UNR is going like a rocket right now along with northern nevada. but, they do still have a way to go. reno maybe has more upside than austin.
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Pac-12 Expansion Candidates - Academic Criteria
- Thread starter Buffnik
- Start date
UNR is going like a rocket right now along with northern nevada. but, they do still have a way to go. reno maybe has more upside than austin.
BerkeleyBuff
Well-Known Member
Nik, any chance you could post summaries of the total research expenditures of each school?
I’ll try to pull something together tomorrow. I’ll see what I can find for UNLV, UNR, SDSU, BYU, Boise, CSU & UNM compared to Wazzu, which is at or near the bottom of the conference.
I support any plan that puts Tulane in the PAC 12. Even if it means adding Houston, about whom I could not really care less.
How would you feel if they went for Rice with Tulane as a total academic play that also got us into the New Orleans and Houston media markets & recruiting grounds?
Rice is in Houston?
You didn’t ask me, but I support any plan that puts Tulane in the PAC 12.
Therein lies the problem with Rice.
ahoelsken
Well-Known Member
If they're getting a UT who is willing to play ball and OU, they'll take TCU. Most coaches would want games in DFW......even if we have to take the bullet and take a religious school. Still think the most likely scenario involving some collaboration between the Big 12 and Pac 12 would be both conferences dropping to eight conference games (might involve them expanding by two-maybe Cincinnati as a travel partner for WVU and BYU or Houston) and then using that extra non-conference slot to play a game against a team who finished in the same spot in the other conference (I'll use BYU and Cincy as teams 9-10 for them.....since both teams won more games than Baylor and Kansas):
1. Oklahoma/USC
2. TCU/Stanford
3. Washington/Oklahoma State
4. Wazzu/Iowa State
5. K-State/ASU
6. Texas/Arizona
7. West Virginia/Oregon
8. Texas Tech/UCLA
9. Cincinnati/Utah
10. BYU/Colorado
11. Cal/Baylor
12. Oregon State/Kansas
ahoelsken
Well-Known Member
I'd venture there are a lot of Cal and Stanford alums in Lake Tahoe/Reno-Like Sacramento, Vegas, or San Diego, we may not have a team there as a league but our league does have a ton of alums in those markets. If we expand, we expand east. I don't see much logic in raiding the Mountain West.
On the academic side, I want to remind everyone that CSU gets a lot of research dollars and is mentioned as a university the AAU would be considering for membership. If CSU was able to join the AAU, you can be assured that they would get a Pac-12 invitation.
JR had the best response, but I'd also like to point out that you should never underestimate the value of a built-in easy in-conference win.
We used to have ISU, KjSU (pre-Snider), and KU to pad the in-conference schedule - that allowed us to play a much more aggressive out of conference schedule. You don't have to play patsies in the OOC when you get them in conference.
So sure, add them both. They may not move the revenue needle that much, but they'd allow conference teams to schedule better and more lucrative OOC games every year.
In the long run, this would actually be good for the state - and good for the "rivalry."
We wouldn't have to waste an OOC game on them.
They'd struggle for a long time in a P5 conference, and we'd get them at the end of the season after they've been beat up and demoralized, so we'd be likely to continue winning 4 out of every 5 games for the foreseeable future - only the loss wouldn't look so bad, and those wins would look better.
ahoelsken
Well-Known Member
I can see it, and hopefully the conference would not push having it at whatever the hell the name of that stadium is. II gotta think Wyoming might be a better option from an academic standpoint. Since they're the only four year institution up there, they've gotta have every single program.
I think the first decision (besides whether expansion is beneficial), is whether to raid a P5 or not. If the Pac is going after P5s, I think the teams that make sense are KU, OU and Nubs. And don't shoot me regarding the corn, just mentioning that they make more sense that other nearby P5s from the conference's perspective. And I left off UT because eff' Tejas. I think KU and OU is a pipedream unless the Big12 folds first. And there would be difficulty not adding their little brothers.
If they aren't going after P5s, then the decision would be whether to sure up their current footprint (SDSU, UNLV, Nevada, Boise, NM, AF, CS-who, etc.), or whether to expand the footprint (Tulane, Houston, etc.).
And I'm good with adding teams that will struggle in football. As Judge Smails said, "The world needs ditch diggers too."
If they aren't going after P5s, then the decision would be whether to sure up their current footprint (SDSU, UNLV, Nevada, Boise, NM, AF, CS-who, etc.), or whether to expand the footprint (Tulane, Houston, etc.).
And I'm good with adding teams that will struggle in football. As Judge Smails said, "The world needs ditch diggers too."
