(08-17-2021 03:20 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:34 PM)usffan Wrote:  With the exception of football, USF and UCF would be considered "travel partners" for most sports, meaning for one plane trip you would cover two road games with a simple bus ride and wouldn't likely even have to change hotels. Same way, for example, the Washington schools travel to the Arizona schools (which, by the way, is further apart than Stillwater or Ames to Tampa).

USFFan

Fair point if both are taken. I’m looking at them independently. Either one taken alone would constitute another WVU-type island that’s 900 to 1100 miles away from the rest of the conference.

To be fair, though, it's a heck of a lot easier to fly a team into Orlando than Stillwater, Lubbock, or Manhattan

Note that BYU is closer than either of the U_F twins. Colorado St, is pretty similar to Cincinnati.

(08-17-2021 03:20 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:34 PM)usffan Wrote:  With the exception of football, USF and UCF would be considered "travel partners" for most sports, meaning for one plane trip you would cover two road games with a simple bus ride and wouldn't likely even have to change hotels. Same way, for example, the Washington schools travel to the Arizona schools (which, by the way, is further apart than Stillwater or Ames to Tampa).

USFFan

Fair point if both are taken. I’m looking at them independently. Either one taken alone would constitute another WVU-type island that’s 900 to 1100 miles away from the rest of the conference.

If "travel partners" were the main consideration, meaning except for football, for one plane trip you would cover two road games with a simple bus ride and wouldn't likely even have to change hotels, then SMU and TCU or Baylor would be the ticket. Only one school would have to be added to the existing Remaining 8. There are many other good choices for number 10. For that matter, Tulsa and Oklahoma State would be good travel partners too.

*** SMUstang ***

Cincinnati is really the most likely new Big 12 school. They're in a good market with solid athletics and an excellent recruiting area that serves a geographic bridge to West Virginia. Most importantly, they carry absolutely no baggage: there are no concerns about religious-based restrictions (unlike BYU) or worries about in-state rivals blocking them (unlike Houston or SMU). Cincinnati is solid on-the-field and off-the-field without any controversy. I'd be shocked if they were left out in *any* Big 12 expansion regardless of size.

Outside of that, I'd agree with the OP that BYU is the most valuable available school on paper for the Big 12. If they weren't carrying any of the aforementioned baggage, then BYU would be in the Big 12 as long as BYU wants to be in the Big 12. Of course, it's a two-way street: I believe that any AAC school would take a Big 12 invite in a heartbeat, but BYU *could* conceivably turn the Big 12 down. I wouldn't put it past them to choose to stay independent.

That's what will be fascinating when we get to the point where the Big 12 is deeper in the process of looking at adding schools. Outside of Cincinnati, it's really hard to see a clear addition. You could argue one day that BYU and Houston are guaranteed locks to get into the Big 12 and I'd believe you... but then you could argue the next day that BYU and Houston are the *least* likely schools to get into the Big 12 due to the aforementioned baggage and I'd believe you, too. Big 12 expansion could go in to ton of different directions.

(08-17-2021 03:27 PM)whittx Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 03:20 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:34 PM)usffan Wrote:  With the exception of football, USF and UCF would be considered "travel partners" for most sports, meaning for one plane trip you would cover two road games with a simple bus ride and wouldn't likely even have to change hotels. Same way, for example, the Washington schools travel to the Arizona schools (which, by the way, is further apart than Stillwater or Ames to Tampa).

USFFan

Fair point if both are taken. I’m looking at them independently. Either one taken alone would constitute another WVU-type island that’s 900 to 1100 miles away from the rest of the conference.

To be fair, though, it's a heck of a lot easier to fly a team into Orlando than Stillwater, Lubbock, or Manhattan

What matters is whether it’s easier to fly a team from Stillwater, Lubbock or Manhattan into Orlando versus Houston, Memphis or Cincinnati.

That’s how the L8 will view it, if and when they get to the point of caring about geography versus all of the other factors.

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  I get similar results. But I see UCF blocked by Kansas and the basketball coaches. They a re not going to take a school that has only been to one NCAA tourney this century and averages less than 5,000 fans in their arena. Football is not enough better to justify it.

