You're right that I should have qualified my original statement. In a perfect world, these conferences would want to add institutions that bring everything to the table: athletics ($), television markets, and high-quality academics.

When put to the test, though, we've seen that these same conferences are more than willing to disregard the last of these three. See: Utah, Nebraska, and the likely additions of OSU and TT.

This is why I laughed about the premise of adding Rice. Sure, it's great that it's a fine academic university, but without the Houston market, outside conference wouldn't even want to urinate on this institution.

Academic branding is such an ancillary point in all of this that, yes, it's laughable.

Dude.

@LaSportsDudeJordan Grove


RT @finebaum: Tusc News' Cecil Hurt,'The SEC would like to have Missouri, but will wait & see on Big 12. WVU is 4th or 5th on the list.'

Just wondering....Would KU fans here be more attracted to the ACC (if it turns into the mega-basketball conference some on the radio are predicting) or to one of the power conferences (B10, Pac12)?

You don't want em'.

Only a ****ing idot would pick the ACC over the B1G.

LMAO

Yeah, ok.

I edited my post to include B10, Pac12, power conferences.
I don't have any particular interest in seeing KU in the B10 due to their lack of a football program but I respect them as an institution.

PAC 16 or B1G...

I hear a lot of KU fans here say they care more about hoops than football. So, I was wondering if they would rather be in a power b-ball conference than a prime BCS conference.

B1G Network needs some winter programming as well and KU would provide some basketball ratings.

Rather than join the other members of college hoops royalty in the ACC?

That makes sense. We watch B10 hoops in the winter as it is but it would be fun to have KU mixed in.
No matter if it is KU or someone else they won't seem like a B10 team.
Hell I still don't think of Penn State as B10.

As a fan it would be nice to be able to see some of the games....

Living in OK, going where OU goes makes sense...

I love driving to the Noble toilet center and watch the Hawks live. Also like watching them get killed in football also live...

they go to the ACC or B1G and my football and basketball experience takes a hit...

Honestly no, academia in computers(especially systems) does not generally do 'primary research'. I've been on both sides of this fence at the very highest levels and I've seen what happens. One of the problems is that academia generally doesn't know what has been done before and so they 'publish' a lot of old work. Now that isn't always bad because it is useful to publish ideas that have been developed before but haven't been published previous. But it isn't really novel and that does make it somewhat disappointing. You don't really get to appreciate this until you actually know what happens behind the curtain to know exactly how far behind academia really is.

There is a real question of who is doing primary research these days. The reality is, big industrial labs aren't, academia generally isn't(there are always exceptions), is it startups then? Not really because once you get funded you're productizing and not really doing research.

Academia should be the place where primary research is done, but really it isn't. Part of the reason is that they don't have the resources to really tackle 'bigish' problems that really have to work. Cute little ideas sure, big problems not as much. Academia also rewards more publications and the best way to get 'more' is to publish a lot of a smallish safeish ideas. Try something big and revolutionary and it doesn't work and your tenure case is screwed(or your thesis etc).

That is one of the real problems in the computer field today and realistically I'm not sure the best way to solve that. It is an important issue because we're really not pushing the envelop like we used to. Everything today is evolutionary. Where did the revolutionary ideas go?