The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Marshall and ODU maybe pushing for a split.

Quote:https://twitter.com/mu96___/status/14219...02020?s=21

Gotta admit the football in the SBC would be a little more competitive than the AAC without Cincy, Houston, Memphis and UCF.

If the not too distant future holds a return to the sunbelt for us, just kill me now.

Only care about Coastal, App State, and ULaLa currently.

The Sun Belt is not an institutional fit.

UaB is a R1 research university. Ranked roughly 150 in the world. None of the sun belt comes close to us. Our endowment dwarfs the entire belt. USA is the closest at roughly to half of our endowment. 600 million to like 350 million. We should be in a conference with our peers. I don't see Troy or Boone as a peer university.

Now if the entire thing gets blown up, sure we can talk. I want to be in the best possible conference. But jumping ship to the current belt by ourselves or even with Marshall and usm? Hell no.

I can see how what you all are saying affects what happens on the field. Thank you for putting me in my place. Much appreciate!

While we as fans tend to think in terms of athletics first, conference invitations are made by university presidents, and most of them tend to want to associate with their academic peers. For instance, while most think of the Big Ten as the next conference down from the SEC or maybe equal to them, all of the Big 10 schools are members of the the AAU, the Association of Academic Universities. It's made up of elite schools, most of them big in research. There are 64 of them total, and while some have athletics some have dropped them or only have them at lower levels. We're talking the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Penn, Stanford and the like. The Big Ten wouldn't touch Louisville, for instance, with twelve ten foot poles lashed together.

Put it this way. At this point UAB's academic profile is not good enough for AAU admission, and we're no football factory. We meet many of the requirements, but our stats in many academic categories are far below what would be required to get in. It's something we need to aspire to. Getting into the AAU would be a huge feather in the university's hat, raising our reputation a great deal immediately. The other side of this is that our academic profile fits very well with the AAC schools, and that may help put us over the top so far as getting in there. This is also why so many here are disdainful of dropping to the Belt, because their academics are not in the same league... and believe it or not, universities are about academics first and foremost. The good ones, anyway.

Prior AAU thread on the board here. https://csnbbs.com/thread-615243.html

Note that this analysis dates back to 2013, and we're still not in. If things have moved much in that direction I have not heard about it. Perhaps some of the more academic and research oriented posters have some knowledge and can update this.

I suspect that many of the AAU member schools regard us the way we do Troy. That's neither accurate nor fair, but it can be hard to change people's perceptions.

(08-02-2021 08:29 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  While we as fans tend to think in terms of athletics first, conference invitations are made by university presidents, and most of them tend to want to associate with their academic peers. For instance, while most think of the Big Ten as the next conference down from the SEC or maybe equal to them, all of the Big 10 schools are members of the the AAU, the Association of Academic Universities. It's made up of elite schools, most of them big in research. There are 64 of them total, and while some have athletics some have dropped them or only have them at lower levels. We're talking the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Penn, Stanford and the like. The Big Ten wouldn't touch Louisville, for instance, with twelve ten foot poles lashed together.

Put it this way. At this point UAB's academic profile is not good enough for AAU admission, and we're no football factory. We meet many of the requirements, but our stats in many academic categories are far below what would be required to get in. It's something we need to aspire to. Getting into the AAU would be a huge feather in the university's hat, raising our reputation a great deal immediately. The other side of this is that our academic profile fits very well with the AAC schools, and that may help put us over the top so far as getting in there. This is also why so many here are disdainful of dropping to the Belt, because their academics are not in the same league... and believe it or not, universities are about academics first and foremost. The good ones, anyway.

Prior AAU thread on the board here. https://csnbbs.com/thread-615243.html

Note that this analysis dates back to 2013, and we're still not in. If things have moved much in that direction I have not heard about it. Perhaps some of the more academic and research oriented posters have some knowledge and can update this.

I suspect that many of the AAU member schools regard us the way we do Troy. That's neither accurate nor fair, but it can be hard to change people's perceptions.

Just for reference, AAU member schools
https://www.aau.edu/sites/default/files/...r-List.pdf

(08-02-2021 08:29 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  Put it this way. At this point UAB's academic profile is not good enough for AAU admission, and we're no football factory. We meet many of the requirements, but our stats in many academic categories are far below what would be required to get in. It's something we need to aspire to. Getting into the AAU would be a huge feather in the university's hat, raising our reputation a great deal immediately. The other side of this is that our academic profile fits very well with the AAC schools, and that may help put us over the top so far as getting in there. This is also why so many here are disdainful of dropping to the Belt, because their academics are not in the same league... and believe it or not, universities are about academics first and foremost. The good ones, anyway.

