The AAC is eyeing Boise State or Army instead of Rice or Buffalo. What does that tell you about their priorities? And that is more a reflection on this country’s priorities than the conference. What school’s diploma is the best in the long run?

(04-19-2021 12:34 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  The AAC is eyeing Boise State or Army instead of Rice or Buffalo. What does that tell you about their priorities? And that is more a reflection on this country’s priorities than the conference. What school’s diploma is the best in the long run?

To be perfectly honest, that is a very hard question to answer. Ideally, you want a diploma from an accredited institution for one thing. A very good friend of mine went to an unaccredited college awhile back and she had a hard time finding a job or even trying to transfer the credits she did have to another college/university. That college, thanks to her and other students complaining about the lack of accreditation, is now accredited, but it does show how important accreditation is.

Then you want to get the diploma that is best for your field and where you live. For example,a lawyer from Texas A&M would have a very difficult job finding a position in Alabama, but it would be easier for him or her to find a position in Texas, so long as the applicant wasn't competing against the University of Texas or SMU for the same slot.

Generally speaking, flagships and private institutions have the better law schools and medical schools, while land grant colleges excel in engineering, architecture, and agricultural related fields. However, I am sure that there are exceptions to every rule.

Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

(04-19-2021 01:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  [quote='Bogg' pid='17389687' dateline='1618855583']
Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.
[/quote

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

While Rice is a fine institution, its leaders have pretty much de-emphasized athletics, and therefore the Rice brand is not as well known as Boise. It's also very difficult to get into Rice also, so you have much smaller alumni base than Boise too.

(04-19-2021 12:34 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  The AAC is eyeing Boise State or Army instead of Rice or Buffalo. What does that tell you about their priorities? And that is more a reflection on this country’s priorities than the conference. What school’s diploma is the best in the long run?

Army is highly thought of academically. If held a gun to a university president's head to group Army's academics with Boise St or with Rice/Buffalo, they'd group them with Rice/Buffalo.

Do we know the AAC is eyeing Boise St?

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  [quote='Bogg' pid='17389687' dateline='1618855583']
Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.
[/quote

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it is for many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

Edit: screwed up my sources

(04-19-2021 01:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it form many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school?

(04-19-2021 01:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

Right - Army is an elite academic institution (while having a very different mission than many other universities). I would say that any consideration of Army means that academics are quite important (or at the very least are being highly valued).

The higher up on the pecking order, the choosier you can be.

The Big Ten can afford to apply stringent academic criteria to its expansion candidates in a way that the G5 leagues can't (and probably shouldn't). When you're in a league that's already making a ton of money, institutional fit becomes a much more critical consideration. It's no different than a sports team itself - when you've got a great team already in place, you want to bring in additional players that actually fit in (beyond just pure talent). When you've got a bad team, though, you're in a triage situation where you've got to find talent for talent's sake regardless of fit (because it's self-defeating to try to "fit" into a bad team).

Even then, I've always felt that even at the highest levels (like the Big Ten and Pac-12), there's an academic *bar* that each school needs to clear. Once that bar is cleared, then schools are judged on purely on athletic/financial considerations. So, a school like Rice doesn't get extra points compared to, say, TCU simply because Rice is so much higher than them in academic rankings. At the end of the day, the P5 looked at Rice and TCU as academically acceptable in Round 1 of the conference realignment analysis. Once that bar was cleared, that academic side of the house becomes irrelevant and Round 2 is all about pure athletic and financial value.

(04-19-2021 01:42 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school.

Usually...yes.

If the only metric y'all use to categorize "academic worth" of a university is the US News report, I don't think you know enough to try and evaluate the "academic worth" of a university to a potential athletic conference...especially one as disparate as the AAC.

No offense to the eggheads on the board, but for the AAC they need quality on the field and in brand strength over academic rankings. Its all about ratings and revenue my friend-- and unless Rice is sharing research dollars with AAC members schools, they aren't going to be added.

(04-19-2021 01:42 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it form many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school.

I dont know--I think it may depend on the employer. I suspect an academy degree is absolutely worth at least as much as one from Buffalo (which was the comparison). For anyone who knows how hard it is to get into an academy and the type of discipline it requires to graduate---for some employers---an academy degree may indeed be more impressive than some Ivy League degrees.

(04-19-2021 01:42 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:06 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Not sure why West Point is being lumped in with Baked Potato U.

The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it form many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school.

That's a really difficult comparison because a graduate from West Point doesn't go directly into the marketplace - they end up having a military commitment for several years. It's not as if though they are heading to Goldman Sachs or a FAANG company after graduation even if they wanted to do so.

However, I would say that military leadership is *highly* valued in the marketplace and West Point is one of the handful of schools where you're generally going to get a universal instinctive, "That's really impressive!" reaction if you see it on a resume. At least in the elitist professions (e.g. finance) that target Ivy League grads, they're going to look at graduates from the service academies very favorably. It's just a wildly different career track.

(04-19-2021 01:48 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:42 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:12 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  The analogy is:
Boise State vs Rice Institute
or
Army vs Buffalo

Rice and Buffalo are research institutes. West Point is a fine school. But not ranked as high as Buffalo.

Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it form many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school.

I dont know--I think it may depend on the employer. I suspect an academy degree is absolutely worth at least as much as one from Buffalo (which was the comparison). For anyone who knows how hard it is to get into an academy and the type of discipline it requires to graduate---for some employers---an academy degree may indeed be more impressive than some Ivy League degrees.

Ok, I think we can agree that either Rice, or Buffalo, or Army are far superior to Boise State academically. But not athletically.

(04-19-2021 01:54 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  Ok, I think we can agree that either Rice, or Buffalo, or Army are far superior to Boise State academically. But not athletically.

It's a conference that already has Wichita, Memphis, and ECU.

(04-19-2021 01:54 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:48 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:42 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:35 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-19-2021 01:22 PM)Bogg Wrote:  Dramatically different institutions and goals, and it's still not hard to argue that West Point is both more difficult to get into and more rigorous academically. It's just super-specialized.

Right--when it comes to academics---I dont think anyone will be looking down their nose at West Point. The competition to get in there is every bit as stiff as it form many Ivy league schools. In terms of "exclusivity" and quality---the academies are generally perceived as being similar to other very high quality academic institutions by both the public and university presidents.

As I said before, West Point is a fine school. But out in the marketplace is a diploma from there worth as much as an Ivy league school.

I dont know--I think it may depend on the employer. I suspect an academy degree is absolutely worth at least as much as one from Buffalo (which was the comparison). For anyone who knows how hard it is to get into an academy and the type of discipline it requires to graduate---for some employers---an academy degree may indeed be more impressive than some Ivy League degrees.

Ok, I think we can agree that either Rice, or Buffalo, or Army are far superior to Boise State academically. But not athletically.

Absolutely.

The AAC aren't a totally unified bunch in terms of wants.

Navy and the privates would think:

1. Army
2. Rice
3. Boise
4. Buffalo

Temple (and maybe ECU) would think:

1A. Army
1B. Buffalo
3. Boise
4. Rice

UC/Memphis/UCF/UH would think:

1. Boise
2. Army
3. Rice
4. Buffalo

Do you see why we don't have a Team #12 yet???

(04-19-2021 01:24 PM)DawgNBama Wrote:  While Rice is a fine institution, its leaders have pretty much de-emphasized athletics, and therefore the Rice brand is not as well known as Boise. It's also very difficult to get into Rice also, so you have much smaller alumni base than Boise too.

Rice is FAR better known than Boise. Much more competitive, too.

Boise St. accept rate, 2021: 81.7%
Rice accept rate, 2021: 9%