Rice is becoming more intriguing to me as I look into them.
47k capacity football stadium that's expandable to 70k and was just upgraded with new field turf and a new field house.
Basketball/Volleyball arena still needs work with its 5k capacity and having the look of a HS gym, but they recently opened a new aquatics center that moved swimming & diving out of the back end of the building. They have been able to repurpose that as a 2 story space to give brand new locker rooms and offices for the basketball programs and volleyball along with offices for Olympic sports programs. MBB program is bad, though.
Baseball is one of the elite programs in the nation and has a top facility. Would be a big addition for that sport.
Track & Field has good programs and a really nice stadium that was a repurpose of the old football stadium. Tennis has a top center that was built 4 years ago. As mentioned above, swimming & diving has a very nice aquatics center that's less than a decade old to go along with a very solid program. Women's Soccer is the best program in C-USA and made the NCAAs again this year - it also uses the old football stadium in conjunction with T&F. Both Men's and Women's XC are good programs that made the NCAA tourney this year. VB program consistently wins 20 games a year and gets an NCAA tourney invite every so often. Men's Golf (they don't have women's) is regularly in the NCAA tourney.
In short, it's a solid athletic department with a lot of on campus acreage set aside for its facilities and a ton of alumni donor money behind them to keep improving. Put them in a P5 conference and they'd likely do pretty well across their sports.
Back to academics: Rice is Carnegie R1 for research, #74 Shanghai ARWU and an AAU member. Would get no objections from the university presidents.
47k capacity football stadium that's expandable to 70k and was just upgraded with new field turf and a new field house.
Basketball/Volleyball arena still needs work with its 5k capacity and having the look of a HS gym, but they recently opened a new aquatics center that moved swimming & diving out of the back end of the building. They have been able to repurpose that as a 2 story space to give brand new locker rooms and offices for the basketball programs and volleyball along with offices for Olympic sports programs. MBB program is bad, though.
Baseball is one of the elite programs in the nation and has a top facility. Would be a big addition for that sport.
Track & Field has good programs and a really nice stadium that was a repurpose of the old football stadium. Tennis has a top center that was built 4 years ago. As mentioned above, swimming & diving has a very nice aquatics center that's less than a decade old to go along with a very solid program. Women's Soccer is the best program in C-USA and made the NCAAs again this year - it also uses the old football stadium in conjunction with T&F. Both Men's and Women's XC are good programs that made the NCAA tourney this year. VB program consistently wins 20 games a year and gets an NCAA tourney invite every so often. Men's Golf (they don't have women's) is regularly in the NCAA tourney.
In short, it's a solid athletic department with a lot of on campus acreage set aside for its facilities and a ton of alumni donor money behind them to keep improving. Put them in a P5 conference and they'd likely do pretty well across their sports.
Back to academics: Rice is Carnegie R1 for research, #74 Shanghai ARWU and an AAU member. Would get no objections from the university presidents.
For the record, UC San Diego is D2 and does not have football. Although I did just learn they are transitioning to D1 and will join the Big West in 2020. They still don't have football. My Alma Mater the University of San Diego is FCS. It is stupid that we still have football. The program loses the AD $ big time every year. The program needs to be dumped and the funds need to go into basketball and baseball. In closing, San Diego State sucks.
This ended up being too much work and I'm not going to do it. Apologies.
You really have to drill down and look at the university websites - particularly their areas on research and their master plans. Those master plans are something I have looked at for UNLV and Nevada, which is why they've been so intriguing to me as institution in such high growth metros that already have sizable populations.
Also, sometimes there's some good stuff on Wikipedia. Here's a snippet for UNLV on there:
UNLV
UNLV Research and economic development activities increased for the fourth consecutive year, according to the fiscal-year-end report from the Division of Research and Economic Development. Research awards rose by 7.5 percent to nearly $34.5 million, and proposals increased by 2 percent. Total sponsored program expenditures held steady from FY2015 at roughly $49.2 million.
The College of Sciences received the largest amount of award funding among the colleges once again this fiscal year: nearly $15 million through more than 100 awards. Engineering followed with roughly $7.6 million in awards. The College of Education posted the largest percentage gain in award funding in FY16 with a nearly 47 percent increase from $1,776,332 in FY15 to $2,609,366 in FY16.
UNLV’s economic development activities continue to grow. Sixty-one patents were filed in FY16, an increase of 17 percent over FY15, and licensing revenue doubled from $126,242 in FY15 to $252,309 in FY16.
