"Those facts do nothing to support your claim that joining the Big 10 would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in research money that we would not get if we join the SEC. There is no reason why athletic conference membership should effect academic research money. If it does, that it an indication of a corrupt and broken system."
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The CIC schools (Big Ten and UChicago) take up 18% of all NSF grants and 12% of all R&D dollars total. That's out of hundreds of schools. 4 of the top 10 schools for research money are Big Ten and it's no coincidence.
Those facts do nothing to support your claim that joining the Big 10 would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in research money that we would not get if we join the SEC. There is no reason why athletic conference membership should effect academic research money. If it does, that it an indication of a corrupt and broken system.
Hey fella, sorry to step in on your board but I've been lurking quite a bit. Let me first introduce myself as a big Ags fan, second only to my beloved Wolverines. As a former soldier (11B/77F!) and an alum of another school that loves tradition, let me tell you I am blessed that my old lady is a former student, and that I have been fortunate enough to attend midnight yell, attend games, and hang out in Northgate!
Sure, the system probably is corrupt and broken, but the CIC is no joke. I present to you the cases of UT and Penn State, since they are a good comparison, ranked similarly by US News and about equally "prestigious" in the big picture. It's about as apples-to-apples as you can get, university profile wide.
If you look here, you'll see that Penn State had about $701 million in research monies in fiscal year 2008, and UT had about $493 million (a difference of $208 million):
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf10311/pdf/tab31.pdf
In 2001, it was $458 million for PSU and $296 million for UT (a difference of $162 million).
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf10311/pdf/tab27.pdf
Although the NSF's stats don't have it going back that far, when PSU joined the Big 10 in the early 90's, UT and PSU were about equal.
So:
PSU joins, them and UT are about equal.
10 years later, PSU is up like $162 million after their big jump from CIC membership.
20 years later, PSU us up over $200 million a year.
Also, I don't have the numbers (you can look it up
, but PSU flew up the US News rankings, relatively speaking, over that time.
This is not a coincidence when you consider how much funding, generally, and relative to other schools, CIC-member schools get.
So yes, of course, when you join the Pac-10 or the SEC, it's strictly about athletics. But when someone joins the Big Ten, the athletic part of it is just the tip of the iceberg.
Put simply: Tens of millions of dollars in athletic money when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in academic money isn't that much.
Now I'm not the kind of guy that's gonna come on here and tell you what to think, but I will provide you with some facts and let you do more research for yourselves.
Personally, I hope you come join us. I love my school, but I also see how much my girl/former student loves hers, and I also know that her degree will be a *lot* (not just a little) more valuable for our future life together if you guys come to the Big Ten, and it would be awesome to have 7 of the top 24 winningest programs (and 6 of the top 10!) of all time in one place.
I also look forward to taking the winningest program of all time (wins and winning %, friends!) into Nebraska and kicking some Husker [rearend] and beating them for Tom Osborne's going away present after the 1997 season.
And I hope to God we can avenge our Rose Bowl loss to UT and our loss to you guys in like 1995.
All this said, the SEC is way better than the Pac 10 for you guys, in my opinion. God bless, and I hope we can meet on the field again.
[This message has been edited by michiganalum (edited 6/10/2010 10:40p).]
