Conference Expansion: SEC EXPOSED.
Who is the big loser during the Conference Expansion process? The SEC is.
No, it's not because of what schools they pick up or don't pick up.
It's because of the merciless coast-to-coast holy-ass beating the SEC's academic reputation is taking during the Expansion process.
Article after article, post after post inevitably points out that the SEC is not even under consideration for big fish like Texas because of its deplorable academics.
I get that the SEC Coaches and Athletic Directors don't seem to care, but man if I'm an SEC university president, I gotta be cringing every time I open a newspaper or click on a link.
Meanwhile, the Big 10 is constantly referenced as the top of the academic food chain for major conferences. So much so that schools are weeded out based on academics before any conversations even start . . . the now famous "Tech problem".
No wonder the SEC hates the Big 10.
So next time an SEC slappy tells you that the Big 10 can't keep up with their speed, remind them that when it really counted, the SEC couldn't keep up with the Big 10's smarts.
The verdict is in: The Big 10 may be slow, but the SEC is STUPID.
You can't fix stupid.
And stupid is as stupid does...
is no way to go through life son."
Zero point zero.
"Face it Flounder, you threw up on Dean Wormer"
2 out of 3 isn't bad.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and SEC stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
Or something like that.
I feel bad for Vanderbilt.
How much better academically is the B12 compared to the SEC? I don't think it's too big of a difference.
And by the way, Missouri would be a middle-of-the-road SEC school academically...
if I'm an SEC university president, I gotta be cringing every time I open a newspaper or click on a link...
a) You're assuming they can use them internets.
b) Do the qualifications to be an SEC president rate the same as their academics in comparison to the Big Ten?
c) If so, I am sure that being president is a big upgrade from their potential as adjunct faculty at UM.
I think that at one point in the last decade, Vanderbilt was the only SEC school NOT to have a prgoram on probation at that given moment.
This really made me laugh, so I really want this to be true. As such, I will do zero research to verify it for fear that it is not true, but will go on to tell other people this fun fact whenever I can.
I'm not sure if there are too many SEC fans that would care that their conference academics are bad.
Behind my family and I was an alumna from the University of Georgia, (I know this, because she was talking to her companions about her academic pursuits there). Not once, in the 45 minutes I stood in line, did I hear her put together grammatically correct sentence. Not. Once.
As we got on the ride, (and out of ear shot) I turned to my wife and said, "Our children will never attend the University of Georgia."
Funny thing is, I believe UGA is the 3rd best school in the SEC, behind only Vandy and UF.
That tells you everything you need to know about the overall quality of education in the SEC.
Behind my family and ME is the grammatically correct version of your sentence..... just saying.
I am glad that our conference is superior academically but I can't help but think how much more superior we would be without those couch-burning degenerates in East Lansing.
As much as we like to sling the old mud at MSU, they actually have a pretty good set of grad programs. They would be ranked somewhere in the middle of the PAC10 and in the top of both the B12 and SEC. They have one of the best Education schools in the country, TWO decent med schools (one of the best DO schools in the nation) both ranked in the top 25 for primary care.
Biz: 47
Education: 17
Engineering: 51
Veterinary: 9
And as should be no surprise, they have the 7th ranked Criminology program in the nation!
So, MSU is a very good school, that if anything looks worse in light of the comparisons to UM, etc within the B10. If they are the worst school in the B10, then the B10 looks pretty damn good.
MSU is a very good school"
Let's not get crazy here, I appreciate the conference enthusiasm but MSU is very definitely a terrible school.
Come on, MSU is certainly not a great school, not an elite school, but they are not a definitely terrible school. They are a top 30 public school nationally. This means that about half the states in the country don't have a state school as good as MSU (since states like CA have a few) and very few have more than one.
I'm no MSU fan, and I'm not saying you need to be a brain surgeon to get accepted there, but saying it's "definitely a terrible school" is way overboard.
I've always felt the Pac 10 was, overall, academically superior to the Big 10. The Big 10 has an advantage with the CIC, but the Pac 10 has more top tier schools than the Big 10.
the bottom is really down there.
Northwestern can match Stanford and UofM matches Cal-Berkeley. After that, it's all about what fields you're talking about. Wisconsin and Indiana are underrated academically because they're not in glamorous locations like UCLA. Also, don't forget Ohio State is one of the top schools in the country for aspiring truck drivers and meth chemists.
but the do have some butt ugly friends (Wash St., Oregon St, ASU, etc.)
And no, this analogy is not a reflection on the actually hotness of the girls at each school.
Yes, I mean ASU is probably a comparator to MSU with WSU and Or.SU bing significantly worse than any Big 10 school.
Still, Stanford, UCLA, UCB, UW and Oregon (in some respects) are all wonderful research institutions which would seem to outweigh any inadequecies present due to lesser schools.
MSU is well above ASU. As I have stated previously, MSU would be in about the middle of the Pac10. The top 5 of the Pac10 are good, but once you get to WSU, Oregon, Oregon St, Arizona, and Arizona State, it has gone pretty far downhill. UW and the Cali schools are basically where all the academic capabilities lie within the Pac10.
