IMHO Big 12 is a better option for Cal and Stanford. Does the league a school plays sports in really impact a school's academic reputation? Anyone interested in serious academic pursuits is not going to choose a school based on their athletic associations. It's too bad the Pac 12 leadership was too arrogant as to not pursue a merger with…
IMHO Big 12 is a better option for Cal and Stanford. Does the league a school plays sports in really impact a school's academic reputation? Anyone interested in serious academic pursuits is not going to choose a school based on their athletic associations. It's too bad the Pac 12 leadership was too arrogant as to not pursue a merger with the Big 12 to begin with. Everyone could have risen together with the tide instead of everyone just looking out for themselves. If Cal, Stanford, WSU and OSU end up in the Big 12, will the 4 teams that jumped to the BIG really be that much better off when travel, and impact on athletes are accounted for? I live in socal and I don't think the LA TV market is any less fickle than the SF Bay Area. Neither USC nor UCLA attract much TV interest or fan interest when they are losing...UCLA especially.
YES, the academic reputation matters. Government contracts to just the physics department typically pay 10x the athletics budget (haven't seen the actual numbers in a few years esp. since the Livermore Labs reorg). B1G REQUIRES academic cooperation so that money gets sloshed a little among all the members to share in research (obviously some goes out and some comes back from the other schools). I *think* the ACC has similar but weaker sharing. I don't know at all about the B12 but without Texas I'm not optimistic about their collective incoming grant money. Imagine if CAL has to start effectively subsidizing other schools' academic research in order to get their football team into a conference... The Academic Senate really will shut down all athletics if that happens.
IMHO Big 12 is a better option for Cal and Stanford. Does the league a school plays sports in really impact a school's academic reputation? Anyone interested in serious academic pursuits is not going to choose a school based on their athletic associations. It's too bad the Pac 12 leadership was too arrogant as to not pursue a merger with the Big 12 to begin with. Everyone could have risen together with the tide instead of everyone just looking out for themselves. If Cal, Stanford, WSU and OSU end up in the Big 12, will the 4 teams that jumped to the BIG really be that much better off when travel, and impact on athletes are accounted for? I live in socal and I don't think the LA TV market is any less fickle than the SF Bay Area. Neither USC nor UCLA attract much TV interest or fan interest when they are losing...UCLA especially.
YES, the academic reputation matters. Government contracts to just the physics department typically pay 10x the athletics budget (haven't seen the actual numbers in a few years esp. since the Livermore Labs reorg). B1G REQUIRES academic cooperation so that money gets sloshed a little among all the members to share in research (obviously some goes out and some comes back from the other schools). I *think* the ACC has similar but weaker sharing. I don't know at all about the B12 but without Texas I'm not optimistic about their collective incoming grant money. Imagine if CAL has to start effectively subsidizing other schools' academic research in order to get their football team into a conference... The Academic Senate really will shut down all athletics if that happens.