I move Cincy to 2nd based on more NCAA appearances and Luke Fickell being under a long contract, meaning they have the strongest football.

Your school rankings are mostly AI plus Peer ranking --which is highly questionable, as it's just the random results of Professors asked to rank schools they've heard of rather than any personal knowledge.

HERD R&D is more consistent. Except that you have to subtract Medical school research, which skews badly the ranking of schools. You can see this in examples of similar schools, one with a Med school officially under the same accounting roof as administering school, such as UCLA, and one which is under a different roof yest still administered by the school, such as UCSF (Med) and UC Berkeley. Thus UCLA appears to have a larger R&D budget at 1,076,917,000 (yes that is $1B) than UC Bekeley at $770,822,000. But if you were to include UCSF with UCB to make it more apples to apples, you need to add $1,409,398,000 (yes $1.4B) to Berkeley's administrative total, to get $2,180,220,000 or almost double UCLA. There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner. (Note, UC Davis and UC Irvine, like UCLA include a medical school.) Baylor is another example, where the main campus is like BYU not a research center, but the Med school has $604m in R&D.

This is pretty consistent Nationally, we spend a lot more R&D dollars on medicine than all other sciences and engineering combined. It's been a steady shift over time. So one has to remember that schools like South Florida, UAB and Cincinnati have the medical college included, but others like Colorado State have no medical school. So even HERD is not always apples to aples. Not sure how much to reduce the R&D by, but cutting in half is probably fair. (Note, Texas is a school where the medical school is not included, making their number, like Cal's very impressive.)

Anyway that shuffles things:

South Florida = $558m (med school)
Cincinnati = $455m (med school)
Colorado State = $338m
Temple = $268m (med school)
UCF = $233m (med school)
Houston = $169m
Memphis = $46m
BYU = $43m // high AI school
Boise State = $35m

Remaining Eight

Iowa State = $324m
Kansas = $300m (med school)
K State = $196m
Texas Tech = $191m
Oklahoma State = $191m
West Virginia = $185m (med school)
Baylor = $29m // high AI school
TCU = $7m // high AI school

If you are curious why the Pac-12 will pass, the HERD numbers answer. They are a research conference. They bent a little bit with Utah to have a 12th

UW = $1,35b
Stanford = $1.09b
UCLA = $1.08b
Cal = $771m (no med)
USC = $764m
Arizona = $622m
ASU = $545m (no med)
CU = $499m (no med)
Utah = $380m
WSU = $357m (no med)
Oregon State = $267m (no med)
Oregon = $96m (no med, no engineering schools)

Oregon Health and Science University has a $384m R&D budget.
CU Anschutz Medical Campus has a $481m R&D budget
UCSF (administered by Cal) has a $1.41b R&D budget


Looking at the Big 12 I don't know if research level is all that important in their situation. Carnegie has allowed a lot of grade inflation and pretty much every large public institution is now granted R1 status. It used be almost 1 to 1 with AAU membership. This forces a deeper dive into the numbers to determine peers. Memphis and Boise State are clearly hurt by low AI numbers combined with low research levels. Even if you allow that half of West Virginia's R&D budget is eaten up by their med school, these two are well short of even that Mendoza line. But does it matter? The data clearly show BYU then Memphis with Cincy (if as I suspect basketball gets some weight) and UCF following.

BYU + Memphis would fit the best value, but I think the combination of athletic performance and academic fit would put Cincy ahead of Memphis and UCF.

Just wanted to mention those are older R&D numbers (I believe 2017). I bet the same spot or similar to what I had found before. I kept searching because certain things I found suggested recent data was available and I found the following site a few weeks ago. The most recent data can be found here (Table 20 shows 2010-19).



Also I think I figured out what you meant by "AI", but the only time I could find it mentioned was in reference to Ivy League schools.

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner.

