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SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
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jrj84105 Offline
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Post: #121
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
Are you looking for a direct statement from a University president citing research funding as a requisite for membership? Because you're going to have to find a pretty stupid university president to give you that. These are private organizations that have no membership criteria lest the organizations get sued for not including one party or another. They talk about nebulous criteria like "cultural fit" among "peer institutions". They don't talk about X,Y,Z criteria for good reason.

I suppose the need to affiliate with similar institutions helps to promote the academic branding of a conference. The president's care about brand and image because that helps them raise money.

One example I can allude to was a planned relationship between two institutions in the same city where institution A was going to sell some adjacent land to institution B for a collaborative venture. Institution B, in promotional materials to raise money for the new buildings, had a picture of the land that featured prominent signage from institution A. Institution A didn't like the other school leveraging its better branding to raise funds so they killed the deal. Both had spent millions on the planning and had even recruited new faculty. That's how serious these guys take their branding.

I also know that a few BCS wins helped win over ADs, but it was he improvement in research programs that finally made Utah attractive enough for PAC presidents (and I've been told it was still sort of close).

You're argument against all of the very few people on this board who have even a passing interest in PAC internal workings. One starts to wonder why.
(This post was last modified: 04-17-2017 08:37 PM by jrj84105.)
04-17-2017 08:32 PM
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nzmorange Offline
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Post: #122
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 08:32 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  Are you looking for a direct statement from a University president citing research funding as a requisite for membership? Because you're going to have to find a pretty stupid university president to give you that. These are private organizations that have no membership criteria lest the organizations get sued for not including one party or another. They talk about nebulous criteria like "cultural fit" among "peer institutions". They don't talk about X,Y,Z criteria for good reason.

I suppose the need to affiliate with similar institutions helps to promote the academic branding of a conference. The president's care about brand and image because that helps them raise money.

One example I can allude to was a planned relationship between two institutions in the same city where institution A was going to sell some adjacent land to institution B for a collaborative venture. Institution B, in promotional materials to raise money for the new buildings, had a picture of the land that featured prominent signage from institution A. Institution A didn't like the other school leveraging its better branding to raise funds so they killed the deal. Both had spent millions on the planning and had even recruited new faculty. That's how serious these guys take their branding.

I also know that a few BCS wins helped win over ADs, but it was he improvement in research programs that finally made Utah attractive enough for PAC presidents (and I've been told it was still sort of close).

You're argument against all of the very few people on this board who have even a passing interest in PAC internal workings. One starts to wonder why.

I can answer your "why" question. It's because "research is the end all, be all" is a common consensus, but nobody can give a coherent reason as to why - PAC or otherwise. Seriously, look at the example that you just gave me. Correct me where I'm wrong/exaggerating, but your theory appears to be based on a possibly hypothetical real estate transaction between two schools, where one school wouldn't sell land to another because the first school presumably did more research than the second, and the second included the first's logo in a picture of the proposed construction. That story/explanation/hypothetical doesn't pass the laugh test, which brings me to your first question. I'd be willing to take a logical argument that can pass the "5 why" test. Given I'm still waiting for the first/second why to be answered, I'm not holding my breath.

Sanity check your position:
Do you think that Rice's faculty are being held back in any meaningful and/or material way by Rice's athletic affiliations when they apply for research grants? I don't. In fact, I honestly feel foolish for asking the question.
(This post was last modified: 04-17-2017 10:53 PM by nzmorange.)
04-17-2017 10:33 PM
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Wedge Offline
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Post: #123
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 10:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  I can answer your "why" question. It's because "research is the end all, be all" is a common consensus, but nobody can give a coherent reason as to why - PAC or otherwise.

You're approaching this as if guys who frequent internet message boards get to decide who is in or out of major college athletic conferences and what the criteria should be.

