What's new
AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!

CU has rejoined the Big 12 and broken college football - talking out asses continues

Grants are fairly political and based on association.

And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did.

Notice where the Big 12 teams are.
With all due respect, I'm a college professor who spent 7 years at Stanford and Berkeley. I've been the person earning many of those grant monies. Athletic affiliations do not matter whatsoever for R&D expenditures. CU's funding has increased because CU has put a premium on upping its research output, just as many universities do - including many not in the PAC. You assuming it had anything to do with athletic conference is just you (or someone else) making a completely false conclusion based on a completely unrelated correlation.
 
Last edited:
Jim, with all due respect, I'm a college professor who spent 7 years at Stanford and Berkeley. I've been the person earning many of those grant monies. Athletic affiliations do not matter whatsoever for R&D expenditures. CU's funding has increased because CU has put a premium on upping its research output, just as many universities do - including many not in the PAC. You assuming it had anything to do with athletic conference is just you (or someone else) making a completely false conclusion based on a completely unrelated correlation.
No one said athletic association played a sole role in R&D. What they are saying is that a school is not going to change their academic association for athletics but they are not against merging athletics with higher academics. Athletics are a “front porch” for donars.

With all due respect, a college professor should be able to get the finer points of a conversation.
 
No one said athletic association played a sole role in R&D. What they are saying is that a school is not going to change their academic association for athletics but they are not against merging athletics with higher academics. Athletics are a “front porch” for donars.

With all due respect, a college professor should be able to get the finer points of a conversation.
Edit - You directly insinuated that athletic association does indeed impact research expenditures when you said, "And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did." That insinuation - made more than once in this thread - is all I am addressing, because it is flatly incorrect.

*edit - my bad Ralphie, was quoting your own incorrect insinuation, not Jim's.
 
Last edited:
. Big Jim directly insinuated that athletic association does indeed impact research expenditures when he said, "And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did." That insinuation - made more than once by Jim - is all I am addressing, because it is flatly incorrect.


Uhmmm....professor BerkeleyBuff sir? Uhmmmmm......I didn't write anything of the sort. It was the guy sitting in the post next to me, RalphieSpeaks, that wrote that.
 
With all due respect, you apparently didn't even read the post I was responding to right there. Big Jim directly insinuated that athletic association does indeed impact research expenditures when he said, "And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did." That insinuation - made more than once by Jim - is all I am addressing, because it is flatly incorrect.
We will leave snark out.

Go find data that contradicts the data and charts posted. If association, whether athletic or whatever, doesn’t matter you should be able to show that. Seems like personal opinion at this point.
 
We will leave snark out.

Go find data that contradicts the data and charts posted. If association, whether athletic or whatever, doesn’t matter you should be able to show that. Seems like personal opinion at this point.
Personal experience and, for lack of a better way of saying it, kind of a "duh, obviously" truth for anyone in academia (and I'm not even saying it should be that obvious to anyone outside of academia). If you think athletic association matters for research expenditures whatsoever, that's a strong claim. You've not shown any data that support it, only a correlation. If you truly believe it's a real phenomenon, you'd need to get rid of any other potentially explanatory variables, at a minimum. So far you've shown that a single university increased its research expenditures during a time when said single university has been putting a premium on upping its research output. If you want to claim that research expenditures have anything to do with athletic affiliation, you need to find data that actually show that. (A single data point with zero consideration given to other variables is not useful data, my friend).
 
Personal experience and, for lack of a better way of saying it, kind of a "duh, obviously" truth for anyone in academia (and I'm not even saying it should be that obvious to anyone outside of academia). If you think athletic association matters for research expenditures whatsoever, that's a strong claim. You've not shown any data that support it, only a correlation. If you truly believe it's a real phenomenon, you'd need to get rid of any other potentially explanatory variables, at a minimum. So far you've shown that a single university increased its research expenditures during a time when said single university has been putting a premium on upping its research output. If you want to claim that research expenditures have anything to do with athletic affiliation, you need to find data that actually show that. (A single data point with zero consideration given to other variables is not useful data, my friend).
840EA3E9-20C5-4850-863B-30307EF2F57F.jpeg
 
The Big 12, when formed, had the following members:

AAU Institutions
Colorado
Iowa State (no longer AAU)
Kansas
Missouri
Nebraska (no longer AAU)
Texas
Texas A&M

Non-AAU Institutions
Baylor
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas Tech

The current Big 12 once it loses UT and OU will only have a single AAU member

Worse, in terms of graduate research intensity & funding (Carnegie Classification), every non-AAU was R1 (the top level - Doctoral universities with very high research activity). It's a high standard, but not that high of a hurdle - about 130 US schools meet that standard. It's kind of the minimum for CU to consider a school to be a peer university.