Another measure of university research activity is the number of doctoral degrees conferred, as doctoral programs require a strong research component culminating in the doctoral dissertation. UNLV doctoral conferrals increased nearly 13 percent in FY16 to 166 degrees conferred.
My daughter graduated from UCSD last year. It's the furthest thing from a sports oriented school I've ever seen. They have a good thing going academically and are growing fast-they expect to add a seventh undergraduate "college" soon. I don't see the powers that be wanting a FB program anytime soon. There's also no way the La Jolla bourgeoise would allow an on campus FB stadium. What if some drunken fan dinged Mitt's BMW?
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ahoelsken
Well-Known Member
A couple of things with this post-aren't we the only Pac 12 school that doesn't play baseball? Time to add that if its possible to do so from a finance/title 9 perspective. I like this idea Nik, but I think the revenue from TV would need to come up or we'd need to help them out to make it work-they've still gotta pay to get their non-revenue sports to places like Pullman and Corvallis. They may also need a partner......Tulane may work for that. Rice would be about as far from their nearest conference mate in this idea as West Virginia is from theirs in the Big 12. IIRC, A&M started talking about non-revenue sports as a reason to not play ball with the Pac 16 when expansion was going on (though I think they were never on board with that to begin with.
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Yeah. Of the 2 candidates, I could see UC Davis making the move, but I don't think UC San Diego is a candidate in any way.
I think if Davis went to D1 you'd see some well-heeled alums get behind things. Fortunately for them, they're outside Sacramento in a pretty rural area that would allow for a ton of expansion projects.
plus they have a head coach with D1 experience...
Well, they're currently in C-USA.
Members:
Charlotte (North Carolina)
FAU (Florida)
FIU (Florida)
LA Tech (Louisiana - 300 miles from Houston, so maybe a bus ride)
Marshall (West Virginia)
Middle Tennessee (Tennessee)
Old Dominion (Virginia)
Southern Miss (Mississippi)
UTEP (Texas - but 750 miles from Houston)
UTSA (Texas - 200 miles from Houston, so could bus)
Western Kentucky (Kentucky)
Considering that Rice would make more money in the Pac, I don't think travel costs would be a factor here. They did join the WAC back in the day when it expanded to 16 teams and were in the same conference as Utah back then.
ahoelsken
Well-Known Member
I think Tulane would make more sense than any of them. Shreveport is closer to Houston than NOLA is, but Tulane has a much better academic rep than LA Tech does and is also in a metro area that is 3x bigger than Shreveport. I'm sure they'd make more as well. I wouldn't mind trips to NOLA every other year, and that would give us another easy game and access to recruiting in NOLA and Houston.
Oh, I wasn't suggesting adding another C-USA member along with Rice. I was addressing that travel to Pac-12 schools wouldn't be any worse for them than their current situation. Tulane is a rival and relatively close. Best would be UT, but I think that's a pipe dream. Or rather, the wet dream of Pac-12 presidents would be UT, Rice, Oklahoma and Kansas.
nocoolnamejim
Well-Known Member
Re: ScottyBuff's post from earlier in the thread:
I don't generally like to get involved in these sorts of discussions as a guest on other teams' boards but I'd argue that the TV Market metric can be a highly misleading one because there is a broad delta between the number of TV sets in a market or geography and what is actually delivered.
Houston, for example, has a media market that is very attractive looking but how far down are they on the sports selection of the population in question? The question isn't just "what is the available media market" but also "does the team actually deliver that market and translate it into eyeballs on the screen" which equals larger TV contracts?
Houston has a total population of about 2.3 million people. How much of that population would their program actually deliver and convert into people watching games? Idaho, the state, has about 1.7 million people in it and maybe I'm going full homer here but I suspect with NO OTHER viable sports viewing options, and a substantially more successful product combined with a conference upgrade that you'd get more actual viewership from adding Boise State than you do adding Houston, particularly when you factor in national interest outside of just the local markets generated by a consistently and repeatedly successful at the national level program.
It's counter-intuitive, but I think the arithmetic of TV markets goes deeper than just the number of TV sets in a arbitrarily defined geographical area. To Scotty's credit, he touches on this with his tabulating the population of Mormons and articulating that this is a metric that is not limited to BYU's specific TV market but that also serves to make my point that just looking at TV Market's in a vacuum gives a limited picture without proper context and a broader perspective.
You also have to look at what is actually realistic. Schools like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, etc. may not really be on the table to join the P5 conference that is struggling the most. (No offense intended.) I'm not saying that they AREN'T but I'd argue are somewhat unlikely.
