(05-12-2022 12:17 AM)DawgNBama Wrote: (05-10-2022 03:13 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: (05-10-2022 12:33 PM)random asian guy Wrote: According to Forde, the examples of the schools that will not professionalize include:
ND, Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, USC, UCLA, Cal, Virginia, North Carolina, and maybe Michigan.
I wouldn't put Michigan in that group.
Purdue, Northwestern, and Wisconsin have long been considered to be on the same page as Notre Dame on this issue.
From what I understand, there's an unofficial voting block of Purdue, Wisconsin, Northwester, Indiana, Illinois, and Minnesota that guarantees that those 6 will be on the same side of this issue. Nebraska & Ohio State will oppose them, probably joined by Iowa & Penn State.
So in the Big Ten, Michigan & Michigan State (or maybe Rutgers & Maryland?) will cast the deciding votes.
I suspect you'll see most of the voting on this align along the same axis as shutting down the FBS season in summer 2020. Except with Notre Dame on the side of the Big Ten & Pac this time.
Why is Wisconsin, with a football stadium roughly the same size as South Carolina's, in a voting block with Illinois, Purdue, Indiana, etc., who all have stadium sizes the equivalent of ACC & PAC12 teams?? And not with Ohio State, Michigan, & Penn State who have SEC style capacity stadiums???? I don't get that.
Let me preface this by saying once again that I fully and completely believe that all Big Ten schools will be participating in whatever form the top level of college athletics will be going forward. I'll repeat that 100 times - none of the Big Ten schools are unilaterally downgrading themselves.
Now, if we're entertaining the argument that the most academically-focused schools are going to unilaterally disarm (once again, something that I personally don't believe at all, but I'll engage in the discussion for hypothetical purposes), it would make perfect sense that Wisconsin is in that group.
I always tell people this: the most academically snobby school in the Big Ten is NOT Northwestern. It's *Michigan*. Michigan doesn't have the "lay person" academic prestige as Harvard and Stanford, but they truly in their heart of hearts believe that Harvard and Stanford are their academic rivals every bit as much as Ohio State is their athletic rival. In fact, the practical reality that Michigan doesn't have same lay person prestige is why they're way more outwardly bombastic about their academic credentials than a place like Northwestern.
What does this have to do with Wisconsin? Well, Wisconsin is really the next level of the Michigan mindset of where they stand in the academic pecking order. If you look at graduate research rankings, Wisconsin is actually sneakily really high across the board in nearly every department ranging from STEM to liberal arts. They might not have a mega-star department like Illinois and Purdue have with engineering, but Wisconsin is one of those schools that is performing at a really high level in virtually every facet of academia. To your point about Wisconsin having a stadium like South Carolina, note that at the graduate research level, Wisconsin has more in common with the Ivy League schools than it does with most of the SEC schools. Yet, among public schools, they don't have the same "lay person" academic prestige as places like Berkeley, UCLA, or... Michigan. So, just as Michigan has a sort of complex of wanting to be seen as a Harvard-level academic institution, Wisconsin similarly has a complex of wanting to be seen as a Michigan-level public university. (This isn't a criticism of Wisconsin. My alma mater of Illinois thinks exactly the same way.)
This is further evidenced by the AAU vote to remove Nebraska from its membership. Michigan and Wisconsin take the academic requirements of the AAU so seriously that they were the only two Big Ten schools that voted to remove Nebraska. (Note that Northwestern supported Nebraska.) This was even after Michigan and Wisconsin have been two of the schools that have been most stringent on wanting only AAU schools (with an exception for Notre Dame) in for Big Ten expansion.
So, if we're going to end up with a line of demarcation of schools that separates the more prestigious academic schools from other schools for sports, then Wisconsin would be the type that would want to be in the prestigious academic group.
That being said, I'll repeat again that I don't believe that believe that any of that will happen. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue et. al all love their Big Ten money and exposure just as much as Ohio State and Penn State (even if the former schools try to play it off otherwise).