A comparison of conference athletic and academic rankings
- Thread starter WhichReligionIsRight
- Start date
Duke definitely helps, but the ACC has a lot of strong academic schools. UVA, UNC, Ga Tech, Wake, plus ND is combined with them in this study. Nothing to be ashamed of for them.
Louisville is a massive anchor on their academics.
All of that might also be a measurement of bias in establishing such rankings.. both academically and athletically... though there are objective measures sprinkled amongst the athletic charts.
No doubt. My point is there are a number of strong academic institutions in the ACC beyond Duke.
Lol 10 years later after Rutgers/Maryland joined the B1G, I'm wondering if the ACC has buyer's remorse taking Louisville over UConn, especially after seeing UConn revived from the dead in basketball in the BE 2.0 right now. UConn fit the ACC far better as an overall academic institution than academic dog Louisville.
Lmao at you thinking the ACC cares about anything other than basketball.
To me, here are the important numbers as it relates to Rutgers ...
Avg SEC:
Athletic Budget - $133 mil
# of Sports - 16.5
Endowment - $2.4 bil
Avg BigTen:
Athletic Budget - $116 mil
# of Sports - 21.5
Endowment - $4.3 bil
Rutgers:
Athletic Budget - ?
# of Sports - 27
Endowment - $2 bil
I use a question mark because we play games on how we do accounting for the budget (for example, how student tickets are attributed and on what budget line). The school says the number was $118 mil last year; I bet it was lower (below the $116 conference average). All of that said, like any other business, you have to spend money to make money. We already start behind most of the other members of our conference because we have no history of success (in conference or prior to us entering the conference). Many of those other schools have already spent their upfront money to get the ball rolling on their athletic programs. And almost all of them have more money in the bank. In order to get to their level, we need to outspend them for a significant period of time. I know we never will, but that is the explanation for why we don't compete. The SEC schools have endowments in our neighborhood, but somehow they manage to way outspend us (much higher budget, far less sports) - this is because these schools give a shit about being successful. This is a demonstration of spending money to make money. And it works.
Now, all of that said ... now that we have the new NIL rules, I'm not sure any of this matters. These other schools that have a history of success and donor whales will just out outspend teams like us and there's nothing we can do about it. So I'm not sure it's even worth trying to spend money to make money. The only way I see it being a valuable proposition is if we were betting that we could spend enough to get us to be the 31st or 32nd "professional" team in what will surely be the Professional College Football League that is coming down the road. Teams that get invited into that league will see their values skyrocket (beyond anything we can imagine) and everyone else will have glorified Division 3 sports programs.
Avg SEC:
Athletic Budget - $133 mil
# of Sports - 16.5
Endowment - $2.4 bil
Avg BigTen:
Athletic Budget - $116 mil
# of Sports - 21.5
Endowment - $4.3 bil
Rutgers:
Athletic Budget - ?
# of Sports - 27
Endowment - $2 bil
I use a question mark because we play games on how we do accounting for the budget (for example, how student tickets are attributed and on what budget line). The school says the number was $118 mil last year; I bet it was lower (below the $116 conference average). All of that said, like any other business, you have to spend money to make money. We already start behind most of the other members of our conference because we have no history of success (in conference or prior to us entering the conference). Many of those other schools have already spent their upfront money to get the ball rolling on their athletic programs. And almost all of them have more money in the bank. In order to get to their level, we need to outspend them for a significant period of time. I know we never will, but that is the explanation for why we don't compete. The SEC schools have endowments in our neighborhood, but somehow they manage to way outspend us (much higher budget, far less sports) - this is because these schools give a shit about being successful. This is a demonstration of spending money to make money. And it works.
Now, all of that said ... now that we have the new NIL rules, I'm not sure any of this matters. These other schools that have a history of success and donor whales will just out outspend teams like us and there's nothing we can do about it. So I'm not sure it's even worth trying to spend money to make money. The only way I see it being a valuable proposition is if we were betting that we could spend enough to get us to be the 31st or 32nd "professional" team in what will surely be the Professional College Football League that is coming down the road. Teams that get invited into that league will see their values skyrocket (beyond anything we can imagine) and everyone else will have glorified Division 3 sports programs.
Doesn't change your broader point all that much but the gap between the two is skewed that much more with UT-Austin entering the former and leaving the latter, which is reflected in these charts even though the move is still 2 years out.
