Mary Sue Coleman on B10 Expansion, NCAA sanctions

can you elaborate any on your last paragraph.  what speculation in reference to what comments?  speculation on how the practice overages relates to ND and Missouri?  like what?  any continuation there would be great.  thank you again.  

interesting that the name would remain Big Ten...

(edit):  nevermind, i think i figured it out..... the AAU issue is how it relates to ND and Missouri.

Thanks for the info.  I was wondering about the name and if they changed it to the Big 16 would BTN become BSN? 

Glad to hear we will be announcing self-sanctions and putting that whole mess behind us. I appreciate the info.

...name: I'm glad to hear that's the case.  It's all about branding our tradition. 

I'm interested in knowing what the process is for AAU admission and if a prospective school could achieve that status in the time between the expansion announcement and the school's admission to the CIC/Big Ten.  If yes, then schools not in the AAU but with AAU admittable credentials could be realistic expansion candidates.

I find it amusing, impressive, and soul-crushingly annoying that we're gonna get to the sanctions phase before USC, despite the fact that (a) the USC thing started years earlier, and (b) REGGIE BUSH GOT A F*^&ING CONDO.

Why are you taking up MGoBoard space with relevant, actual information that we all care about, when you could instead be posting about various sports journalists, the RR v. Trent / Carr situation, the length of Denard's dreads or what Les Miles ate for breakfast?

/sarcasm

This was actually a great post with some pretty interesting info - thanks.

Yes, I echo the others. This is insightful and encouraging to hear. Thank you.

So long UConn...

I'll be so glad when all that stuff is behind us.

Didn't really have an opinion on Mary Sue while I went to school (graduated in 2006), but came to definitely appreciate and admire her through this whole NCAA fiasco.

Also, I was very impressed with her speech at "Obama at the Big House" a few weeks ago. I think that she gave one of the best speeches of the day.

Also, she's pretty attractive in an older woman, university president sort of way.

I still can't believe we're getting in trouble for going over on time due to what amounts to a miscommunication about whether stretching counts or not and making sure players are at their summer classes.

The QC staff thing sounds like we were pushing our luck on, but I'm still upset that WE'RE getting the cheating label for it and everyone else bending that rule gets to hurry up and fire everyone to make sure they aren't next. All because of a rouge reporter and a paper that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on BEFORE August 30, 2009, much less after.

Criteria for AAU membership are here, on the 1/1/02 link.

http://www.aau.edu/about/membership_information.aspx?id=1110

It's largely based on evaluation of competitive grants won by faculty, awards and fellowships to arts and science faculty, membership in national learned societies (which are by invitation only), citations of faculty work, PhD's awarded, and some nebulous evaluation of the quality of graduate and professional programs.

Of particular interest is the low importance of undergraduate education. It's only mention of undergrad ed says:

The committee will assess the institution’s undergraduate programs to determine that the institution is meeting its commitment to undergraduate education. Recognizing that differing institutional missions among research universities dictate different ways of providing undergraduate education, the committee will be flexible in this assessment.

Long story short: the US News rankings are of almost no importance and shouldn't really be considered except as a very broad estimate of the university's standing.

Election requires support of 3/4 of current members. Given that potential new additions would presumably go in with 12 votes lobbying for them, I would think it would be relatively easy to gain admission. I'm pretty sure that was the assumption of getting ND admitted when they were proposed for Big 10 membership.

FWIW, I asked John Bacon on-air a few months ago about this, since ND ain't a member yet an offer was extended to them a while back. Apparently the assumption on the Big 10's part was that ND would apply for admission to the AAU with the understanding that there would be changes at ND affecting the role and importance of research there. Bacon said that there was a significant amount of opposition from ND faculty about the proposed change in emphasis, since ND is not really a graduate research institution per se like UM is; ND has always been an institution primarily oriented to undergraduate education.

I was at this same event.  reposting my comments that I originally posted at Rivals.

Attended a donor/alum function where MSC attended, spoke, and answered audience questions. Overall, MSC was extremely impressive, speaks well, high energy, and a sense of humor. Would've never guessed she is 68.

