Unverified Voracity With Actual Number

More teams = more games = more content, both for existing programming (more football, for example, as now BTN can carry games from 12 to 16 teams rather than 11) and new programming. Expanding into areas not currently carrying BTN brings in more fees as well as providing more content (which is an argument against inviting that other Indiana school - isn't two enough?).

...on England - USA by venerable NYT sports writer George Vescey is definitely worth a look.

No Super Bowl, no sudden Final Four pairing, no Olympic battle-of-the-decimal points, no heavyweight championship fight, no World Series, no Stanley Cup, no golf tournament has had this much attention for a full six months. While older Americans fret that they do not “get” soccer (it really doesn’t matter if they do or don’t), for the generation that communicates with the flicking of its thumbs, this match may turn out to be Frazier-Ali. (The U.S. team playing the role of the unglamorous Frazier.) The closest thing in the United States these days is the ordering of the sausages and upgrading of the RV for some great college football pairing — Oklahoma-Texas, let’s say [you and I would say Michigan - Ohio State]. Those annual crusades are regional, not global, however, and not once-in-a-generation, like England-United States, about to happen in Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenberg in a nation so far away that it is late fall.

The accidental matchup grew even more provocative through the meat grinder of the English season, as English fans respectfully watched Tim Howard and other Yanks excel in the goalmouth in the ancestral home of footy, and watched Landon Donovan become a man — a highly mobile man at that — in a cameo for Everton, and watched Clint Dempsey’s soulful Texas border grit for Fulham.

No English fan can sneer, “Why don’t you Yanks stick to your stinkin’ baseball?” as one bloke snarled at me in Sardinia in 1990. (The 1-0 upset by the Yanks in 1950 is so ancient, it hardly even registers. Except that it happened.)

I am getting seriously excited about this potentially historic match.

...the inimitable WashPo Soccer Insider provides an update on the Yanks.

English reporters tried to bait Landon Donovan and Bradley into saying they would consider trying to exploit Wayne Rooney's suspect temperament and provoke him into a red card.

Donovan, who has been around the media block a few times, answered: "I think Rooney is going to be just fine."

Added Bradley: "No, we don't enter into all that. Good, hard game."

Also: Jozy, Gooch updates, Landon on becoming a team leader.  Bob Bradley on advice he's gotten from Fabio Capello:

"His quote to me, his coaching advice: 'When you make wine, the grapes aren't always the same.' The first few times he said that to me, I thought he was actually talking about wine. [laughter] Since then, I have thought about it and I realized he was trying to tell me something about football."

Here's hoping Fabio's advice proves useful in the end.

I'd agree that more degrees earned is better, especially among groups who are earning degrees at lower rate than their peers.

However, I thought the problem of "overmatching" had been debunked by Bowen et al.  Generally speaking, a poor and/or minority student should go to the best college that will admit him or her.  His chances of graduation are better at the better school.  Whatever challenges are created by the high level of expectations are more than made up for by the peer effects of being surrounded by students who are more ambitious & goal-driven than he'd find at a less selective school.  It sounds like the UC system shows the compete opposite; I'm not familiar with the data there.

In athletics, it's a different situation entirely--yes, kids get admitted to places way beyond their qualifications, enough so that there would normally be a danger of being overwhelmed... but on the other hand, they get boatloads of support. 

Eh, I think I'm getting way off topic here, but I was just at a conference where this was being discussed so your comment rang a bell.

Hate to break it to you, but other than 3 or 4 seasons since 1993, Michigan has long been entrenched in a period of mediocrity.

One man does not make a program. Last I checked, Denard, Tate, Taylor, Schilling, Roh, Campbell, Marvin, Cullen, Woolfolk, Turner and many others are still on the team. Don't let one kid who couldn't get admitted shake your faith.

I would say most of us aren't pissed off because Dorsey was just out of qualification range. We're pissed off because admissions led him on right from the get-go, the media shat all over him for months, and then admissions remained frustratingly out of contact.

Stop with the phony outrage.  When most of the criticism directed at M for signing Dorsey was thinly veiled "this guy committed a crime--has gold teeth and dreads, and doesn't speak like us," race already entered into it.  Half the posters to most of the internet sites wouldn't have had the problem they did without that element.  And they criticized M's institutional character for admitting him.  Brian was just playing within the rules that the critics established.

And this: "As a two-time Michigan graduate I happen to think that the academic records of the incoming student body heavily reflects the the character of the institution.   As a Michigan grad, this should matter more to you too."

How so?  In fact it is the opposite. The incoming records of the students has NOTHING to do with the character of the university. That's like saying an upscale neighborhood has great character based upon the salaries of its inhabitants.

unless you meant that they were either exclusively or partially available on PPV, in which case a number of Big Ten schools would have fallen into the same category prior to the BTN (from being available in certain parts of the country on ESPN GamePlan; obviously that's no longer the case).

It's not a case of viewership as much as a crappy television deal. (Anything that involves Versus is obviously a crappy deal.) During non-conference play, FSN can only carry so many games, and without an FSN Nebraska, NU has to settle for what is available to them.

Nebraska brings more eyeballs (yes, it's only the 100th-largest market or so, but not everyone can be in the top 10) and more events. On their own, they don't help significantly, but it's also not just about television money. NU fans and alumni will travel to regular-season games - by now I'm sure you've seen the picture of Nebraska fans filling Notre Dame's stadium - and bowls, and more attendance is good for the conference. Better to bring in a school that fills the stadium than another one that doesn't.

Of course they are more attractive if they bring some of their southern friends. I suspect that if an announcement on Friday is coming, it will not be the last.

...on which to base this claim:

...admissions told him what he needed to do. With their word Dorsey did what needed to be done, but before he got his grades back admissions changed their minds and he had no shot.  Now we find out he did what he needed to do and admissions still screws him over. 

Where's the evidence that:

1. Admissions gave him some minimum bar to clear?
2. Dorsey cleared the hypothetical bar?
3. Admissions changed its mind and raised the hypothetical bar and set a new hypothetical standard?

Achieving the clearinghouse minimum is not the same thing as doing what's needed to gain admission.  I've not seen anyone say on the record that Dorsey had the bar raised by admissions (i.e., time 1, one standard communicated by admissions to Dorsey; time 2, a second standard applied to Dorsey's record).

Statements like this are so ignorant, so full of assumptions as to be funny at best, offensive to anyone who respects this University at worst. The sad thing is that such assumptions seem to be shared by the majority here. Everyone needs one person or entity to blame, when most likely all the main players share a little bit of the blame. 

lol, glad to see you stopped working on foreign films and onto sports what people really care about.