I suspect that many of the AAU member schools regard us the way we do Troy. That's neither accurate nor fair, but it can be hard to change people's perceptions.

Chancellor Whit plan for UAT worked like a charm to bring all of those out of state well off students to finance the mass expansion. On this board he is hated for following the UAB SOM and BOT wishes to end football.

Whit plan was to use our medical reputation to attract out of state students to participate in undergrad research and improve that side of the campus academics, UAB green and other student life improvements and plans to move the inner city kids remedial work to Junior colleges. But some parties objected to diluting the quality of the Research at UAB. IMHO the SOM wanted to retain their dominance.
So far as I know nothing is currently ongoing to improve for AAU

(08-02-2021 08:29 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  While we as fans tend to think in terms of athletics first, conference invitations are made by university presidents, and most of them tend to want to associate with their academic peers. For instance, while most think of the Big Ten as the next conference down from the SEC or maybe equal to them, all of the Big 10 schools are members of the the AAU, the Association of Academic Universities. It's made up of elite schools, most of them big in research. There are 64 of them total, and while some have athletics some have dropped them or only have them at lower levels. We're talking the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Penn, Stanford and the like. The Big Ten wouldn't touch Louisville, for instance, with twelve ten foot poles lashed together.

Put it this way. At this point UAB's academic profile is not good enough for AAU admission, and we're no football factory. We meet many of the requirements, but our stats in many academic categories are far below what would be required to get in. It's something we need to aspire to. Getting into the AAU would be a huge feather in the university's hat, raising our reputation a great deal immediately. The other side of this is that our academic profile fits very well with the AAC schools, and that may help put us over the top so far as getting in there. This is also why so many here are disdainful of dropping to the Belt, because their academics are not in the same league... and believe it or not, universities are about academics first and foremost. The good ones, anyway.

Prior AAU thread on the board here. https://csnbbs.com/thread-615243.html

Note that this analysis dates back to 2013, and we're still not in. If things have moved much in that direction I have not heard about it. Perhaps some of the more academic and research oriented posters have some knowledge and can update this.

I suspect that many of the AAU member schools regard us the way we do Troy. That's neither accurate nor fair, but it can be hard to change people's perceptions.

Nebraska isn’t anymore, right? I thought that was one of the issues the Big Ten has with them.

(08-03-2021 08:55 AM)blazers9911 Wrote:  

(08-02-2021 08:29 PM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  While we as fans tend to think in terms of athletics first, conference invitations are made by university presidents, and most of them tend to want to associate with their academic peers. For instance, while most think of the Big Ten as the next conference down from the SEC or maybe equal to them, all of the Big 10 schools are members of the the AAU, the Association of Academic Universities. It's made up of elite schools, most of them big in research. There are 64 of them total, and while some have athletics some have dropped them or only have them at lower levels. We're talking the Ivy League, Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, Penn, Stanford and the like. The Big Ten wouldn't touch Louisville, for instance, with twelve ten foot poles lashed together.

Put it this way. At this point UAB's academic profile is not good enough for AAU admission, and we're no football factory. We meet many of the requirements, but our stats in many academic categories are far below what would be required to get in. It's something we need to aspire to. Getting into the AAU would be a huge feather in the university's hat, raising our reputation a great deal immediately. The other side of this is that our academic profile fits very well with the AAC schools, and that may help put us over the top so far as getting in there. This is also why so many here are disdainful of dropping to the Belt, because their academics are not in the same league... and believe it or not, universities are about academics first and foremost. The good ones, anyway.

Prior AAU thread on the board here. https://csnbbs.com/thread-615243.html

Note that this analysis dates back to 2013, and we're still not in. If things have moved much in that direction I have not heard about it. Perhaps some of the more academic and research oriented posters have some knowledge and can update this.

I suspect that many of the AAU member schools regard us the way we do Troy. That's neither accurate nor fair, but it can be hard to change people's perceptions.

Nebraska isn’t anymore, right? I thought that was one of the issues the Big Ten has with them.

They lost their AAU status after joining the big