I live in Texas, and travel all over the state for work, so I don't need the geography lesson. You are right, of course, that Texas is a large, large state. However, what you (conveniently?) fail to mention is that vast parts of Texas are sparsely populated. West Texas, in particular, is a giant desert, with very little population between El Paso and, essentially, the I35 corridor. South Texas, below San Antonio, is also sparsely populated. Baylor is centrally located in the populated part of Texas. Waco is about 2-3 hours south of the Dallas/FW metroplex, an hour north of Austin, 2 hours north of San Antonio, and 3 hours northeast of Houston. That is the #4, #5, #25, and #35 most populous metro areas in the country, all football crazy. You can draw a radius of everything within a 4 hour drive of Waco and it would all the Texas population This isn't meant as a knock on SU. I'm in no way, shape, or form a Baylor fan. I'm incredibly optimistic about Syracuse's future. But the truth is that due entirely to location, Baylor will always enjoy a high ceiling as a program because of its access to high quality recruits. I agree with what A Clockwork Orange wrote in post #16. Baylor is a useful comparison at this stage. Both schools were coming off a decade plus of dismal showing and were bottom rung P5 programs. Baylor had to build, and it is useful to look at how they did it and what their trajectory looked like. I'm simply saying that there comes a point where Syracuse's path will diverge enough from the path Baylor traveled that comparison's will not be helpful or instructive. edit: maybe a map is helpful. You see that triangle you can make with the three big red clusters? That's DFW to the north, Houston to the east and Austin/San Antonio to the west. That small red dot in the middle? That's Waco.