I don't generally like to get involved in these sorts of discussions as a guest on other teams' boards but I'd argue that the TV Market metric can be a highly misleading one because there is a broad delta between the number of TV sets in a market or geography and what is actually delivered.
Houston, for example, has a media market that is very attractive looking but how far down are they on the sports selection of the population in question? The question isn't just "what is the available media market" but also "does the team actually deliver that market and translate it into eyeballs on the screen" which equals larger TV contracts?
Houston has a total population of about 2.3 million people. How much of that population would their program actually deliver and convert into people watching games? Idaho, the state, has about 1.7 million people in it and maybe I'm going full homer here but I suspect with NO OTHER viable sports viewing options, and a substantially more successful product combined with a conference upgrade that you'd get more actual viewership from adding Boise State than you do adding Houston, particularly when you factor in national interest outside of just the local markets generated by a consistently and repeatedly successful at the national level program.
It's counter-intuitive, but I think the arithmetic of TV markets goes deeper than just the number of TV sets in a arbitrarily defined geographical area. To Scotty's credit, he touches on this with his tabulating the population of Mormons and articulating that this is a metric that is not limited to BYU's specific TV market but that also serves to make my point that just looking at TV Market's in a vacuum gives a limited picture without proper context and a broader perspective.
You also have to look at what is actually realistic. Schools like Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, etc. may not really be on the table to join the P5 conference that is struggling the most. (No offense intended.) I'm not saying that they AREN'T but I'd argue are somewhat unlikely.
ScottyBuff
Well-Known Member
No argument from me on your points, I should have spelled that out a little better. However, the size of the TV market is still a variable that the conferences have to consider as it is sort of a "market cap" figure. Then they would have to look at what their schools playing in that TV market could deliver in TV ratings. CU probably doesn't move the needle greatly in the Denver DMA, yet there is no debating that the Denver DMA being added along with Salt Lake helped the Pac-12 monetize that potential at the negotiating table. Why else would Maryland and Rutgers get invited to the Big Ten?
Certainly it cuts both ways, with schools like Nebraska having a relatively small "home market" but drawing large ratings in many major cities due to national interest, alumni, etc. Kind of like the Raiders in the NFL where every city has a couple hundred thousand diehard fans so they always show up to games and watch on TV.
My concern was that looking at just academics and athletic performance does not paint the full picture. Since the public doesn't have access to detailed TV ratings by school and market we have to use what tools we do have to make assessments.
Once all the variables are factored in, the pool of truly viable candidates reduces significantly and everyone else is a "reach", at least based on today's variables.
Nik's post about the growth trend at Nevada-Reno is a great one to watch and see how that develops. UNLV is also on a solid growth track. However, both of those schools have a long way to go in regards to building a large and loyal fanbase that can be monetize when it comes to TV ratings. Otherwise there is no financial benefit to adding them.
nocoolnamejim
Well-Known Member
I got no real major areas of disagreement with your post Scotty. Quite the opposite really. It was a pleasant read and logical.
About the only quibble I'd offer is that Boise State is also on a very solid growth track and has a lot more proven track record than UNLV or Nevada-Reno does.
I'd add that the financial considerations aren't necessarily always considered correctly. Typically when I read threads of this sort they generally boil down to "does (fill in the blank) school add 'X' and/or $35M value by itself". I think this is an imperfect look at the math. Very few schools by themselves add that sort of value by themselves to a TV contract. Wazzu I am fairly certain doesn't add that sort of value by itself, but it's value is multiplied by pairing it with Washington and thereby capturing the whole state and the rivalry.
It's admittedly a bit of a "Moneyball" viewpoint...but I don't think expansion threads are always really asking the right questions when they analyze the metrics.
(Okay, it's both a Moneyball viewpoint and a biased homer viewpoint. Mea Culpa buff bros.)
About the only quibble I'd offer is that Boise State is also on a very solid growth track and has a lot more proven track record than UNLV or Nevada-Reno does.
I'd add that the financial considerations aren't necessarily always considered correctly. Typically when I read threads of this sort they generally boil down to "does (fill in the blank) school add 'X' and/or $35M value by itself". I think this is an imperfect look at the math. Very few schools by themselves add that sort of value by themselves to a TV contract. Wazzu I am fairly certain doesn't add that sort of value by itself, but it's value is multiplied by pairing it with Washington and thereby capturing the whole state and the rivalry.
It's admittedly a bit of a "Moneyball" viewpoint...but I don't think expansion threads are always really asking the right questions when they analyze the metrics.
(Okay, it's both a Moneyball viewpoint and a biased homer viewpoint. Mea Culpa buff bros.)
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