Wanted: A Beautiful Mind

My thoughts. I think that was brilliantly written. You did a great job of pulling in all the different moving parts that go into a deal as big as this. Like you, I’m sold on the Pac 10, but I wish there was a way to do it without bringing the okies along for the ride.

Great sum up.

I hadn’t thought of the Pac Ten’s shrewdness in letting it be known that Tech could be part of the picture there. Once that happened, any hope of UT leaving Tech behind went out the window.

Delaney should have handled this as you suggested. But the price he should now be willing to pay is to take Tech. It sounds ridiculous, but if they would do that, they could get Texas and probably Notre Dame (who would have to interpret this as a seismic change forcing them out of independence). Tech could be forced into an agreement to spend some of their new TV loot on academics.

I just hope that we don’t end up stuck in the Big 12.

Nice post. All that’s left to say is, “Good luck, Nebraska. I hope the referees at the game in Lincoln next year remember who will be employing them after the Big 12 breaks into the PAC-16 East.”

I just cannot imagine a scenario in which the Big 10 would sign off on adding Tech to the league.

Texas, Notre Dame, Texas Tech? Which is not like the other two? I think Notre Dame would rightfully view that as a seismic change of stupidity if they were in the mix.

Very nice article.

Another strong effort in the spirit of your “Being Bill Powers” effort from February, especially on the political context that runs beneath the surface of this whole situation.

Nicely done.

I particularly liked this: “and 10% would favor withdrawing from intercollegiate athletics entirely as a protest against the hyper-commercialization of sports and the exploitation of student athletes and sweatshop laborers indentured by shoe companies (because tenure ensures freedom to be unreasonable).”

I wish I had the ability to subtly stick a knife in the neck like that. But, don’t forget their hatred for hyper-competitve anything.

Presumably UT’s insistance is the only thing bringing the Okies along for the ride. Am I missing something?

Ohio State fan here…

This piece is brilliant but I hope it’s wrong. I hope there is a way to bring Texas and A&M into the Big Tent without submitting to the “Tech problem.” Austin is a fantastic town and the fan base is solid. Plus, with the two regular season battles and the recent Fiesta Bowl thriller, and the mutual respect that seems to exist between Mack & Tressel, the groundwork has been laid for a dynamic, respectful rivalry between two monstrous school and fanbases.

Obviously, Texas is a monster as an independent, but man, as part of the Big Tent, both UT and the conference could take the notion of symbiotic benefits to level parallelograms. Delaney, as Wenzel said, is an assassin. I hope he figures this out.

If not, good luck Horns. Punch USC in the face for us.

Great article. Question; Is is too late for those lobbyists to convince the Legislature that the Big Ten is best for Texas and A&M?

Well done. Unlike most analysis of this, you make the key point that the Pac-10’s offer to bring Tech along for the ride pretty much ended or chances of moving to the Big 10. Very shrewd on their part.

Except there are rumblings that Aggie will soon go to war with Horn, rejecting the P16 for the SEC. OU rumored to follow, blowing up much of the advantage of a P16 for Texas. Perhaps the peace treaty involves requiring Ag to take Raider to the SEC, freeing up Texas to join their new found soulmate ND in the Big 16? If six Big 12 schools remain, they can rebuild the conference, opening the BCS door to UH, TCU, and SMU. Could make a lot of politicians happy.

Killer schedule for us, though.

They submit journal articles that may or may not get published based on the perception-biased judgments of peers

Perhaps we could outsource things to the unbiased, non-peer group?

Once again aggy’s pipe dreams don’t jibe with reality. Doesn’t the SEC (which has given every indication of standing pat for now) have to actually indicate they have some – any? – interest in aggy for this threat to be worth our attention?

Just awful posturing by Byrne, who is most likely out of the loop and just begging to be noticed.

This was exceptional.

“I wish I had the ability to subtly stick a knife in the neck like that. But, don’t forget their hatred for hyper-competitve anything.”

You have no idea what you’re talking about if you think academia is any but competitive. Of course based on your posting history I can’t say I’m surprised by your clueless-ness.

Secondly, horninexile is evidently unaware that most quality journals use blind peer review to attempt and thwart the very problems he brings up.

“The CIC that is comprised of the Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago would not directly impact the amount of research funding flowing to the 40 Acres”

This is the key statement in the whole argument. NOTHING prevents a UT faculty member from collaborating with a peer at Ohio St now and after re-alignment, there will be no heightened advantage.

Most faculty members don’t care and shouldn’t unless they like sports. Then they should read Dan Wetzel’s article.

Great article. I’m a little hesitant to say that it would have worked out differently if Delaney hadn’t been open about it though. I think the TEXAS political firestorm was inevitable.