Not that it matters for sports discussions, but... there was temporarily a long row of "NL" spaces when they were doing some construction on campus. The normal arrangement is that each Nobel Prize winner on campus gets a "NL" space as near as possible to his or her own lab or office. It started about 40 years ago when the chancellor told a recent Nobel winner they were going to have a ceremony and name an award in his honor, and he said he wanted his own parking space instead.

(08-17-2021 03:40 PM)Alanda Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  I get similar results. But I see UCF blocked by Kansas and the basketball coaches. They a re not going to take a school that has only been to one NCAA tourney this century and averages less than 5,000 fans in their arena. Football is not enough better to justify it.

I move Cincy to 2nd based on more NCAA appearances and Luke Fickell being under a long contract, meaning they have the strongest football.

Your school rankings are mostly AI plus Peer ranking --which is highly questionable, as it's just the random results of Professors asked to rank schools they've heard of rather than any personal knowledge.

HERD R&D is more consistent. Except that you have to subtract Medical school research, which skews badly the ranking of schools. You can see this in examples of similar schools, one with a Med school officially under the same accounting roof as administering school, such as UCLA, and one which is under a different roof yest still administered by the school, such as UCSF (Med) and UC Berkeley. Thus UCLA appears to have a larger R&D budget at 1,076,917,000 (yes that is $1B) than UC Bekeley at $770,822,000. But if you were to include UCSF with UCB to make it more apples to apples, you need to add $1,409,398,000 (yes $1.4B) to Berkeley's administrative total, to get $2,180,220,000 or almost double UCLA. There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner. (Note, UC Davis and UC Irvine, like UCLA include a medical school.) Baylor is another example, where the main campus is like BYU not a research center, but the Med school has $604m in R&D.

This is pretty consistent Nationally, we spend a lot more R&D dollars on medicine than all other sciences and engineering combined. It's been a steady shift over time. So one has to remember that schools like South Florida, UAB and Cincinnati have the medical college included, but others like Colorado State have no medical school. So even HERD is not always apples to aples. Not sure how much to reduce the R&D by, but cutting in half is probably fair. (Note, Texas is a school where the medical school is not included, making their number, like Cal's very impressive.)

Anyway that shuffles things:

South Florida = $558m (med school)
Cincinnati = $455m (med school)
Colorado State = $338m
Temple = $268m (med school)
UCF = $233m (med school)
Houston = $169m
Memphis = $46m
BYU = $43m // high AI school
Boise State = $35m

Remaining Eight

Iowa State = $324m
Kansas = $300m (med school)
K State = $196m
Texas Tech = $191m
Oklahoma State = $191m
West Virginia = $185m (med school)
Baylor = $29m // high AI school
TCU = $7m // high AI school

If you are curious why the Pac-12 will pass, the HERD numbers answer. They are a research conference. They bent a little bit with Utah to have a 12th

UW = $1,35b
Stanford = $1.09b
UCLA = $1.08b
Cal = $771m (no med)
USC = $764m
Arizona = $622m
ASU = $545m (no med)
CU = $499m (no med)
Utah = $380m
WSU = $357m (no med)
Oregon State = $267m (no med)
Oregon = $96m (no med, no engineering schools)

Oregon Health and Science University has a $384m R&D budget.
CU Anschutz Medical Campus has a $481m R&D budget
UCSF (administered by Cal) has a $1.41b R&D budget


Looking at the Big 12 I don't know if research level is all that important in their situation. Carnegie has allowed a lot of grade inflation and pretty much every large public institution is now granted R1 status. It used be almost 1 to 1 with AAU membership. This forces a deeper dive into the numbers to determine peers. Memphis and Boise State are clearly hurt by low AI numbers combined with low research levels. Even if you allow that half of West Virginia's R&D budget is eaten up by their med school, these two are well short of even that Mendoza line. But does it matter? The data clearly show BYU then Memphis with Cincy (if as I suspect basketball gets some weight) and UCF following.

BYU + Memphis would fit the best value, but I think the combination of athletic performance and academic fit would put Cincy ahead of Memphis and UCF.

