC interested in adding West Virginia University despite its strong athletic department? Why has the University of Louisville been left behind in this recent round of expansion? Neither WVU nor UL possesses a strong enough academic reputation to be courted by any conference aside from the scholastically puny Big 12.
Chadd Scott -
If you're reading this you've heard the "FSU (and Clemson) to Big 12" rumors. I'm typically able to ignore similar nonsense which breeds on college football's scum-covered basement of message boards. The difference here is that I've made a name for myself being right about conference realignment due to my ability to understand the multi-faceted nature of these moves and feel a duty to end this foolishness.
With that in mind, here are reasons Florida State University (and Clemson) will NEVER join the Big 12:
.Academics. The people spreading these rumors don't possess degrees from the universities whose futures they want to determine. To them, these are "teams," not "universities." Florida State is first and foremost a UNIVERSITY, not a football team. The individuals who ultimately would make a decision of this gravity - the university president and board of trustees - are highly educated people, many FSU graduates, who understand athletics is a piece (an important piece, but not the whole purpose) of an overall university mission. In the 2012 U.S. News and World Report rankings of American colleges and universities the ACC stood head and shoulders above all other BCS conferences with an average ranking of 43.25. That ranking stands almost 30 places higher than the next highest for any conference and a country mile ahead of the Big 12 whose average placement was 100.3. In language as simple as I can make it, NO UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT OR BOARD OF TRUSTEES WILL EVER LEAVE AN ASSOCIATION WITH SCHOOLS LIKE DUKE, UNC, WAKE FOREST, MIAMI, GEORGIA TECH, BOSTON COLLEGE AND VIRGINIA IN FAVOR OF ONE WITH TEXAS TECH, OKLAHOMA STATE, WEST VIRGINIA AND KANSAS STATE.
If you're one of the many who doesn't think academic reputation matters to conference expansion, let me enlighten you.
Why were Texas A&M and Missouri invited to join the SEC? There were many reasons and one of the biggest was the membership of those two schools in the prestigious Association of American Universities. The SEC not only wanted to improve its collective television markets with the addition of the Aggies and Tigers, it wanted to improve its academic clout.
Why was neither the SEC nor ACC interested in adding West Virginia University despite its strong athletic department? Why has the University of Louisville been left behind in this recent round of expansion? Neither WVU nor UL possesses a strong enough academic reputation to be courted by any conference aside from the scholastically puny Big 12. With its athletic excellence, industry-leading facilities, brand value, resources, charm and ownership of a medium sized TV market if it weren't for academic reputation the University of Louisville would have joined the SEC, ACC or Big 10 long ago. (This is not to say UL is a bad school; it's a fine school whose mission has been largely about service to non-traditional college students which accounts for its lower rankings. This is a long story I won't get into here.)
Never was the influence of academics on conference expansion made more clear than the Pac 12's refusal to add four Big 12 schools in the Fall of 2011. Remember when it was a "done deal" that Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State were joining the Pac 12? They all wanted to go and Pac 12 Commissioner Larry Scott wanted them in, but the presidents at his member institutions told him "no" - emphatically. Despite the new TV markets it would have opened up, despite the cash windfall it would have presented, despite the power of the Texas and Oklahoma brands, the presidents of great academic institutions like Cal-Berkley, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington said we're not letting Texas Tech and Oklahoma State into this conference. Period.
Conference expansion involves multiple factors. Academics plays a larger role than fans recognize. This is the number-one reason FSU will never join the Big 12 and it's such a strong reason none others are needed.
