Nobody said this. Alabama’s Greg McElroy was up for a Rhodes scholarship. There are guys can do both but it’s few and far between.
Why do you say that? Just curious. Live in the South Bay for 13 years and Stanford and Cal fans and students were some of the most down to earth, un zoobish people I’ve ever met.
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I mean, if you look at the actual teams and not the conference it’s been all Alabama. The cyclical nature of the sport has to do coaching and not just recruiting and honestly outside of Nick Saban (and
Urban Meyer’s time spent at Florida) the rest of the conference only has mediocre to good coaches. It’s not like there are 5 Nick Saban level coaches in the SEC.
So what happens when Saban is gone? Will there continue to be the smattering of a championship here and there by LSU and Auburn, because that’s not going to be called dominant. Even if we look at recruiting, how is recruiting in the SEC any better than it’s always been? Most of the teams are pulling their 4 and 5 star recruits from the same troughs they always have (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, etc). Sure, Alabama is pulling recruits from a national search, but not everyone else is doing so at the same rate.
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How are they stronger? They make less money than the Big 10. They went out on a limb all by themselves. They have less viewers than the alliance. Outside of championships, there is a stronger conference in every category.
The SEC and ESPN took a risk and are trying to consolidate power amongst themselves. Now they have to wait. Either the Big 10 joins them and ESPN wins or the Big 10 doesn’t and the SEC has to get back in line.
The SEC has no power at this point if no one wants to play with them. They can form their own 16 team league and go their own way. They will do it alone. And if you are a kid from Florida, do you want to go play in the SEC, which is a business and you’ll be treated as such, or do you want to compete for national titles, have the pagentry, walk around campus as the big man, make some money and play for Miami or FSU or Ohio State or Clemson?
Also, who won the title in AAA baseball or the G League? No one cares. If the SEC thinks they can make a minor league professional system and still have the interest they have now…well, no one has ever done it before. Good luck.
The Big 10 holds the keys right now. They get to decide the fate of college football. Do they spurn a couple dollars today to maintain control or do they sell out to Mickey Mouse like the SEC did?
Fortunately, it appears the Big 10 has some brains and can see what is happening here.
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Okay, I’m sorry for the Stanford stuff. I know from experience that nothing riles up Utah fans like putting Stanford down.
I’ve known a dozen Stanford grads, and most of them are great. I had a church leader who is a Stanford grad, and he is amazing. A girl I dated in high school went there, and I’ve only ever thought highly of her. I have known a few Cards who are very snobby about it - most notably a law student who thought anything not Stanford was horribly inferior. When I get Stanford resumes, I proceed with caution. If I don’t detect a sense of entitlement, I’m happy to move forward with them. (I put Utah resumes in the yes pile automatically as a rule, of course).
Truth is, I would be happy to have the level of football success that Alabama has. I would not welcome that if it invovled dishonesty or corruption or even a messed up sense of priority, but I have no reason to think Alabama is invovled in any of those things.
I would not want Utah to be like Stanford academically. Stanford is an elite institution. It is ranked at the top, and it’s mission is to be ranked at the top. To attend Stanford, you either need to be extremely wealthy, extremely connected, or extremely gifted. I would hate for that to be true of the U. I know universities are supposed to climb the US News ladder, but Utah can be better than that. Utah can be a great public university in the best sense of the term. It can be a place where all kinds of people are admitted and receive a top rate education. I appreciated the great diversity at the U in terms of ability, background, age, intellect, etc. It was nothing like Stanford in that sense. I chose Utah over Stanford because I like that.
I want Utah to be the best Utah it can be - I’m all for academic excellence - but I would be sad if it become Stanford. So, yeah, Stanford is great. So is Utah. In different ways.
I’ve always liked teasing Stanford in these forums, but if y’all are tired of it, I can move on. I do like John Elway and Andrew Luck, who are probably the #2 and #3 best Cards of all time after that church leader I mentioned earlier.
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He went to a private school that thinks it’s better than everyone else around it. Stanford just does it better.
Just pulling your chain Sancho.
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I still believe the best Cardinal QB was Jim Plunkett. Great academic, also spoke ASL because his parents were deaf.
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One thing the SEC has is innovation and great leadership. They had major guts and started the Conference Championship in FBS, The BCS and modern day football moving from Bowl Games only doesn’t happen without the SEC. The SEC being the # 2 conference in revenue makes zero sense considering it’s footprint is poverty states. Everything from wins on the field and wins in the boardroom happen because of great leadership. We all know the woes in the Pac 12 offices.