Historyhorn, sure they might be competitive within their profession when it come to stacking up against one another and attempting to advance their career, but they damn sure don’t teach the greatness and merits of competition. No strangers to hypocrisy are they. I would have to get political to prove that point, and I’m not going to do that.

Thanks for joining in the conversation, you can get your blue participation ribbon at the door. i know that’s why you came here anyway. Oooorr, you’re a frequent poster on here mired in cowardice, so you changed your handle.

Whoa there, don’t confuse he/she/it with me.

Congrats on a brilliant piece. That was fantastic.

The Pac 10’s play for the entire Big 12 South was shocking to me because I didn’t think it was even a possibility due to the academic hurdles. Just a masterful strategic move by Larry Scott/Kevin Weiberg and great execution too to get everyone on board and be in a position to act quickly. It appears they’ve done it again by preemptively grabbing Colorado to undercut Baylor before that situation gets out of control. We’re dealing with shrewd, shrewd people here.

At this point, it’s obvious to me that the Big Ten has much greater ambitions then simply trying to bring ND into the fold. Nebraska’s getting the nod either way, and soon. Texas will get one last look at the blonde, but that ship has already sailed. The Pac 10 it is. It certainly has its charms.

I am not so sure anyone in the main building think associating with the Big 10 in athletics is going to provide them with a direct line to NSF grant money. As stated above, NSF grants are awarded on the basis of handshake deals because folks spend time walking the halls and pitching their research. I’ve been told you have about a 0% chance of winning an NSF grant if they don’t know it’s coming and have already told you they want to fund it, despite the language in their BAAs. It helps if you have alumni there to dole out the cash. Otherwise, it helps to hire folks who went to school with those folks. A&M has done a brilliant job at that aspect of the game.

Also factor in that the amount of grant money differential isn’t as big as you make it out to be. It’s a function of overhead rates at each school. My office is in Georgetown (DC), and our overhead rates are outrageous. We could do the same work in Austin for about 3/4 of the cost or less – we have to pay higher overhead, higher salaries, and supply prices. I’ve been to Columbus, Chicago, and Palo Alto (among others) and Palo Alto is by far the most expensive. We can’t afford to hire people in our Palo Alto office anymore because they cost too much relative our Georgetown people. So wrap your head around that before your eyes get all big on the $800 mil for Stanford.

Last, please look at the year to year variability in grant money spent. It’s pretty variable. One year, A&M is ahead of us, the next year behind. That’s because big grants are on a multi-year cycle. Many are on 4 year funding cycles, which means year one you spend gearing up and planning, maybe some acquisition. Years two and three are when the big money is spent. year four is spent writing up the results and asking for more money. Generally, schools are pretty good at keeping their labor expenditures consistent

Now it does make sense that we would be interested in the Big 10 tv dollars. But we get the same benefit from the PAC-10. And we get rid of a headaches of being the best school in a conference whose average student is probably a partial qualifier (ok, that is an exaggeration) and the fact that we’re circled on everyone’s schedules. But we also probably bust up the #1 athletic conference across sports (#2 football, #2/3 baseball, #2 basketball) and in doing so we up the level of competition to the point where we can’t count on 9-10 wins/season anymore, given the fact that we’ll be playing at least one decent team on the West Coast – which means travel and time zone changes.

Anyway, I don’t see this working at all unless we take 4 teams from the Texas/OU area… possibly Colorado since at least they are in the same time zone. I am sure the PAC 10 would rather see KU than Tech, too. But I don’t see how any of this is good for college football, unless the plan is to then drop Div 1 to 60 or so teams and have a playoff.

“Like you, I’m sold on the Pac 10, but I wish there was a way to do it without bringing the okies along for the ride.”

Trips, I’ve posted the question as to why OU and OSU were included in the first place across the site, and the only coherent responses I’ve gotten are:
blackscholes: I f*cking hate OU and I don’t like having to play for the conference title in October (perfectly reasonable)
UT_06: More balance in travel logistics with the East Division/West Division set up. (also reasonable)

As I’ve said, the math doesn’t add up. You can get just the 4 Texas schools and not OU/OSU. The only thing I can think of is that the Pac 10 really only wants OU and Texas. Texas requires A&M and Tech to come along. OU requires OSU to come along. That leaves an extra spot for Colorado, who the Pac 10 has lusted after for some time. In other words, it’s not the Texas schools bringing the Okies along for the ride. It’s Texas and OU bringing their requisite baggage. It really doesn’t make sense any other way.

