Marshall is playing for an unbeaten season. UAB is playing for its life.

Actually, the University of Chicago has football, but it's Division III (which means it's non-scholarship). They abolished their Big Ten program in 1939, but brought it back in a minor form in 1969.

 

Meh ... No scholarships? They ain't shit.

 

Hopkins, RPI and MIT have football as well.

UCI and UCSB's high reputation is in a great part due to their association with the UC system; there are 50 million people in the state and their kids can't all go to Cal or UCLA so they get a lot of great students there as their second-choice schools (plus UCSB is beautiful. UCI, not so much). UCSB had football, dropped it about 20 years ago.

 

The ghost of Jay Berwanger shakes his fist in your direction.

 

It wasn't that long ago that UAB kicked TCU's ass on ESPN. They were in C-USA with UAB. They made the decision to invest in getting better.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4517229/athetic-revenue


http://freakonomics.com/2012/07/09/how-much-do-football-wins-pay-off-for-a-college/


There have already been a number of large donations suspended or rescinded, but UAB is about to lose $22m to fund the Collat School of Business because of how that donor has been treated. These people are doing so much more long term damage than any money that they are saving is worth.

It's been so stupidly handled.

 

I have always thought Chicago was a little better school overall than Northwestern. Both are really good.

But according to the website CollegeBoard the SAT's of Chicago's freshman class are a bit higher. So some how Chicago has overcome the mistake of leaving the Big 10.

 

Academically, Chicago never left the Big Ten.

 

Not to mention that both Hopkins and MIT got to 2nd round of D-3 playoffs this year.

 

Amos Alonzo Stagg just kicked a leather helmet.

 

He ought to be happy since Watson Brown took the all time NCAA Football coaching losses record off of him.

 

Yeah, but Brown only had 12 seasons at UAB. He has 18 seasons and counting at other places..

 

I listened to the podcast. They talked a lot about how a comparable school, UNC Charlotte is starting a D-1 program. This decision was evidently made about 2006-2007. Kristi Dosh, one of the hosts, said Charlotte did it for two reasons. One was to increase overall school exposure. The second was to help the basketball program.

Which got me to thinking about how much the conference realignments have changed the landscape for a non Big Five school. I checked Wikipedia and largest crowds in the last 25 years for men's basketball were for Memphis, Cincinnati and Louisville. Those schools are no longer in the conference.

But UAB got caught in a situation where it did not move up so it now schedules schools like Western Kentucky who have little appeal in the Birmingham market. I don't think they really have a traditional rival. I also don't see many scenarios where the conference gets multiple bids to the NCAA tournament.

So even if the school gets booted from Conference USA and has to join the Atlantic Sun so what? Would a game against UTEP significantly outdraw Kennesaw State? I checked the USA Today figures and the typical Conference USA school appears to send over 25 million on athletics and receives revenue of about eight million. The typical Atlantic Sun school spends about 12 million and has revenue of about two million. So UAB can go from direct losses of about 18 million a year to about 10 million.

I understand the arguments about exposure. But how much extra exposure does the UAB-Old Dominion basketball game receive as compared to UAB-North Florida? I think in part this is a reaction to the Big Five conferences grabbing all the dollars and also attention with their television contracts.