Even last year. All of us including me killed them for moving forward with the season:
Somehow it worked. Now, if only Southerners would elect better leaders in government.
Headline from the Athletic:
Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC expected to formally announce alliance on Tuesday: Sources
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The Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 are expected to formally announce their alliance on Tuesday, multiple people with knowledge of the situation told The Athletic. The three leagues plan to work together on multiple fronts, from College Football Playoff expansion to NCAA governance issues and annual football scheduling.
Schools within the three conferences believe they are like-minded, that they want to continue to prioritize broad-based sports offerings and that the academic profile of their institutions matters — as does graduating athletes.
“You all know the importance to us and the Big Ten around the concept of like-minded institutions,” Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour said on Saturday.
“The Big Ten really prides itself on being more than just an athletics conference. … If you look at that footprint of Pac 12, ACC and the Big Ten, I think the number is 40 percent of the AAU (Association of American Universities) membership lies in those three conferences.”
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I would like Utah to be academically similar to UNC, Michigan, Cal, UCLA, etc, but it’s not going to happen. Although I have grad degrees from more prestigious schools, still would like to see Utah make the academic climb. Doubt meaningful progress will be made, though.
I find this part weird. When we have stats showing that the ignorant Hicks at Alabama are doing this compared to people in their alliance:
Of the four teams in this year College Football Playoff competing for the national championship, the survey found that Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame had strong academic standing “while Ohio State lagged behind,” Lapchick said.
Notre Dame graduated 91% of its football players, Alabama 88% and Clemson 83%. Ohio State graduated just 69% of its football players.
Among Black football players, Alabama graduated 84%, Notre Dame 82% and Clemson 77%. Ohio State graduated 60% of its Black players.
Alabama and Clemson graduated 100% of their white football players, Notre Dame 96% and Ohio State 90%.
Lapchick called the gap between white and Black football graduation rates at these schools “disturbing.”
Other things the study found were that while 54 of the 56 schools had graduation rates of 70% or higher for white players, only 36 programs had similar rates among Black players.
It’s weird because even in the Barber Shop recruiting videos Bama puts out it’s one of the first topics with Derrick Henry, Ha Ha Clinton Dix & Amari Cooper talking with Coach Saban. Dudes who came back after leaving early to get their degrees.
Weirdly, since Nick Saban arrived at Alabama they have doubled their amount of Rhodes Scholars on campus as well as their National Champion QB Greg McElroy made it to the final cut.
I guess I’m kind of tired of hearing lectures about academics. The programs at the top in the SEC are doing well academically. Not all kids go to elite private schools. Seeing the ACC, P12 and B1G take a big dump on other schools academics is a weird flex.
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Well, take comfort in the fact that this alliance has nothing to do with academics and everything to do with money and power.
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I don’t think you can say that. Remember the big 10 guy who was pointing out that it’s important to them that their members, as institutions, have solid academic standing. 40% of the AAU membership comes from those three conferences.
I’m curious. Does Alabama have any Nobel prize winners? Is it a member of the AAU? Those are additional markers of academic status and institutional achievement, beyond graduation rates.
We know the Alliance is mostly about football, but they are trying to make it bigger about student athletes, a better NCAA, and into other sports. They’ll talk about AAU and academics and graduation rates (not just football, so can’t just cherry pick that one stat for comparison even if most football degrees are not in harder subjects). At the same time, it is a reaction to NIL and SEC to stay in the game (so money and power). It’s an attempt to Make ‘Amateurism’ Great Again, although that ship has sailed into a new ocean. Things are going to change a lot in the next 5-10 years.
It’s like 3 ‘friends’ banding together against a ‘big dog’ in the playground. The big dog always gets to say what game they play. The big dog males the rules. The big dog would pick on and push around each one individually, but the 3 can stand up and reframe the situation. Then there’s the one small, quiet kid that peed his pants but doesn’t draw attention anymore so everyone is waiting to see if they should invite him into the group or just let him be. Sad.
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This belongs in the elitism thread. Bama is a good school. All the big state schools are good schools.
The point is that this alliance is happening in response to the SEC. It’s an attempt to stay even in revenue with the new giant. It wouldn’t be happening otherwise, regardless of AAU membership (which, I suppose, is our new favorite metric for academics since we are now in).
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If expansion decisions were based on helmet design, San Diego State would invite all of us into their conference, and we would accept:
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By what metrics are you comparing?
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Here’s an interesting take on the B1G and the AAU.
I dug this up as a reminder of how selections are made. I wasn’t sure.
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