.Big 2 Little 8. When fans discuss FSU moving to the Big 12 they often talk about the excitement of football games and road trips to Texas and Oklahoma. True enough. Texas and OU are two of the most powerful , prominent and well-respected brands in all of college sports. These fans fail to acknowledge there are eight other members in the league. Do road trips to Lubbock and Waco, TX, Ames, IA and Morgantown, WV stack up favorably to Atlanta, Boston, Charlottesville, and Chapel Hill? Fact is, once you get past the Longhorns and Sooners the Big 12 is a stinker. In life you are the company you keep and FSU's brand and reputation is vastly improved keeping company with the current members of the ACC. The Big 12 hasn't lost four of its best schools over the past two years because it's a great place to be. Elite universities are fleeing the Big 12; why would FSU want to join it? If the Big 12 wasn't good enough for Colorado, Nebraska, Texas A&M and Missouri - universities who lived in the Big 12 for years, competed in it for years, recruited in it for years, intimately understood the culture and political climate and are actually located in its footprint - then it can't be good for Florida State. No one's leaving the ACC despite what you read. The ACC is bedrock solid and has been for years while the Big 12 in each of the past two summers has been on the brink of extinction. Is it that hard for you to imagine something similar happening during the next round of conference expansion in five or six or eight or 10 years and seeing the Seminoles stuck in a Big 12 without Texas? It isn't for me.
.Culture. Florida State is a Southeastern university. Despite the diversity of its students and faculty, despite its national athletic brand, FSU is Southern. The Big 12 is Western, Texas, Great Plains. Culturally, those states, those people, those institutions and fans are vastly different from Seminole fans. Different values, different ethics, different points of view. Culturally, FSU is much more ACC than it ever would be Big 12. "Fit" matters in life and conference affiliation. The SEC and Big 10 are the two most powerful conferences in college football and their power doesn't come from good football or big TV markets, it comes from unity. Their power is derived from a shared set of beliefs, an "all for one, one for all" mentality. A mentality the Big 12 has never shared and never will. The disparate nature of the Big 12 schools and locations, the imbalance of power between the Longhorns, the Sooners and the rest of the league, its lack of a shared vision of the future or shared culture makes the Big 12 weak in its bones. FSU (and Clemson) joining the Big 12 only creates more hodgepodge, more incongruity, less shared cultural values and less cohesion and brotherhood. The ACC has divisions between its membership, but they pale in comparison to those present in the Big 12.
FSU leaving the ACC for the Big 12 forever alters the course of the University away from the Southeast and toward Texas and the Great Plains not only in athletic competition, but in recruiting, student body composition and a dozen other areas. Taking FSU out of the Southeast and dramatically altering its culture, future and nature would be a terrible decision.
.All other sports. Big 12 football is better than ACC football. The ACC as an overall athletic conference is today and always has been better than the Big 12. In the 2010-2011 Learfield Sports Directors' Cup, a broad measurement of a universities' overall athletic success for men's and women's sports, the ACC had five members in the top 30 (Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Florida State) while the Big 12 had only two (Oklahoma and Texas - Big 2 Little 8). Football stands as the most important of all college sports in any way you want to measure it, but if you're going to compete in other sports - and FSU is - you should seek to compete at the highest level. FSU's overall athletic success across all of its teams has never been higher. Recently, FSU was the ONLY athletic department in the nation to place all of its teams - 19 - into postseason play. Maybe FSU's recent men's basketball tournament title, its track and field national championships, its College World Series appearances, it's Olympians (all achieved competing in the ACC) mean nothing to you; they mean a great deal to many Seminole fans who have not yet lent their voices to this conversation.
Join the Big 12, begin competing against inferior completion and watch the best prospective student-athletes you bring on campus choose somewhere else to play. A move to the Big 12 surely and in swift fashion leads to the devaluation of every team on campus.
.Fan disengagement. If FSU moves to the Big 12 it faces the prospect of its nearest conference rivals (aside from Clemson - making the huge assumption they'd follow the Noles into this folly) being West Virginia 840 miles away and Texas 870 miles away. Additionally the Big 12 has a nine-game conference football schedule. So does the ACC. I believe the SEC will soon. This means a move by FSU to the Big 12 kills either the Miami or Florida rivalry. Put this all together: the academic devaluation, the collapse of the total athletic department's success, the loss of rivalry games and cultural discomfort generates massive fan disengagement. This disengagement results in fewer fans at football, basketball and baseball games - home and away. It results in long-time FSU fans becoming less connected to the University. It results in FSU sports generating fewer dollars in the community. These suddenly disengaged fans donate less money creating a funding void no beefy football-driven TV contract can fill. Booster donations account for the majority of money at the biggest athletic departments - FSU included, where contributions accounted for $19.3 million in revenue while combined NCAA and conference distributions accounted for just $13.8 million in 2010-2011. Join the Big 12, disengage your fans, have your booster donations dry up and FSU will find out what hard times really mean.
I am not against change. If FSU were presented an invitation to a better conference than the ACC, namely the SEC, I would advise the Seminoles take it. That invitation is not coming. I am also not blindly in love with the ACC. I think the league needs fresh leadership. I think the conference needs to address its shortcomings in football from dreadful officiating to a lack of on-field success to a cockamamie divisional alignment immediately. I think the ACC needs to be more ambitious, aggressive and innovative telling its story and promoting its brand. Those changes would be best made by FSU working from inside the conference, partnering with like-minded institutions to steer the league on a more contemporary, football-minded course.
Changing conferences is a generational decision. Its impacts are felt for decades on both the athletic department and university at-large in a multitude of ways few can envision. The message-boarders treat it with the casualness of switching channels on TV. While not perfect, the ACC remains an infinitely better athletic home for Florida State University than the Big 12 is now or ever will be.
Later this week I'll explain to you how the arguments of those promoting FSU to join the Big 12 are based on false premises
Message was edited by: josephg®
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Ambassador [6046]
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Honus "The Dude" Sneed > Chadd Scott***
May 10, 2012, 2:04 PM
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All-TigerNet [11024]
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I'll see your honus and raise you
May 10, 2012, 3:12 PM
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one ron morris...
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Letterman [255]
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Re: LOL - Great blog on FSU to Big 12, hilarious espeically this
May 10, 2012, 2:11 PM
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That same guy has said in the past that clemson and fsu would love to be in the sec which has, guess what, lower academics. So do academics matter to universities or not?
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Oculus Spirit [83070]
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The SEC's academic standards are very similar to
May 10, 2012, 2:15 PM
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FSU/Clemson.
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CU Medallion [50703]
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I thought the "especially this part" you mentioned
May 10, 2012, 2:14 PM
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would have referred to the statement about the ACC needing "fresh leadership". That is where changes in this conference need to begin.
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Letterman [295]
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I understand you point...but why does the academic ...
May 10, 2012, 2:36 PM
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reputation of a school mean a hill of beans in an athletic conference? Athletic conferences are NOT brain sharing trusts. Just because you are associated with other teams in an athletic conference doesn't mean you are sharing professors, curriculum or testing methodology.
This connection between academics and athletics in conferences is simply and illusory exercise to maintain some semblance that college football is not big business. But the fact is, because of TV money, college football is bis business.
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Head Coach [758]
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Hall of Famer [22965]
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you forgot to include usuck's national ranking....
May 10, 2012, 2:56 PM
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coming in at a STERLING #111
attaboy chickens!!
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Letterman [295]
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All-American [576]
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Re: I understand you point...but why does the academic ...
May 10, 2012, 3:02 PM
[ in reply to I understand you point...but why does the academic ... ] |
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I never understood why people think changing conferences will affect the academic standards of a school. That school does not have to change its admissions or academic standards b/c they are in a conference with schools with less standards. A degree from Clemson 5 years ago will have the same prestige as a degree from Clemson 5 years from now (if they joined the big 12). Schools like to be associated with better schools. Its like if you moved into a rich neighborhood where everyone drives a Lexus...more likely you would want a Lexus just to fit in.
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CU Medallion [50703]
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If I move into a neighborhood where everyone drives a Lexus
May 10, 2012, 3:04 PM
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everyone would likely re-locate.
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All-American [576]
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Re: If I move into a neighborhood where everyone drives a Lexus
May 10, 2012, 3:06 PM
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haha..me too
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CU Medallion [60215]
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when you pimp a list that cites Duke's athletic prowess
May 10, 2012, 3:22 PM
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(Top 30 of Directors Cup) ---- your argument is gonna have some major flaws.
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