Without further ado, here are the big-bowl pairings if academics mattered, with the A/BCS ranking following the school name:

Allstate BCS Championship Game:
Boston College (127.80) vs. Cincinnati (97.25)

Note the University of Cincinnati, often derided for low graduation rates in men's basketball, does very well academically with regards to Division I-A football.


Appropriately, Luebchow came up with a ratings procedure that's hard to understand -- just like the real BCS! Her reasoning: "The A/BCS formula starts with the football team's four-class average federal graduation rate, which includes all football players who entered college between 1997 and 2000 and graduated within six years. Football programs then earn or lose points based on three criteria. First, the gap between the graduation rate of the team and the overall school. Second, the gap between the black-white graduation rate disparity on the team and at the overall school. Third, the team's Academic Progress Rate, a measure developed by the NCAA that evaluates how many student-athletes are advancing toward a degree."




http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sto...ook/071127

Taken from your link

Bonus Obscure Score: St. John Fisher 38, Curry 7. (Division III playoffs.) Located in Rochester, N.Y., St. John Fisher College has a school of nursing endowed by Robert Wegman, founder of the supermarket chain. Located mainly in non-booming old-industrial areas such as upstate New York and central Pennsylvania, Wegmans are the greatest supermarkets out there. Many Wegmans have entire internal food courts of higher quality than most delis and Italian restaurants. When, oh when, will a Wegmans open near me?

Wegman's ahhhhhhhh I wish we had them in Texas. The best supermarket chain in America.

Wegmans

TexanMark Wrote:Taken from your link

Bonus Obscure Score: St. John Fisher 38, Curry 7. (Division III playoffs.) Located in Rochester, N.Y., St. John Fisher College has a school of nursing endowed by Robert Wegman, founder of the supermarket chain. Located mainly in non-booming old-industrial areas such as upstate New York and central Pennsylvania, Wegmans are the greatest supermarkets out there. Many Wegmans have entire internal food courts of higher quality than most delis and Italian restaurants. When, oh when, will a Wegmans open near me?

Wegman's ahhhhhhhh I wish we had them in Texas. The best supermarket chain in America.

Wegmans

There is nothing like Wegmans that I have seen anywhere. There are some pretty decent folks at the corporate offices here in Rochester. They are one of my clients that I sell to.

BTW Mark, it will be a long time before you see a Wegmans down in Texas. You and I may need the assistance of a walker by the time they get to Texas. They are very careful and deliberate with their expansion process. They are slowly covering the larger cities of the Mid-Atlantic States and Upstate NY. They are doing very well wherever they expand. For their grand openings there are usually thousands and thousands of people waiting for the store to open, and they have to hire extra traffic re-enforcement. They truly are a great and unique story.

Here is a 2003 article showing how C-USA benefitted academically by the realignment:

Conference Graduation Rates Shift with Realignment:
ACC Keeps Top Spot Overall; Conference USA Shows Biggest Gain
Lapchick Report Reveals the Effect of Division IA Conference Realignment
on Conference Graduation Rates in Football
Orlando, FL…November 10, 2003 – The Institute for Diversity & Ethics in Sport at the
University of Central Florida today released The Classroom Counts, a study of the effect of
Division IA football realignment on conference graduation rates.
Richard Lapchick, who authored the study as director of the Institute, noted that, “The
classroom record of student-athletes was barely mentioned amidst all the chess moves made
between conferences over the last few months. In all the discussions about shifts of powerful
‘teams,’ the student-athlete was hardly mentioned. The Classroom Counts analyzes conference
graduation rates, taking into consideration the recent changes in the Division IA football
landscape.”
Lapchick, who also is Eminent Scholar Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management
Graduate Program at UCF, said, “Conference USA had the biggest improvement, increasing the
graduation rate for all football student-athletes from 52 to 57 percent, and jumping from 48 to 55
percent for African-American football student-athletes. It went from a fourth-place ranking to
second (out of 11 conferences) for all football student-athletes, and from fifth to first place for
African-American student-athletes. The high graduation rates of newcomers Rice, Tulsa and
Southern Methodist bolstered the overall rates.”
Graduation rates were reviewed for all institutions that participated in Division IA football. Based
on the current conference structure, an average graduation rate was calculated for each
Division IA conference. A new average graduation rate was calculated based on the changes
announced for 2005.
Among the results were:
Conference USA had, by far, the biggest improvements for both football student-athletes
in general and for African-American student-athletes in particular, as noted above.