RE: P5: It’s mostly about the company you kept pre-1945
It's mostly about being a flagship (34 of them):
Cal, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, West Virginia, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, LSU, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri
Or being a high budget, high profile athletics private school (13 of them):
Stanford, Southern Cal, TCU, Baylor, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pitt, Syracuse, BC, Wake, Miami, Duke
I am going to throw one (1) specialty Engineering public school in with the privates:
Georgia Tech
We have at this point accounted for 48 schools. 28 of the 48 are AAU schools.
We then look at land grant schools, the "states" type schools of which there are 12:
Washington State, Oregon State, Texas A&M, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Auburn, Purdue, Oklahoma State, Iowa State, Kansas State, Virginia Tech, Clemson.
Note: Texas A&M is generally considered a 2nd flagship of Texas, much like UCLA is the 2nd flagship in California. And several flagships are land grants as well
The remaining 5 includes three "State" schools of enormous size, literally "best of breed":
NC State, Arizona State, Florida State
The final two: Louisville, Texas Tech
32 of the 65 are AAU.
Similar schools who didn't make the cut:
UConn (flagship), BYU, Colorado State (land Grant), Tulane, Rice
Of the above group UConn and BYU look the most like the P5, but UConn abandoned P5 aspirations with the Big East move. They started FBS football too late to make the cut (same for UMass). Tulane and Rice kind of fell out of major status over the decades.
When you look at the rest, they seem to be trying to get in on the "Louisville exception"; that is being so important in athletics it overrides everything else. Memphis, Boise State, Fresno State and UNLV all fall in that category. Houston, Cincy and perhaps Temple fall into a better version academically than Louisville. UCF and USF (and ECU) may be most comparable to the Texas Tech category, being directional, that is "other big State Universities than flagships or land grant".
The question is, are any of UCF, Houston, Cincy, USF big enough to overcome being the "Louisville" category to get into P5?
(This post was last modified: 08-23-2019 12:50 PM by Stugray2.)
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