Here is summary of what she said

- on Obama's visit. A year in the making. M sent applications to white house every month. Every month, white house would say "got your application". Secret weapon was number of M grads in white house pushing Obama to come. Mentioned 3 in particular. Said even the President of College Republicans said that they didn't agree with Obama, but glad he came. Said this was the happiest she's seen students with their speaker ever.

- On B-school expansion. B school got a new building. Old building (Frieze?) was too old, torn down. Said "facilities matter" (!!). Said saw acceptance rate rise to 80% after new facilities, unprecedented.

- On Peace Corps - Said M will have a commemoration of JFK Peace Corps christening later this month.

- On Supercollider - some idiot asked what impact the supercollider will have on M. Without missing a beat, MSC mentioned the physics staff working at the supercollider and the grad students publishing papers based on its work.

- on Big10 expansion - Said she loves Jim Delaney is a forward thinker looking ahead to the future. Said 2 teams maybe, or a 16 team big10 is possible. Said Big10 channel (she said channel) has been big success. Said no offers out yet, all that is false. Said all big10 schools are part of AAU (??) where we are all top tier research schools. Said any additions would have to live up to that. Said one big hurdle is that no existing big10 school wants to lower their share of Big10 network money, so she thinks it'll have to be a buy-in plan or else some change in how money works.

- on state budget cuts - Said budget cuts were coming no question. Gave credit to past president Shapiro for diversifying M's money pool Said 7th biggest (or so) endowment in USA. Thanked alums again for donating. Said made a number of budget cuts to help with things. Asked for examples, she said 50k in fewer flowers by her house, 7M in consolidating two parallel IT departments, turning some department facilities into a central service organization, 50k in moving a ceremony from outdoor tent to indoor facility, other savings in custodial stuff with no loss in service. Said that M is tough on granting in-state tuition, because this will really lower revenue stream. Noted that M went to a 7-year payout rather than 3-year a few years back. Others thought M was nuts, but M saw no dip in endowment funds during this entire recession. Noted importance of improving student experience, since this is what keeps people returning.


- On sanctions - said numerous times that M was wrong. Said though that QA coaches want to be real coaches, players want advice, and this makes it hard. Said violations were ~2h a week, which was wrong but not ridiculous. Of nature of reporting strength+conditioning as practice or something like that. Said she felt coaches asked one questions, compliance answered a different question, and there was ships passing in night. Did not believe coaches intentionally cheated. Said self sanctions were coming, to be announced May 24 (I think), same day as NCAA will make some findings public or something like that. Said this situation is common in D1, predicted number of QA coaches at other schools will go down next season. Noted many times we were wrong, but again noted the difficulty of a player who wants advice and the QA coach who has to tell him no. Seem to indicate that RR would NOT be fired over this. Said need to give RR a chance, but in the end it comes down to winning (people clapped here). A few people heckled the person who asked the question and said he was a RR supporter; a few supported the question asker.

*edit* this was not in my original posting, but I remember the same thing about not changing the name of the Big10 if we go up to 16.

Interesting bit about QA staff answering players questions ...

Does anybody else think the NCAA rules sound like tax code in their convolutedness about what counts and what doesn't and what defines a coach and what doesn't?

Anyone else confirm this or record the event? 

I also attended the Pres. Coleman reception at the Liberty Hotel in Boston on Wednesday night, and as others have posted, she was very impressive.  It was also great to mingle with some other MGoBlog users who share such a passion for Michigan football!

The posting of Michigantrumpet82 was dead-on, but I wanted to add a few more impressions that I picked up from her.  On expansion and revenue sharing, my understanding of her comments was that not only do current Big Ten members insist on keeping equal revenue sharing, but they wouldn't accept any short term reduction in revenue from the Big Ten Channel, etc., when bringing in the five new members.

She said self-imposed sanctions would be announced on or by May 24th but did not elaborate more.

Somebody also asked her about online learning.  She said that learning was also about meeting people, learning about diverse backgrounds, saw online learning as a niche thing.  So she didn't see M going that direction, and got a bunch of applause with that.