a mess in comparison to what everyone else had at the time. sure the rankings are subjective, but if we were 6th in the old Big East, which severely lagged behind everyone else, wouldn't that make them some of the worst in the bcs?
SWC did a good job writing this up ... the thread creates an interesting factual baseline. His opinion about our place in the facilities race over the past couple of decades may differ from yours, but the write up tells you what's been done. The rest is fodder for discussion.
One observation I would make is that some of institutions we've been competing against are either public universities or have support from professional sports franchises, or both. Yukon, for one example, put 90M into its program -- paid for by the good citizens of Ct. Pitt (quasi-public) and USF (public) also have pro sports teams providing capital. A private school, even with some public support, isn't going to be able to compete on this level.
There are many other examples, but SWC makes a very good argument that in the future, we have to be reasonable about the schools we can compete against. We are a private, northeastern U with a strong academic tradition. Our first priority is not to field a top 20 FB team, but to provide a great faculty and rich academic resources, including top-notch student support services and financial aid.
Those priorities make it impossible to compete with perennially-ranked (mostly SEC) southern schools -- including their paper mache' classes (for players), 3-4M coaching salaries, over-the-top facilities and even whores and cash for recruits! Clearly, that's not territory we want to move into.
The ACC seems to have a pretty responsible balance between academics and sports. Given our move to this new conference, all due respect to the thread, it really doesn't matter any more what we did in the 80's or 90's. It's a new ballgame, and we have almost 4 times the revenue to work with than we did during the BE era. We'll need it because we clearly have some catching up to do.
:crazy:
