NY Times: Imagine the Big East, Coast to Coast

[rocky_warrior]

So on my CV I should put "Accepted into Wash U, but Attended Marquette 1993-1997, BSEE"

[mu03eng]

So on my CV I should put "Accepted into Wash U, but Attended Marquette 1993-1997, BSEE"

So does "MIT wait listed, but attended...." work as well?

[GGGG]

So on my CV I should put "Accepted into Wash U, but Attended Marquette 1993-1997, BSEE"

So does "MIT wait listed, but attended...." work as well?

As long as you aren't one of those louts who would wear his garish gold Marquette sweatshirt at Grendel's in Cambridge, you're good.

[Groin_pull]

He has a sense of style?

To the hoop with authority!

[rocky_warrior]

As long as you aren't one of those louts who would wear his garish gold Marquette sweatshirt at Grendel's in Cambridge, you're good.

Never!  I'm very polite in my gold Marquette Warriors t-shirt.

[keefe]

He has a sense of style?

Northeastern dudes arriving at Grendel's

[DFW HOYA]

DFW, you are confusing two categories schools use.

Penn, Duke, Brown are GT's aspirational schools. 

Virginia, ND, BC and Wake are their peer institutions.

Agree to disagree. When it comes to admissions, Georgetown wins more than it loses with students applying to GU and Duke, or GU and Penn, and splits with Brown. Obviously, majors have a lot to do with it. If you want to be an engineer at Duke you aren't applying to Georgetown, and if you're applying foreign service at Georgetown, Duke isn't in the discussion.  GU comes up short against the likes of Princeton and Northwestern.

Outside of Georgetown, it's a great topic for Big East schools: where do these schools aim to be? Villanova fans chafe at being called a "regional" school but it lacks the investment in graduate school programs. MU and Creighton are a little underrated as national schools while X and PC seem content to being locally focused schools. On the flip side, St. John's and Seton Hall are going in the direction of being less prestigious. Nearly 80% of applicants get into Seton Hall today.

[keefe]

Ugh, you're one of those.

Also, no one outside New England/Upper Northeast even recognizes Babson, Smith, Williams....

I disagree. I think most discerning individuals know all three.

I will grant you that a majority of people in the US have likely never heard of Smith, Williams, Amherst, Johns Hopkins, Bates, Bowdoin, Tufts, etc...

But senior executives and key decision makers recognize educational and professional credentials like neon signs.

One kid went to Wazzou and another went to Middlebury. 99% of the people would recognize my WSU t-shirt. In Bellevue most would recognize a Middlebury sweat shirt; in Everett not so much.

I agree that small elite colleges might not be familiar to most but they are to those who need to know.

[keefe]

So on my CV I should put "Accepted into Wash U, but Attended Marquette 1993-1997, BSEE"

I am surprised you have not cashed in that chip.

I endorse your choice of Marquette, by the way. The opportunity to hear KO unleash a torrent of vile language was worth the price of admission.   

[keefe]

Seton Hall...going in the direction of being less prestigious. Nearly 80% of applicants get into Seton Hall today.

I think the admission of one Tony Soprano more than reversed that slide in exclusivity.

[Galway Eagle]

Agree to disagree. When it comes to admissions, Georgetown wins more than it loses with students applying to GU and Duke, or GU and Penn, and splits with Brown. Obviously, majors have a lot to do with it. If you want to be an engineer at Duke you aren't applying to Georgetown, and if you're applying foreign service at Georgetown, Duke isn't in the discussion.  GU comes up short against the likes of Princeton and Northwestern.

Outside of Georgetown, it's a great topic for Big East schools: where do these schools aim to be? Villanova fans chafe at being called a "regional" school but it lacks the investment in graduate school programs. MU and Creighton are a little underrated as national schools while X and PC seem content to being locally focused schools. On the flip side, St. John's and Seton Hall are going in the direction of being less prestigious. Nearly 80% of applicants get into Seton Hall today.

Creighton isn't listed as a national school.  http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/creighton-university-2542

The national schools are GU, MU, SJU, DU, SHU. 

[Eldon]

Completely agree about Northeastern.  They don't belong anywhere in this thread.  They are the poster child of why USWNR rankings should not be the sole metric of prestige (and neither should acceptance rate, Mr. DFW). 

Recently Northeastern was ranked one spot below Boston University.  Anyone who knows colleges would know that Northeastern's Top 50-ranking-right-next-to-Boston-University is an absolute travesty.  BU smokes Northeastern every day of the week, twice on Sunday, three times in all 50 states, four times in leap years.  Apples-to-apples?  Not even close.  Apples-to-oranges?  Still no.  Apples-to-ceiling fans?  Yeah, that's about right--there's no comparison.

USWNR ranks schools based in input, e.g., HS GPA, SAT/ACT, Class rank, etc.  I once saw a ranking based on output measures.  BU stayed pretty high, Northeastern fell precipitously.

[Benny B]

Completely agree about Northeastern.  They don't belong anywhere in this thread.  They are the poster child of why USWNR rankings should not be the sole metric of prestige (and neither should acceptance rate, Mr. DFW). 

Recently Northeastern was ranked one spot below Boston University.  Anyone who knows colleges would know that Northeastern's Top 50-ranking-right-next-to-Boston-University is an absolute travesty.  BU smokes Northeastern every day of the week, twice on Sunday, three times in all 50 states, four times in leap years.  Apples-to-apples?  Not even close.  Apples-to-oranges?  Still no.  Apples-to-ceiling fans?  Yeah, that's about right--there's no comparison.

USWNR ranks schools based in input, e.g., HS GPA, SAT/ACT, Class rank, etc.  I once saw a ranking based on output measures.  BU stayed pretty high, Northeastern fell precipitously.

Northeastern has been gaming the rankings for years.  They've even admitted doing so.

[Eldon]

Agree to disagree. When it comes to admissions, Georgetown wins more than it loses with students applying to GU and Duke, or GU and Penn, and splits with Brown. Obviously, majors have a lot to do with it. If you want to be an engineer at Duke you aren't applying to Georgetown, and if you're applying foreign service at Georgetown, Duke isn't in the discussion.  GU comes up short against the likes of Princeton and Northwestern.

Outside of Georgetown, it's a great topic for Big East schools: where do these schools aim to be? Villanova fans chafe at being called a "regional" school but it lacks the investment in graduate school programs. MU and Creighton are a little underrated as national schools while X and PC seem content to being locally focused schools. On the flip side, St. John's and Seton Hall are going in the direction of being less prestigious. Nearly 80% of applicants get into Seton Hall today.

A logically true statement but a bit pragmatically infelicitous, i.e., some may read into your statement that Nova can't invest in graduate programs because it is short on resources.  Nova's lack of graduate programs is the result of choice, not a manifestation of resources being a binding constraint. 

Most of Nova's admin, BOT, faculty, etc., are perfectly happy with its niche, which caters to the "I want the benefits of small class sizes, but I also don't want to feel like I'm in high school 2.0" crowd.  Nova is kind of a middle ground between a research university and a true liberal arts college.  There are about 7-8k students--not too big, not too small.  Professors publish in respectable academic journals, yet at the same time are expected to make time for students.  Nova does a good job catering to its target IMO, at the cost of a few alums lamenting that they cannot technically call their alma mater a "national university."

As I see it, PC and X are the Providence and Cincinnati versions of Nova.

[Eldon]

^And Creighton is the Omaha version

[Marcus92]

Since they don't play football any more, we should add ND.

Bravo. Laughed out loud reading this.

[MU82]

I'm not going to comment on who Georgetown thinks are its academic peers.

I just don't get DFW HOYA's comments about DePaul and Creighton and why that matters.  My guess is that in every conference you see this.  How many Wisconsin applicants also apply to Rutgers and Maryland?  Even in primarily private school conferences, I doubt this is much of an issue.

Georgetown, like Marquette, is in the best conference it can be in at this point in time given the landscape of college athletics.  Very likely the landscape will change someday.  (It always has.)  And I'm not necessarily talking in the next five years, but 10 or 20.  Maybe you will see more conference adapt non-football members.  Maybe schools will drop football and cause a reshuffling.  Maybe one of the P5 blows up causing another reshuffle.

This is the bottom line for me on the Big East and expansion.

1.  The Big East is a good conference.  It is the best non-football conference in college basketball.

2.  There is no reason to expand right now.  All the obvious candidates are either geographic outliers (Zags), the wrong type of school (VCU) or just aren't good enough (SLU).  Unless Fox steps up to make their contract more lucrative, it just isn't necessary.

3.   Sitting and waiting may be the best strategy due to what I said above.  If a school like Wake Forest or UConn decide to drop football in 10-15 years, I would love for them to be part of the BE.  Adding mediocre programs for the sake of doing so isn't smart.

Perfectly stated, Sultan.

[Marcus92]

Perfectly stated, Sultan.

Agree completely. It's still fun to speculate wildly for no good reason.

[VegasWarrior77]

I had posted a couple visual looks at what conference realignment might look like without really stating my opinion.

The BEast should not expand until it is absolutely necessary.
Gonzaga would be a great fit except for its location.
UCONN is trying to get into a power five conference (as is Cincy).
BYU thinks it is the "ND of the west".
Dayton would love to join but I wouldn't pursue them at this time.

[keefe]

When it comes to admissions, Georgetown wins more than it loses with students applying to GU and Duke, or GU and Penn, and splits with Brown. Obviously, majors have a lot to do with it. If you want to be an engineer at Duke you aren't applying to Georgetown, and if you're applying foreign service at Georgetown, Duke isn't in the discussion.  GU comes up short against the likes of Princeton and Northwestern.

Your logic is rather obtuse. But let me guess: GU wins more than it loses against Duke and Penn because they get into GU and are rejected by Duke and Penn?

One of the most silly degree programs in the world is Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. The program doesn't really prepare one for anything.

Having lived all over the world I have interacted with FSOs of every stripe. Some of them are exceptional, the majority of them are pigs on the dole. What a complete waste of our tax dollars.

[bilsu]

I had posted a couple visual looks at what conference realignment might look like without really stating my opinion.

The BEast should not expand until it is absolutely necessary.
Gonzaga would be a great fit except for its location.
UCONN is trying to get into a power five conference (as is Cincy).
BYU thinks it is the "ND of the west".
Dayton would love to join but I wouldn't pursue them at this time.

The current 10 team conference is nice and I would not mind staying with that. However, the general perception would be that we lower than the power 5. I would only expand, if we were adding teams that had a good chance to make the NCAA tournament on a regular basis. I do not care about fit. Adding St. Louis, because they fit the Catholic seven profile just makes us more mid-major. That is why I like schools like Dayton, Cincinnati, UConn, Gonzaga or even Wichita St. We got 5 bids this year, which is 50%. We should not add teams that is likely to result in us getting less than half the teams in the NCAA tournament.

[forgetful]

Agree to disagree. When it comes to admissions, Georgetown wins more than it loses with students applying to GU and Duke, or GU and Penn, and splits with Brown. Obviously, majors have a lot to do with it. If you want to be an engineer at Duke you aren't applying to Georgetown, and if you're applying foreign service at Georgetown, Duke isn't in the discussion.  GU comes up short against the likes of Princeton and Northwestern.

Outside of Georgetown, it's a great topic for Big East schools: where do these schools aim to be? Villanova fans chafe at being called a "regional" school but it lacks the investment in graduate school programs. MU and Creighton are a little underrated as national schools while X and PC seem content to being locally focused schools. On the flip side, St. John's and Seton Hall are going in the direction of being less prestigious. Nearly 80% of applicants get into Seton Hall today.

That's the problem for Georgetown, they are very respected in a couple areas, but as an overall University does not compare to Duke, Brown, Penn.

If we focus on specific programs we can argue that Carnegie Mellon (#1 in Computer Science and high in economics), is comparable to MIT and Cal Tech.  Or University of Akron (largest Polymer Science program in the world) is competitive and comparable to MIT and Harvard.  That of course is disingenuous as it focuses on specific majors and extends it broadly.

Georgetown is not strong in the sciences or engineering, unfortunately, Duke, Brown, Penn are very respected there (less for Brown), whereas Duke, Brown, Penn are still competitive across all departments.

Universities often (when self designating peer institutions) focus on their strength and not the overall breadth of the University.  Georgetown is a great school, but if a person with all the same qualifications applies for a job with me in the sciences from Georgetown or Butler, I'm hiring the person from Butler.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Big East will expand before its contract with Fox expires. I'm almost 100% certain of this. We don't have to expand this second however. There are many reasons why it is good for the BEast to bide its time.

1. There are basketball first schools with football programs who are bleeding money. They've been treading water praying that they will one day get invited to a power 5 conference with their lucrative TV deals, but schools can't hold out forever. UConn, the poster child for this, is losing $20 million a year on football. Eventually, these schools will either need to get the invite they've been praying for, or drop football (or downgrade to fcs). Some scoff at this. We haven't had a FBS football program drop since the Ivies did it in the 80s I think. UAB was going to do it, and then got cold feet. It's scary to be the first one to do something. Eventually one of these schools will and more and more schools will follow their lead. When these schools drop their football, they will be looking for new homes.

2. Realignment will happen again. It always does. The Big 10 will raid the ACC. The Big 12 and SEC might join them and take a few ACC teams of their own. The ACC will react by raiding the AAC, the AAC will raid Conference USA.....and so on and so forth. First of all, I'm not convinced UCONN gets picked up by the ACC in next round of realignment. I don't think they are the shoe-in they think they are. Second of all, when the ACC of the future looks like the AAC of today, they will not be making the same TV money they are now. A lot of the schools left behind the ACC, the Boston Colleges and Wake Forests of the world will go from making money to losing money on football. Notre Dame may no longer wish to affiliate with a weakened ACC and go back to being a true independent. These are all teams that could be potentially brought into the fold.

3. Years ago, you would have never imagined Butler or Creighton being added to the Big East, yet here they are. The next generation of Butlers and Creightons are out there. The key is finding basketball first schools with healthy endowments who are willing to make investments in their basketball programs. The University of Denver sucks at basketball. But they have a very large endowment and have shown a willingness to invest in winning sports programs. They are dominant in hockey, lax, and soccer. With the possibility of a future  Big East invite, they might be willing to make investments in their basketball program and get it to a point where it can compete in the Big East. Maybe a school like UMass or Boston U can be convinced to make the same kinds of investments. They may seem like terrible adds now but give them some time and they might develop into strong additions. Key is finding schools willing to invest (the opposite of Depaul).

4. The teams that we are kicking around now, Dayton, SLU, Gonzaga, St. Mary's, BYU, etc. They will all still be available and begging to get in (maybe BYU isn't begging) to the Big East from now until the end of time. If none of the above scenarios come to pass, we can still get them later.

College athletics will look very different 10 years from now. The BEast has put themselves in a position to be takers instead of taken. No sense in rushing into anything now.

[MarquetteDano]

Big East will expand before its contract with Fox expires. I'm almost 100% certain of this. We don't have to expand this second however. There are many reasons why it is good for the BEast to bide its time.

1. There are basketball first schools with football programs who are bleeding money. They've been treading water praying that they will one day get invited to a power 5 conference with their lucrative TV deals, but schools can't hold out forever. UConn, the poster child for this, is losing $20 million a year on football. Eventually, these schools will either need to get the invite they've been praying for, or drop football (or downgrade to fcs). Some scoff at this. We haven't had a FBS football program drop since the Ivies did it in the 80s I think. UAB was going to do it, and then got cold feet. It's scary to be the first one to do something. Eventually one of these schools will and more and more schools will follow their lead. When these schools drop their football, they will be looking for new homes.

2. Realignment will happen again. It always does. The Big 10 will raid the ACC. The Big 12 and SEC might join them and take a few ACC teams of their own. The ACC will react by raiding the AAC, the AAC will raid Conference USA.....and so on and so forth. First of all, I'm not convinced UCONN gets picked up by the ACC in next round of realignment. I don't think they are the shoe-in they think they are. Second of all, when the ACC of the future looks like the AAC of today, they will not be making the same TV money they are now. A lot of the schools left behind the ACC, the Boston Colleges and Wake Forests of the world will go from making money to losing money on football. Notre Dame may no longer wish to affiliate with a weakened ACC and go back to being a true independent. These are all teams that could be potentially brought into the fold.

3. Years ago, you would have never imagined Butler or Creighton being added to the Big East, yet here they are. The next generation of Butlers and Creightons are out there. The key is finding basketball first schools with healthy endowments who are willing to make investments in their basketball programs. The University of Denver sucks at basketball. But they have a very large endowment and have shown a willingness to invest in winning sports programs. They are dominant in hockey, lax, and soccer. With the possibility of a future  Big East invite, they might be willing to make investments in their basketball program and get it to a point where it can compete in the Big East. Maybe a school like UMass or Boston U can be convinced to make the same kinds of investments. They may seem like terrible adds now but give them some time and they might develop into strong additions. Key is finding schools willing to invest (the opposite of Depaul).

4. The teams that we are kicking around now, Dayton, SLU, Gonzaga, St. Mary's, BYU, etc. They will all still be available and begging to get in (maybe BYU isn't begging) to the Big East from now until the end of time. If none of the above scenarios come to pass, we can still get them later.

College athletics will look very different 10 years from now. The BEast has put themselves in a position to be takers instead of taken. No sense in rushing into anything now.

Good post.

[Goatherder]

One of the strengths of the current Big East is that it is a bunch of similar schools that all want to be there.  None of them have any desire to go anywhere else.  That has not always been the case with these schools.  Creighton was dying to get out of the Valley for years.  Butler has to be thrilled with where it is.  Could they have even imagined it ten years ago?  Xavier is in probably the best conference it ever has been.

So when you talk about the domino effect of conferences raiding each other, who is going to raid the Big East, and who wants to leave?  Right now, it is the best non-football conference out there and it is concentrating on men's basketball.  Maybe the league expands eventually.  I am not at all sure.  The schools and the commissioner seem perfectly happy at ten, and it does not seem that Fox is putting any pressure on them.  I see no need to expand just to expand, and some of the ideas getting thrown around are pretty crazy.  It's not broke.  Don't fix it.