Re: The new Super League is going down the tubes.
Actually 4four4 is right, there would never be any academic reason for a school to leave the B1G for another conference like the ACC. The margin between the B1G and ACC is much closer than most think and the B1G actually has the slight advantage. Here are the USNWR rankings for 2010 (yeah, ok I'm bored...
):
Big Ten U.S. News Ranking RANK
1 Northwestern University- Evanston, IL 12 Wildcats
2 University of Michigan– Ann Arbor, MI 27 Wolverines
3 University of Illinois– Urbana-Champaign, IL 39 Fighting Illini
4 University of Wisconsin– Madison, WI 39 Badgers
5 Pennsylvania State University– University Park, PA 47 Nittany Lions
6 Ohio State University– Columbus, OH 53 Buckeyes
7 Purdue University–West Lafayette, IN 61 Boilermakers
8 University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, 61 Golden Gophers
9 Indiana University- Bloomington, IN 71 Hoosiers
10 Michigan State University- East Lansing, MI 71 Spartans
11 University of Iowa- Iowa City, IA 71 Hawkeyes
12 University of Nebraska- Lincoln, Neb. 101 Cornhuskers
*13 University of Chicago- Chicago, IL. 5
ACC U.S. News Ranking RANK
1 Duke University- Durham, NC 10 Blue Devils
2 University of Virginia- Charlottesville, VA 24 Cavaliers
3 University of North Carolina– Chapel Hill, NC 28 Tar Heels
4 Wake Forest University- Winston-Salem, NC 28 Demon Deacons
5 Boston College- Chestnut Hill, MA 34 Eagles
6 Georgia Institute of Technology- Atlanta, GA 35 Yellow Jackets
7 University of Miami- Coral Gables, FL 50 Hurricanes
8 University of Maryland– College Park, MD 53 Terrapins
9 Clemson University- Clemson, SC 61 Tigers
10 Virginia Tech- Blacksburg, VA 71 Hokies
11 North Carolina State University– Raleigh, NC 88 Wolfpack
12 Florida State University- Tallahassee, FL 102 Seminoles
Keep in mind, when comparing the B1G academically to any other conference, there are three important criteria to consider:
1) the University of Chicago currently ranked #5 should also be included as a member school in the B1G's academic research consortium. As one of the founding schools of the Big Ten, the University of Chicago withdrew from the conference in 1946, but were invited back into the Committee on Institutional Cooperation which represents the prestigious academic consortium and initiative of the Big Ten Conference as the national model of effective research collaboration among top-tier research universities.
2) the CIC is one of the most prestigious collaborative research initiatives EVER designed among a conference of universities in the United States (including the ACC). CIC member libraries own almost as many book volumes (more than 80 million) as the 10 campuses of the University of California system (34 million) and the Ivy League (64 million) combined. The CIC confers 15% of all Ph.D. degrees awarded annually in the United States. CIC members engage in billions of dollars in funded research.
3) Every Big Ten school (except Nebraska...they recently lost their membership) is a member of the Association of American Universities which is unquestionably the most “elite” academic club of 61 universities and a symbol of academic excellence in the nation. A high percentage of the leading intellectual and economic workforce in the United States emerges from AAU members.
BTW, there is little doubt Notre Dame understands how strategically important this consortium could be in elevating it's prestigious business school with these kind of professional research opportunities often funded by the federal government. What is particularly cool to me is the CIC Traveling Scholar Initiative which allows any graduate student (like myself
) the privilege of enrolling in one Big Ten school and traveling to another to receive training and instruction from the hundreds of academic scholar-practitioners in the Big Ten as well as gaining access to the endless array of millions of research materials among library resources in any of the 13 B1G schools. Although other conferences have sought to emulate the B1G in this regard, the extent of available scholarship to graduate students in the Big Ten is unprecedented among any of the NCAA athletic conferences.
The conference ranking totals are: B1G/average 2010 ranking = 52.16 vs. ACC/average 2010 ranking = 48.66 with a negligible difference = 3.5. Why is it negligible? Keep in mind that these USNWR college and university rankings often change drastically from year to year which is why 3.5 is not significant. For example, the University of Minnesota jumped 10 points in one year from 71 to 61 in 2009-10. Moreover, with the exception of Northwestern (private), all of the Big Ten institutions were ranked within the top 30 Public Universities in 2009 by US News and World Report. Now with the addition of Nebraska this year, which is incidentally ranked 101, the average rating for the B1G has dropped but only by a negligible amount by comparison.
Considering the negligible difference in rankings between the two conferences and the existence of the CIC within the Big Ten as representing the most prestigious academic research consortium among any college conference in the United States aa well as membership in the AAU, I'd have to say the Big Ten conference has the slight edge over the ACC academically. Therefore, it's highly doubtful any school would choose the ACC over the Big Ten based on academic superiority and prestige.