Just wanted to mention those are older R&D numbers (I believe 2017). I bet the same spot or similar to what I had found before. I kept searching because certain things I found suggested recent data was available and I found the following site a few weeks ago. The most recent data can be found here (Table 20 shows 2010-19).



Also I think I figured out what you meant by "AI", but the only time I could find it mentioned was in reference to Ivy League schools.

Memphis was 58.7M for 19-20 (no Med)

(08-17-2021 03:53 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner.

Not that it matters for sports discussions, but... there was temporarily a long row of "NL" spaces when they were doing some construction on campus. The normal arrangement is that each Nobel Prize winner on campus gets a "NL" space as near as possible to his or her own lab or office. It started about 40 years ago when the chancellor told a recent Nobel winner they were going to have a ceremony and name an award in his honor, and he said he wanted his own parking space instead.

Another couple of amusing anecdotes about them. First is that they're transferable! For quite a few years, Melvin Calvin (1961 Nobel winner in Chemistry) still came in to campus regularly but didn't drive, so he "gave" his Nobel permit to his administrative assistant, which pissed off quite a few people, but she would often drive him around.

Also, faculty in disciplines that don't have Nobel prizes (e.g. Mathematics) stewed for a long time that they were ineligible for this perk. Perhaps Wedge can disclose how they settled that, but I know there were discussions about how to create similar spaces for high achieving faculty in non-Nobel disciplines.

USFFan

(08-17-2021 03:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  I did the distance with the 11 finalists + Memphis a few years back. Taking out Norman and Austin, below is the median and average distance for each of those 12 schools.

Median Average
distance distance
BYU 1,122 1,183
Memphis 560 594.4
Cincinnati 765 783
Houston 628 660.5
UCF 1,284 1,233
Uconn 1,515 1,456
USF 1,303 1,256
Air Force 665 731
Colorado St. 693 805
Tulane 862 807
SMU 420 462
Rice 516 588

Nobody drives. Flight times and prices

(08-17-2021 02:19 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Geography matters too. Even if travel costs aren’t a factor, travel time/hassle is since it takes away from class time and can adversely affect performance.

If that were a factor in the analysis it would help Houston, SMU, Memphis and Cincy and hurt Boise, USF, UCF and BYU.

Hard to find direct commercial flights between Memphis or Cincinnati to KC, OKC, and Des Moines. That would be tough on half the existing conference...devote 5+ hours on connecting-flight travel...

Houston and SLC have multiple daily non-stop routes to all three.

(08-17-2021 04:18 PM)YNot Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:19 PM)HawaiiMongoose Wrote:  Geography matters too. Even if travel costs aren’t a factor, travel time/hassle is since it takes away from class time and can adversely affect performance.

If that were a factor in the analysis it would help Houston, SMU, Memphis and Cincy and hurt Boise, USF, UCF and BYU.

Hard to find direct commercial flights between Memphis or Cincinnati to KC, OKC, and Des Moines. That would be tough on half the existing conference...devote 5+ hours on connecting-flight travel...

Houston and SLC have multiple daily non-stop routes to all three.

Lol.. CVG is a major airport. Getting UC’s sports teams to locales in the BXII will not be an issue.

University of Houston has a med school now.

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  I get similar results. But I see UCF blocked by Kansas and the basketball coaches. They a re not going to take a school that has only been to one NCAA tourney this century and averages less than 5,000 fans in their arena. Football is not enough better to justify it.

I move Cincy to 2nd based on more NCAA appearances and Luke Fickell being under a long contract, meaning they have the strongest football.

Your school rankings are mostly AI plus Peer ranking --which is highly questionable, as it's just the random results of Professors asked to rank schools they've heard of rather than any personal knowledge.

HERD R&D is more consistent. Except that you have to subtract Medical school research, which skews badly the ranking of schools. You can see this in examples of similar schools, one with a Med school officially under the same accounting roof as administering school, such as UCLA, and one which is under a different roof yest still administered by the school, such as UCSF (Med) and UC Berkeley. Thus UCLA appears to have a larger R&D budget at 1,076,917,000 (yes that is $1B) than UC Bekeley at $770,822,000. But if you were to include UCSF with UCB to make it more apples to apples, you need to add $1,409,398,000 (yes $1.4B) to Berkeley's administrative total, to get $2,180,220,000 or almost double UCLA. There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner. (Note, UC Davis and UC Irvine, like UCLA include a medical school.) Baylor is another example, where the main campus is like BYU not a research center, but the Med school has $604m in R&D.