The new Big 12, beyond having only 1 AAU member, has the following R2 schools: BYU and TCU.

Comparatively, the 10 members of the Pac-12 are all R1 and the following are AAU members:

Arizona
Cal
Colorado
Oregon
Stanford
Utah
Washington

FWIW, this has been a major issue with expanding the Pac-12. The only FBS football AAUs not in a major conference and somewhat "West" are Rice and Tulane.

The Western non-AAU R1s not in a major conference are CSU, Hawaii, LA-Lafayette, Nevada, New Mexico, North Texas, UNLV, UTEP, UTSA and Utah State.

SDSU is now being considered because of desperation. It has had success and is in the vital So Cal market. They're R2 and there's a ton of political stuff about the U Cal vs Cal State systems. Cal States are limited by statute on doctoral programs. Maybe that changes now or Cal accepts the prestige hit of sharing a conference with an R2. Something has to give or they won't get an invite.

SMU is solely about desperation and the Dallas market. Not just R2, but also religious affiliation. Not a peer institution, so this would be hard to swallow for many Pac-12 members.

My guess is that they'll follow the money as the top priority. Conference will stay at 10 if it's close. They'll swallow hard and go to 12 if it makes a big difference on revenue.

The move which should have been made as soon an UT & OU announced for the SEC would have been UH, TTU, KU and UNLV to create a Pac-16 and to renegotiate its media deal early. But we missed the boat.

Edit: The big one for prestige is the Shanghai Ranking of world universities (ARWU). Being in the Top 100 is something the B1G and Pac-12 always highlighted.

Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Colorado and Washington are all Top 100.
 
Last edited:
Can't read one paragraph but claims to understand anything about how research grants are awarded in academia. I take this as your means of admitting you understand you're wrong but you'd rather divert than just admit as much. Thanks, and have a good night.
When you post anything that refutes the presented numbers I will listen. So far it is just your opinion. All the numbers I reposted are not my opinion. They are numbers. Publicly accessible.

My opinion is because of this and evenish TV contract numbers the PAC schools will have no appetite to break up.
 
When you post anything that refutes the presented numbers I will listen. So far it is just your opinion. All the numbers I reposted are not my opinion. They are numbers. Publicly accessible.
You've made a claim, given no data that actually supports your claim, then asked for data that "refutes" your claim. I'm a scientist. Your arguments wouldn't be getting you any grant funding, my friend.
 
We will leave snark out.

Go find data that contradicts the data and charts posted. If association, whether athletic or whatever, doesn’t matter you should be able to show that. Seems like personal opinion at this point.
I feel as though showing research $$ of various schools does not actually prove any kind of causation that the athletic conference affiliation actually drives any of it. I feel like the burden of proof is entirely on that guy (and you at this point) to actually prove otherwise.
 
You've made a claim, given no data that actually supports your claim, then asked for data that "refutes" your claim. I'm a scientist. Your arguments wouldn't be getting you any grant funding, my friend.
I presented other people’s claims and data, said it was their claims, you argued with it, you should refute it. Not my numbers. Go reread the original posts with Twitter links.

Now My OPINION is the PAC stays together based on that data of academic association and athletics. That is my only opinion.
 
I feel as though showing research $$ of various schools does not actually prove any kind of causation that the athletic conference affiliation actually drives any of it. I feel like the burden of proof is entirely on that guy (and you at this point) to actually prove otherwise.
He basically demonstrated that no team had ever left one conference for an academic inferior one and that RD increases in better conferences. What more do you want?
 
The Big 12, when formed, had the following members:

AAU Institutions
Colorado
Iowa State (no longer AAU)
Kansas
Missouri
Nebraska (no longer AAU)
Texas
Texas A&M

Non-AAU Institutions
Baylor
Kansas State
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Texas Tech

The current Big 12 once it loses UT and OU will only have a single AAU member

Worse, in terms of graduate research intensity & funding (Carnegie Classification), every non-AAU was R1 (the top level - Doctoral universities with very high research activity). It's a high standard, but not that high of a hurdle - about 130 US schools meet that standard. It's kind of the minimum for CU to consider a school to be a peer university.