But your comment implies that you seem to be resigned that the only way UT can get the P10/B12 merger to work is with OU and OSU. My simple question is “why?” Why couldn’t the Pac 10 just take the Texas 3 and Colorado and call it good? 14 teams, 7 per division, and a 280 million dollar pie split 14 ways instead of 16.

Nate- here’s a reason to include OU and OSU: the PAC-10 needed to add six teams to be able to have the original PAC-8 members in their own division.

The 14 model would require splitting a pair.

Yes, I have a comment on the PAC10 move. When the hell is UT going to finally throw off these provincial issues and do what’s best for the University? We can’t continue to allow our interests (and even those of A&M) to be determined by local yokel nitwits like Buddy or Jim Bob or Cletus. We constantly espouse this “University of the First Class” position then when an opportunity to raise our academic profile emerges, we are forced to make choices based on these idiotic local considerations. Look OU, OSU and Tech may be convenient opponents and rivals, but they are academically inferior and continue to cast an inferior shadow our way. You are judged by the company you keep. And we are constantly forced to convince the world that we are more Michigan, than Oklahoma. More UCLA, than Texas Tech. The move to the PAC 10 even would be fine, were we not bringing our bug eating half cousins along. Mark my words, Nebraska is going to rise in stature and we are going to languish. PSU has blossomed under its B10 membership. So will the lucky recipients of the bids this time. And we can all thank Buddy Jones and Rick Perry and any one of these other good ol boys for what me missed. And as for the issue of travel expenses? Come on now, the money is going to be tremendous. The additional cost will be more than offset by the higher profile, more prestigious rep and better admissions candidates.

As for all the lobbyists and other college state reps, doesn’t UT have a lions share of such representation in the State House. Same with our Aggie brethren. Why aren’t they pushing back hard to offset all this political pressure? IT IS TIME FOR UT and its Alumni to start exerting pressure back to demand decisions that best serve UT’s interests and in so doing, the state. Period, end of transmission.

Also a clarification:

I was referring to OSU, TT and Baylor when I referred to ’bug eating half cousins". No offense or aspersions towards A&M was intended. I think they would be an excellent addition to the Big Ten and would academically add to the quality of the conference. And it would again afford them an opportunity to raise their profile nationally.

LEL for University President.

Let us call a spade a spade, and a bug eating half cousins an Okie/Techie.

Everyone likes the Big Ten for all its perks and I think Nebraska will fit in well up there as the country bumpkin cousin ( they will never get the respect we give.) But geography is against us joining the Big Ten. The eight division split east and west makes sense. The TV market share doesn’t hurt.
Look at a map. Where is the state of Texas pointing!
Rejoice… escape Baylor.

To be clear, what the the Pac-10 is proposing isn’t really a conference. It’s a joint marketing agreement with the temporary loan of the state of Arizona. More living together than marriage. Which, given the state of college athletics today, makes an enormous amount of fiscal sense. All the benefits of conference affiliation with none of the pesky long-term obligations beyond whatever TV deal they strike next year.

Fantastic writeup, and very very informative.

Big picture, there’s no reason to be so down. This isn’t the last realignment.

The purpose of building these superconferences is twofold: 1) They make a cable network financially viable and very profitable, and 2) It finally gets the Boise States and Utahs and Baylors to stop trying to dip their fingers in our big BCS money pot.

Eventually, I foresee realignment creating a two-tiered system in college football, like the BCS, but more exclusive. The reason should be obvious: you can’t have an athletic league of 110+ teams that are on substantially different institutional levels, play 11 to 14 games, and decide a champion. Just ask your hypothetical mathematician. It gets fuzzy when you get to the middle, but we’re all clear on the fact that there is a big difference between Michigan, Texas, A&M, Ohio St, USC et al. and TCU.

The BCS was the first attempt to whittle the field down, but it was a compromise made not to upset the current world order, which at the time had some mega-conferences, and some conferences with a Miami or Florida State on top and then a whole lot of nobodies. The result was a lot of ignoble teams, e.g. Baylor, got piggybacked into the upper echelon, and the shout righteously went out from the TCUs of the world to say “what, are we so different?”

Realignment makes this possible again. If the Pac-16 goes down, that means there are now four clear conferences: Big X, Pac X, SEC, ACC. However, the Pac 16, by nature of its willingness to stomach Texas Tech, is now the real monster. Among the wealthy, who’s the weak man: it’s the ACC. So now the SEC and Big X counter by ripping that conference apart too, with the Big X happily sending invites to the academically inclined Duke, UNC, Virginia and Maryland, plus maybe BC to grab the Boston market, with the SEC swallowing Florida, Florida State, Miami, Clemson and Georgia Tech (basketball alignments go haywire but these can be sorted out later).