This is pretty consistent Nationally, we spend a lot more R&D dollars on medicine than all other sciences and engineering combined. It's been a steady shift over time. So one has to remember that schools like South Florida, UAB and Cincinnati have the medical college included, but others like Colorado State have no medical school. So even HERD is not always apples to aples. Not sure how much to reduce the R&D by, but cutting in half is probably fair. (Note, Texas is a school where the medical school is not included, making their number, like Cal's very impressive.)

Anyway that shuffles things:

South Florida = $558m (med school)
Cincinnati = $455m (med school)
Colorado State = $338m
Temple = $268m (med school)
UCF = $233m (med school)
Houston = $169m
Memphis = $46m
BYU = $43m // high AI school
Boise State = $35m

Remaining Eight

Iowa State = $324m
Kansas = $300m (med school)
K State = $196m
Texas Tech = $191m
Oklahoma State = $191m
West Virginia = $185m (med school)
Baylor = $29m // high AI school
TCU = $7m // high AI school

If you are curious why the Pac-12 will pass, the HERD numbers answer. They are a research conference. They bent a little bit with Utah to have a 12th

UW = $1,35b
Stanford = $1.09b
UCLA = $1.08b
Cal = $771m (no med)
USC = $764m
Arizona = $622m
ASU = $545m (no med)
CU = $499m (no med)
Utah = $380m
WSU = $357m (no med)
Oregon State = $267m (no med)
Oregon = $96m (no med, no engineering schools)

Oregon Health and Science University has a $384m R&D budget.
CU Anschutz Medical Campus has a $481m R&D budget
UCSF (administered by Cal) has a $1.41b R&D budget


Looking at the Big 12 I don't know if research level is all that important in their situation. Carnegie has allowed a lot of grade inflation and pretty much every large public institution is now granted R1 status. It used be almost 1 to 1 with AAU membership. This forces a deeper dive into the numbers to determine peers. Memphis and Boise State are clearly hurt by low AI numbers combined with low research levels. Even if you allow that half of West Virginia's R&D budget is eaten up by their med school, these two are well short of even that Mendoza line. But does it matter? The data clearly show BYU then Memphis with Cincy (if as I suspect basketball gets some weight) and UCF following.

BYU + Memphis would fit the best value, but I think the combination of athletic performance and academic fit would put Cincy ahead of Memphis and UCF.

(08-17-2021 04:07 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 03:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  I did the distance with the 11 finalists + Memphis a few years back. Taking out Norman and Austin, below is the median and average distance for each of those 12 schools.

Median Average
distance distance
BYU 1,122 1,183
Memphis 560 594.4
Cincinnati 765 783
Houston 628 660.5
UCF 1,284 1,233
Uconn 1,515 1,456
USF 1,303 1,256
Air Force 665 731
Colorado St. 693 805
Tulane 862 807
SMU 420 462
Rice 516 588

Nobody drives. Flight times and prices

I'm confused. The distance is calculated from where to where?

(08-17-2021 03:59 PM)usffan Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 03:53 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 02:43 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  There is a reason UC Berkeley has a row of parking spaces reserved for noble prize winner.

Not that it matters for sports discussions, but... there was temporarily a long row of "NL" spaces when they were doing some construction on campus. The normal arrangement is that each Nobel Prize winner on campus gets a "NL" space as near as possible to his or her own lab or office. It started about 40 years ago when the chancellor told a recent Nobel winner they were going to have a ceremony and name an award in his honor, and he said he wanted his own parking space instead.

Another couple of amusing anecdotes about them. First is that they're transferable! For quite a few years, Melvin Calvin (1961 Nobel winner in Chemistry) still came in to campus regularly but didn't drive, so he "gave" his Nobel permit to his administrative assistant, which pissed off quite a few people, but she would often drive him around.