The new Big 12, beyond having only 1 AAU member, has the following R2 schools: BYU and TCU.

Comparatively, the 10 members of the Pac-12 are all R1 and the following are AAU members:

Arizona
Cal
Colorado
Oregon
Stanford
Utah
Washington

FWIW, this has been a major issue with expanding the Pac-12. The only FBS football AAUs not in a major conference and somewhat "West" are Rice and Tulane.

The Western non-AAU R1s not in a major conference are CSU, Hawaii, LA-Lafayette, Nevada, New Mexico, North Texas, UNLV, UTEP, UTSA and Utah State.

SDSU is now being considered because of desperation. It has had success and is in the vital So Cal market. They're R2 and there's a ton of political stuff about the U Cal vs Cal State systems. Cal States are limited by statute on doctoral programs. Maybe that changes now or Cal accepts the prestige hit of sharing a conference with an R2. Something has to give or they won't get an invite.

SMU is solely about desperation and the Dallas market. Not just R2, but also religious affiliation. Not a peer institution, so this would be hard to swallow for many Pac-12 members.

My guess is that they'll follow the money as the top priority. Conference will stay at 10 if it's close. They'll swallow hard and go to 12 if it makes a big difference on revenue.

The move which should have been made as soon an UT & OU announced for the SEC would have been UH, TTU, KU and UNLV to create a Pac-16 and to renegotiate its media deal early. But we missed the boat.

Edit: The big one for prestige is the Shanghai Ranking of world universities (ARWU). Being in the Top 100 is something the B1G and Pac-12 always highlighted.

Cal, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Colorado and Washington are all Top 100.
It’s almost like the Pac has finally realized that academics don’t drive athletic media revenue so they are finally looking outside their bubble in desperation. They’ve been missing the boat for years. They didn’t adapt to the changing landscape in any meaningful way and we will now see if they can pull something together that keeps the remaining members on an equal playing field
 
I presented other people’s claims and data, said it was their claims, you argued with it, you should refute it. Not my numbers. Go reread the original posts with Twitter links.

Now My OPINION is the PAC stays together based on that data of academic association and athletics. That is my only opinion.
Your opinion was "And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did." Those are your words, not theirs, so I'm simply informing you that opinion is wrong. I don't know your field, but if you're an engineer and I said something incorrect about engineering, I'd expect you to do the same.

As for the PAC, my opinion is that it will likely stay together for now. I admit it looks shaky though. Feels like if anyone flinches all hell will break loose. I would love for the PAC to somehow survive and flourish, as I greatly enjoy being in a western-centric conference, but thriving seems less and less likely for the PAC. Which I think means, for CU, use the next few years to make ourselves as attractive as possible for the B1G and hope to hell we get an invite someday.
 
He basically demonstrated that no team had ever left one conference for an academic inferior one and that RD increases in better conferences. What more do you want?
Actual proof that academic prestige has been reason for institutions moving athletic conferences, like he’s trying to claim, and not the money. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.

His argument is dumb and doesn’t have any bearing on modern college football realignment
 
Your opinion was "And if associations didn’t matter CU wouldn’t have increased as much as they did." Those are your words, not theirs, so I'm simply informing you that opinion is wrong. I don't know your field, but if you're an engineer and I said something incorrect about engineering, I'd expect you to do the same.

As for the PAC, my opinion is that it will likely stay together for now. I admit it looks shaky though. Feels like if anyone flinches all hell will break loose. I would love for the PAC to somehow survive and flourish, as I greatly enjoy being in a western-centric conference, but thriving seems less and less likely for the PAC. Which I think means, for CU, use the next few years to make ourselves as attractive as possible for the B1G and hope to hell we get an invite someday.
Actually if you go listen to their podcast, which I posted, they go over the relationship between CU going to the PAC and their RD. Again, not my conclusion. Relaying information.
 
Actually if you go listen to their podcast, which I posted, they go over the relationship between CU going to the PAC and their RD. Again, not my conclusion. Relaying information.
I did. He doesn't understand what he's talking about. He sees a correlation with an extremely limited set of data points, fails to consider any other relevant variables, then makes a conclusion with no basis.
 
Back
Top