Eh, the Pac Ten is only ahead at the very top. Stanford is above NW, Berkeley ahead of UM (but barely), UCLA ahead of Wisconsin, and USC ahead Illinois. PSU and UW are about a wash (no pun intended), and then every other Big Ten school is above U of Arizona, their next highest ranked school (all according to US News). Iowa, MSU and Indiana are all tied as the 29th best public U in the country, and Arizona comes in at #48. WSU #52, Oregon #57, ASU #60 and Oregon State didn't even make the list of 68 public universities, even though Missouri University of Science and Technology is #64.
Thus, at the top the Pac Ten edges us out, but at the bottom they don't even touch us. The bottom of the Pac Ten is on pace with the bottom of the SEC, maybe worse.
What happens if they bring in Baylor (#80), Oklahoma (#102), and Oklahoma State and Texas Tech (both Tier 3 [?!])?
Wow. Upon further review, Baylor isn't so bad, after all.
To be fair, those numbers I was using were rankings of public universities only (since most of the schools we're discussing are public), and Oklahoma is #48, tied with Arizona. That said, OK St. and TTU are still unranked, and Baylor is still below every Big Ten school, so you're point remains that it brings them down. Even Colorado who they just added is #34, behind every Big Ten school except recently added Nebraska (#43).
So if you point is "the Big Ten was ahead of the Pac Ten before expansion, and looks to be ahead by even more after expansion" then I agree with you. And if we add Texas and/or ND, we go ahead by even more.
SEC Education. Now that's an oxymoron.
i know a man who works in the chemical industry for a nation-wide company, has reached the point where he has plays a role in reading the job applications, and talked with him about the process ...
they will basically at least look at almost any big ten application
however if your a southeast school not in the acc top half (gtech, duke, uva, unc, vatech etc) and you don't go to vandy or absolutly kicked ass at florida, it is a non starter
After she graduted UM (LSA '57) she was hired right off the bat at the first high school teaching slot she applied to in a good district in Westchester, NY solely based on the fact that she graduated from Michigan.
M-Dog, are you Ira Weintraub?
I love your tag line:
"Texas is that cute chic at the bar you take home ... and then you notice she has 3 kids"
Too bad her 3 ugly kids - Texas Tech, A&M, and Baylor - weren't at least smarter. We would have hooked up.
Ira did this story on WTKA this morning. So, my three possibilities were you are Ira, Ira saw your story and went with it, or you both saw the same story and went with it.
I was wondering when someone was going to pick up on this.
This process has been a public humiliation to the academic contingent, no matter how small that is, within the SEC schools.
But perhaps the SEC doesn't really feel an imminent need to expand because current members have won four straight national championships.
but this posted twice for some reason.
While we would all like to see the SEC as losers in expansion, I simply cannot see it happening. There are many contingencies the SEC has that will almost assuredly mean they will at least be in the same postiion post-expansion that they were pre-expansion, if not better. Even if they capture neither Texas A&M or Oklahoma, they still have Georgia Tech, Florida St., Miami and Virginia Tech. Georgia Tech would completely shore up the largest market down there, Atlanta. The other three are mired in a decaying (and increasingly irrelevant) ACC and would love to be part of a great football conference as they are football-centric schools. Football is a religion down there and I have no doubt that an SEC network would be a huge success. With these options, it's hard to see the SEC losing from the recent changes.
Can we really say they're being exposed when everyone in the world already knew those schools (Vandy aside) sucked academically?
Cuz now everyone's talking about how much they suck academically.
Everybody knows what's going on, but if you ignore it, it's not that big a deal. When it's talked about all day? That sucks for them
Ting!!
I was visiting Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend and got into a conversation that I thought had turned intellectual. Now, being the Big Ten midwesterner, I took a devil's advocate position and kept the debate going, until I suddenly realized the Georgia grad was taking it very seriously.
What I was told was that debating is not polite, at all, in the South. Playing Devil's Advocate might as well be playing the devil.
This was not a stupid person. But the Dawg was very earnest in calling me out, and would not be consoled afterwards, ending the evening with snides about northerners and selfishness and such -- kind of killed the night.
The problem, as I discovered, is not in identifying that there's an intellectual difference between the North and South, but in thinking it's about intelligence. Rather, they're coming at it from a perspective of politeness, which is more important in the South, culturally, than discovery or "getting it right." There is no such thing as "constructive criticism," or "just for the sake of argument." If you disagree on something with somebody in the room, then you're probably in the wrong room.
I'm in no position to say what's better. I personally wouldn't choose accord over intellectualism as a cultural value, but then again, I'm much better at arguing about stuff than I am at getting along with people -- that's my bias. I do know that to succeed in the world, it's better if you actually have both.
When you value agreement over correctness, it's very easy to drive the whole damn bus right off a cliff because everyone's too polite to tell you you're going the wrong way.
Perhaps that's just my Northern background speaking. But it seems painfully obvious, and the idea that it isn't explains everything that is wrong with the South.