Also, faculty in disciplines that don't have Nobel prizes (e.g. Mathematics) stewed for a long time that they were ineligible for this perk. Perhaps Wedge can disclose how they settled that, but I know there were discussions about how to create similar spaces for high achieving faculty in non-Nobel disciplines.

USFFan

I heard about that complaint, also about the Calvin story, but AFAIK they haven't created parking spaces for non-Nobel winners.

(08-17-2021 03:29 PM)bullet Wrote:  Note that BYU is closer than either of the U_F twins. Colorado St, is pretty similar to Cincinnati.

Distance-wise, CSU is not similar to Cincinnati.

Colorado State is 75 minutes away from the Denver Airport. Cincinnati is 15 minutes away from the Cincinnati airport (which is actually in Covington, Kentucky).

Even if you're doing a charter jet, CSU is 25 minutes from the Northern Colorado Regional Airport. Cincinnati is 10 minutes from Lunken Field.

That’s a lot of work on those rankings.

Depending on subjective weighting you can get it to say a lot of things but the top five I generally agree on in no specific order.

(08-17-2021 04:33 PM)SMUstang Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 04:07 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 03:27 PM)bullet Wrote:  I did the distance with the 11 finalists + Memphis a few years back. Taking out Norman and Austin, below is the median and average distance for each of those 12 schools.

Median Average
distance distance
BYU 1,122 1,183
Memphis 560 594.4
Cincinnati 765 783
Houston 628 660.5
UCF 1,284 1,233
Uconn 1,515 1,456
USF 1,303 1,256
Air Force 665 731
Colorado St. 693 805
Tulane 862 807
SMU 420 462
Rice 516 588

Nobody drives. Flight times and prices

I'm confused. The distance is calculated from where to where?

It is the median and average from Provo to Morgantown, Ames, Manhattan, etc. and then Memphis to Morgantown, Ames, Manhattan,....

(08-17-2021 04:38 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(08-17-2021 03:29 PM)bullet Wrote:  Note that BYU is closer than either of the U_F twins. Colorado St, is pretty similar to Cincinnati.

Distance-wise, CSU is not similar to Cincinnati.

Colorado State is 75 minutes away from the Denver Airport. Cincinnati is 15 minutes away from the Cincinnati airport (which is actually in Covington, Kentucky).

Even if you're doing a charter jet, CSU is 25 minutes from the Northern Colorado Regional Airport. Cincinnati is 10 minutes from Lunken Field.

Well I'm not going to try to figure out price, but I know, because of Delta's dominance, Cincinnati has typically been one of the most expensive airports in the country. Going to Middletown one time, I flew Houston to Columbus because it was so much cheaper than CVG.

(08-17-2021 04:40 PM)1845 Bear Wrote:  That’s a lot of work on those rankings.

Depending on subjective weighting you can get it to say a lot of things but the top five I generally agree on in no specific order.

A better ranking, and one I thought about, may be to take negative points after the 5th place team (6th=-1, etc…). I didn’t because I was done looking at it, but anecdotally I think the rankings would change fairly significantly.

My team, Memphis, would be ranked lower for sure due to academics (9th) and endowment (8 or 9th…don’t remember) dragging them down. UCF would face a similar fate while Cincinnati and HOU would rise due to being in the mid to upper range in most rankings.

After looking at this too long, if I were the L8 I’d go
BYU, Cincy, MEM, UCF/HOU in that order. I’m biased. I think the TX schools may block HOU/SMU and the non-TX schools would welcome that after the Longhorns running the show. Could be wrong though. Maybe they consider UCF too far. Maybe they want both Florida schools and HOU and MEM are left out.

I DO believe 4 is too small a number. Leaving schools like UCF, HOU, and/or MEM out there with Boise etc leaves too much competition/meat on the bone. You could still fall behind the leftover conference. The 8 have to strip mine the lower tier. Leave no doubt. I think 6 does that, while 4 does not. However, I doubt they go 6 at least not right away