The real-world answer is pragmatic. These decisions are made by power-conference university presidents and chancellors, nearly all of whom are current or former professors with extensive backgrounds in elite-level research. (Look up their bios if you are skeptical of that.) Things that are valued by those people, the decision makers, become significant factors in their decisions. It's not any more complicated than that.
04-17-2017 11:11 PM
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jrj84105 Offline
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Post: #124
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 10:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  That story/explanation/hypothetical doesn't pass the laugh test
I was one of the faculty recruited to institution A, and you're right, it wasn't a very funny situation.
04-18-2017 06:05 AM
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johnbragg Offline
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Post: #125
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-16-2017 10:15 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  
(04-16-2017 06:30 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  UCSD would be the highest ARWU ranked school in the B1G, ACC, SEC, and BigXII. It would be #4 in the PAC and #6 in the Ivy. That's why it would get invited to the PAC before SDSU.

ARWU is close to meaningless, as it places a very heavy emphasis on research, and one school's research doesn't impact another's.

But do your own sanity check. Do you really think that the university of Minnesota is a better overall school than Vanderbilt and several Ivy's?

I find it credible. Without doing any checking, I can imagine that Minnesota, a large well-funded public university in a historically left-liberal state, is outperforming the lower half of the Ivy League, which is underperforming and living off of the reflected prestige of Harvard-Yale-Princeton.

Better overall than Vanderbilt, no, but "better on certain metrics"? Sure.

Quote:I get that the PAC pretends to care about the ARWU, but I have a very hard time believing anything other than that their alleged fixation is based off of the fact that the PAC schools randomly happen to be good using that metric. And, it's better to pretend to care about the metric that you're good at than to pretend/admit to care/ing about the metric that you're "eh" at.

You may have answered your own question here. All of the Big Ten schools were AAU, so AAU took on an outsized importance. PAC rocks the ARWU rankings, ARWU is the real measuring stick. C7 was all big-city mid- to high-ranking Catholic schools--we meant to do that all along.

(I've been surprised at how much Georgetown is going along with the Big East "Catholic Ivy" thing. I'd expect them, as a top 20 school, to be pushing the line "Those guys? Peers? Nah, they're just some guys I know from the gym")

But just because it's somewhat random doesn't mean it isn't very, very real. Ask VCU and Saint Louis about their relative chances of ever getting a Big EAst invite.

Quote:My point is that the top 5 schools in the PAC are fantastic. The bottom 7 aren't. I honestly don't know a lot about either SDSU or UCSD, but I'd be amazed if either had ceilings tangibly below the PAC median.

Unless a conference is backfilling, they want schools that raise their average/median, not just meet it.

(04-17-2017 08:39 AM)nzmorange Wrote:  By what meaningful metric is SDSU materially worse than OSU as is?

It's not a state flagship/land-grant, and it ain't never gonna be.
And again, Oregon State is already in the club. If Georgetown or MIT or UVa wanted to make a push for Ivy status, "just as good as Brown/Dartmouth" isn't going to cut it.

NZMOrange, I think you have a point about research numbers being over-rated by a lot of posters, at least slightly.

Research dollars, US News rankings, SAT/ACT profiles are different ways to measure what schools are looking for in partner institutions, not the thing itself. The thing itself is reputation, sometimes among the general public, sometimes among academics, sometimes a mixture of the two.

Yes, apart from being a Cal State, SDSU is comparable to Oregon State. But Oregon State wouldn't be getting into the PAC today either if it were applying.

The reality is that SDSU isn't a "UC", and UCSD doesn't have a serious athletic department, so it's not going to be considered for PAC membership in anything like the current environment. (SEtting aside scenarios of radical change--California is subdivided into multiple states, CalExit, P5 secession while expanding to 80-100 members).

SDSU had/has an outside chance of getting into a conference like the Big 12 (or the New Big East RIP), which can't be as choosy as the PAC.

On the other hand, sometimes things change rapidly. Garfunkel and Oates, 29 and 31
(This post was last modified: 04-18-2017 07:59 AM by johnbragg.)
04-18-2017 07:54 AM
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westwolf Offline
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Post: #126
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 11:20 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Texahoma-PAC marriage just doesn't make sense to me, as anything other than a last resort.

The geography of the United States is what it is. There needs to be a P conf in the west, for true western schools, and there needs to be a P conf in the central part of the continent, for those schools.
You have that exactly right.
04-18-2017 08:00 AM
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johnbragg Offline
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Post: #127
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 10:33 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  
(04-17-2017 08:32 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  One example I can allude to was a planned relationship between two institutions in the same city where institution A was going to sell some adjacent land to institution B for a collaborative venture. Institution B, in promotional materials to raise money for the new buildings, had a picture of the land that featured prominent signage from institution A. Institution A didn't like the other school leveraging its better branding to raise funds so they killed the deal. Both had spent millions on the planning and had even recruited new faculty. That's how serious these guys take their branding.