Now there are three. And they encompass the following schools:

BIG 16:
Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Northwestern, Virginia, Maryland, Nebraska, Duke, UNC

PAC 16:
USC, UCLA, Stanford, Cal, Oregon, Oregon St., Washington, Washington St., Arizona, Arizona St, Colorado, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St.

SEC (16):
Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss St., LSU, Arkansas, Florida, Florida State, Miami (That Miami), Georgia, Georgia Tech, South Carolina, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Kentucky

Give or take. The Big Ten could grab Missouri now, and maybe the SEC beats them to the prizes of the ACC.

There are some floaters left of high value. Boston College, a big market team which doesn’t fit the Northeast Megaconference (Big Ten)’s idea of a CIC school. Notre Dame, of course. And Missouri, who could still be signed on.

What’s gone is a heck of a lot of fat; the potential championship field has been trimmed from over 100 to about 50 teams. The entire Big East, the bottom half of the Big XII, plus N.C. State. are adrift, and do what they can, attaching to mid-majors, re-forming themselves into the new 2nd class, but still on the outside looking in.

Gone too are the old conferences filled with familiar faces, since you’ll probably face some “conference” foes about twice a decade. As stated above, these are leagues, of which one is now the central repository of U.S. research dollars. There’s only one last thing to do: take over the world combine all three under some sort of formal agreement, then split into divisions, and devise a national championship system.

Here’s hoping they make it a playoff.

Can someone explain in more detail how A&M can have so much more R&D expenditures (the big stat for evaluating the academic side of a university) than UT? I ask this not to sound arrogant, but when I was getting my graduate degree at UT, I met many other grad students from universities such as A&M who transfered because, as they stated it, UT was a better graduate research school than A&M.

The article mentioned the benefits a land grand-university gets, but from:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf09303/pdf/tab79.pdf
I see A&M getting only $27.6 million of federal funds from the department of agriculture. If you subtract that, A&M still has almost $70 million more in R&D expenditures. What gives?

Hi guys, Michigan fan here.

One point about research dollars. You write: “[W]ithout a medical school, UT-Austin’s $447 million of R&D is outstanding even by Big Ten standards.”

This seems to apply that medical school funding is reflected in your table. It is not; the NSF does not fund research to medical schools.

Federal dollars for biomedical research come through the NIH. U Michigan, for example, received an additional $366 million in funding in 2010 through it’s medical school. NIH money is not reflected in your table, although it’s an invaluable federal funding source for research.

http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=1536

Hey guys, me again. As I re-read the post, it’s clear to me there is no implication that NSF dollars include medical school money from the NIH. Oops.

Still, a better reflection of a university’s research capacity would take into account NIH funding as well.

Thanks.

David – NIH funding is included.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvyrdexpenditures/

It’s simply a survey of colleges and universities about their total R&D expenditures.

1. on the list in 2007 is Johns Hopkins at $1.55 billion. UT-MD Anderson is #26 at $496 million. Obviously, both of these include lots of NIH funding.

Strip out the medical schools, and UT-Austin is on par with any of the Big Ten, including Michigan.

You’re right.

Sorry about that.

As a K-Stater, I retroactively apologize for all the mean things I’ve posted about the ‘Cats owning Texas in Big 12 play. With realignment, and no pull from Texas, we’re off to the Missouri Valley Conference to fall further into irrelevance.

Mastiff0 – the only thing (I think) schools really care about in funding is money that goes to labor and capital investments (like buildings). Since A&M specializes in engineering and agriculture (and less so on the behavioral sciences, art, end education), more of their money is pass-through cost, I suspect.

Following up on Misopogon’s post, I have often thought that the purpose of this realignment is exactly to separate the haves from the have-nots. I think the conferences are realizing that a lot of the alignments were the result of historical bases that no longer are relevant in today’s world. As Tom Osborne said historical relationships were thrown over in the interest of surviving in a competitive landscape for entertainment dollars. Looking in to the distant future it seems plausible that one of the ultimate goals of the superconferences would be to usurp the power of the NCAA. Talk about real money, now there is some
real money. Even the best TV rights deal-the SEC’s deals with CBS/ESPN-is a little over $2 Billion over 14 years. The newly negotiated CBS/TBS deal for the Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament is over $9 Billion. If they can consolidate the power of the national collegiate brands( UT, MICH., tOSU, Ala., USC ) then these conferences can supplant the NCAA for the big money national championship deals. Alternatively, depending on the broadcast landscape, they may be the owners of the distribution channels, i.e., the Big Ten Network. As is seen in the current environment, the upper hand is being gained by the content provider over the content distributors.

still I think about some parts and I can’t decide what kind of gloss I should express about this.