(06-25-2017 08:31 PM)Kittonhead Wrote:  

(06-25-2017 06:45 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  State politics have changed, and it seems every state wants to get more and more schools to become an AAU status schools. Minn. State-Mankato could be the Michigan State for Minnesota if they go that route. Minn.-Duluth could become another R1 level for Minnesota like Wisconsin-Milwaukee is to Wisconsin in the research department. Texas and Texas A&M are battling each other on how many of their schools could be research schools. With San Diego State and Fresno State are on the rise in the research departments in California? I think the attitude have changed about having schools moving up. If Omaha was asked to move up today? They may not have dropped their 2 successful programs, football and wrestling. Omaha could be in the MVFC in football if they kept it.

The problem with this David is that the race for federal research money ended around 1980 and the major entrants at that time all divided up market share.

For this reason a school today can't be built from scratch and become an AAU member. The capacity be it physical infrastructure or human capital to support the research required is a hard nut to crack.

The University of California schools have been able to crack the nut as a group but they work TOGETHER to maximize research capacity. University of Minnesota is going to redistribute its resources to other campuses because they want to make sure one institution is very strong in the national research rankings.

It's a non-starter.

Have you ever thought that many of the AAU schools are private and are in D3? Do you think they want the research dollars move out of those D3 schools for the D1 public schools? The AAU standards have been out of date for a long time now.