I can answer your "why" question. It's because "research is the end all, be all" is a common consensus, but nobody can give a coherent reason as to why - PAC or otherwise. Seriously, look at the example that you just gave me. Correct me where I'm wrong/exaggerating, but your theory appears to be based on a possibly hypothetical real estate transaction between two schools, where one school wouldn't sell land to another because the first school presumably did more research than the second,

Stop for a second, loosen up the focus on research, and just think pecking order. Let's say the schools were Houston and Rice, or Harvard and Northeastern, or Temple and Penn, or GW and Georgetown, or UIC and Chicago, or St John's and Columbia.

Yes, now it's not that hard to see why Institution A goes nuclear when it looks like Institution B is selling the idea of equality between them.

Quote:Sanity check your position:
Do you think that Rice's faculty are being held back in any meaningful and/or material way by Rice's athletic affiliations when they apply for research grants? I don't. In fact, I honestly feel foolish for asking the question.

No. But that's because Rice's reputation is strong enough that its gravitational pull swamps CUSA's. The FBS study by the Montana AD 5-10 years ago found the opposite effect, at least in terms of public perception. Their polling data found that UM and MSU were grouped in the public mind with their Big Sky mates, not with their actual peer institutions and never mind their "aspirational peers".
04-18-2017 08:08 AM
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Big Frog II Offline
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Post: #128
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-17-2017 04:28 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(04-17-2017 04:15 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  Lest we rag on Boise too much, they did 31M in research last year. Other FBS schools with lower research:
SMU 29
ECU 27
Tulsa 25
Baylor 25
LaTech 24
FAU 21
Marshall 20
W Mich 20
NIU 18
Miami 16
C Mich 13
Ball St 11
FresnoSt 9
Ark St 8
BwlGrn 8
TCU 8

TCU did a whopping 8 mil? Hahaha...good for last place in FBS. And yes, I see that Boise edged ECU in this category.

TCU's focus has been on undergrad education, not graduate programs and research. However, that will change next year when TCU opens its new medical school here in Fort Worth.
04-18-2017 09:06 AM
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MplsBison Offline
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Post: #129
RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
nzmorange,

In addition to what Wedge and bragg have said .... it really is just this simple: you trying to wrap your head around the idea of "adding Colorado to the PAC didn't help Stanford's research" is a complete waste of your time.


That's not at all how it works, and doesn't have anything to do with it.
04-18-2017 10:26 AM
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SuperFlyBCat Offline
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RE: SDSU FB - Boom or Bust?
(04-12-2017 01:42 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  
(04-11-2017 03:18 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Well since it's city property, they win a citywide referendum (required). OK impossible.

I have no clue why the SDSU leadership have their collective heads up their collective butts on this one. The arrogance is stunning. They are not even a UC with a Medical Center and research center (e.g., UCSD and Scripps). What makes them think they have that kind of pull? College sports is extremely niche in California. Kool-Aid sales must be impressive at SDSU executive offices.

Because the (very popular) mayor, 4 of the 5 county commissioners, and several state reps are all SDSU grads.

Because it's a large (for CA) school with 260,000 alums, over 2/3 of whom live locally. I would guess that there are the same number of SDSU grads in San Diego as there are OSU grads in Columbus.

Because SDSU is the "t-shirt" team of San Diego. That's not saying as much as it would in the South or Midwest, but there's more Ohio State fans in San Diego than UCLA fans.

Because several local billionaires who are not SDSU grads have adopted SDSU.

Because California's real estate development market is not a free market. California's real estate/environmental laws practically mandate that any large-scale development be owned by a wealthy, well-connected, and well-organized interest group. SDSU is one of those interest groups, and they're better connected than any other interest group in town.

Barriers to entry are pretty significant in a lot of markets and sub markets. The Irvine Co. in Orange Co. comes to mind, and when Brookfield went into Downtown LA they bought 7 office towers, go big or go home.
04-19-2017 02:38 PM
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