Quote:
Originally Posted by jAZ
your assumption that acadmics play no role in the decision making of an athletic conference.
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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.