Western Kentucky would be a great fit for the MAC

IBleedMACGreen · Post by **IBleedMACGreen** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:11 pm

Western Kentucky would be a great fit for the MAC is a commentary I wrote up after watching WKU advance to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament yesterday. Feel free to discuss as I am curious to see how others feel today about this topic.

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Bleeding Orange · Post by **Bleeding Orange** » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:39 pm

You're pretty late to this dance as we've been over this on numerous occasions. WKU wouldn't fit into the MAC academically. The presidents wouldn't go for it. Everything else is irrelevant.

San Fran Falcon · Post by **San Fran Falcon** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 2:58 am

Bleeding Orange wrote:You're pretty late to this dance as we've been over this on numerous occasions. WKU wouldn't fit into the MAC academically. The presidents wouldn't go for it. Everything else is irrelevant.

Just out of curiousity, what are the MAC academic standards for even being considered for membership? Sorry, sounds like a topic that was beat to death at some point, but I'm in the dark on this one.
I can say that I remember rumblings of BG being considered as a Big 10 candidate back in '93 as a freshman. It was all speculation that probably had no merit, but it would be an interesting experiment.

Schadenfreude · Post by **Schadenfreude** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:48 am

San Fran Falcon wrote:Just out of curiousity, what are the MAC academic standards for even being considered for membership? Sorry, sounds like a topic that was beat to death at some point, but I'm in the dark on this one.

I don't know that there are any formal academic standards.

1987 will correct me, but if memory serves, there were a couple of initial discussions between Western Kentucky and the MAC office as WKU was about to announce its intention to go to Division I-A. It never went further than that -- and I think the assumption was the presidents didn't want to pull the trigger, and that maybe academics were one factor.

Western Kentucky is a fine university. It's very good at what it does, and it has some excellent programs, such as journalism. But it has no (or virtually no) doctoral programs.

In that sense, its out of step with most of the MAC.

Now, this isn't fatal. Eastern Michigan is not a doctoral granting institution (per the Carnegie classification system), and Marshall isn't either. The MAC brought in Marshall twice before, and I'd strongly support doing it again if the folks in Huntington ever come to realize that Conference USA is lame.

But academics do matter, especially to presidents. As a result, from their perspective, Buffalo -- the closest thing our conference has to a Big Ten university -- remains a huge get. And universities like Albany or Stony Brook are more appealing than some might think because of their academic profiles.

If memory serves, Rick Chryst mentioned Stony Brook in an interview several months back when discussing expansion possibilities. If Temple could be persuaded to stay, long term, then we would want to look out east, he was saying, I believe he tossed Stony Brook out there as a possible example. He didn't say there were discussions going on, or anything like that.

I might be way off on this. But that's what I remember.

My thought is that Western Kentucky would be a decent fit, but that the best thing to do right now is hold tight and see what Temple ultimately decides. I would guess that our presidents would love to bring Temple into the fold on a closer, more permanent basis. That's a good university there. If we can get that done, then lets look out east for ways to solidify that.

If not -- if we go back to 12 at some point -- I'm not sure we *have* to do anything or necessarily would want to.

I can say that I remember rumblings of BG being considered as a Big 10 candidate back in '93 as a freshman. It was all speculation that probably had no merit, but it would be an interesting experiment.

I imagine this was just delirium induced by winning the MAC two years in a row and giving the Buckeyes a hell of a game the previous year.

If the Big Ten was ever gonna take a MAC school, it would be Buffalo, a few decades from now. It ain't us.

JoeFalcon · Post by **JoeFalcon** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:14 am

Schadenfreude wrote: If the Big Ten was ever gonna take a MAC school, it would be Buffalo, a few decades from now. It ain't us.

The old UB President, Bill Greiner, frequently discussed their ambitions to join the Big 10 or Big East as they were preparing to join the MAC. His timetable was a decade, but their recent futility has caused the current UB brass to recalibrate their initial plan. They have the profile as a flagship state university, but I don’t think they’ll ever win enough to turn Buffalo and Western New York into a viable market for big-time college sports. Bob Matthews has floated the idea of turning Ralph Wilson Stadium into the new home for the Bulls when they make the jump, but as you said, such a move is not remotely realistic at the present time.

redskins4ever · Post by **redskins4ever** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:05 pm

The MAC has academic standards? Since when?

UT is open enrollment.

No one besides Buffalo is cosidered a research institution, so why are we all high and mighty? If anything schools should be judged on their undergraduate education because those are the classes that their student athletes are taking.

We allow Temple in and their entire football program is all JC kids.

tiznow · Post by **tiznow** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:09 pm

A few short hours south of Cincinnati?

BGFalconfromCincy · Post by **BGFalconfromCincy** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:00 pm

tiznow wrote:A few short hours south of Cincinnati?

according to mapquest Bowling Green Kentucky is 3 hours and 40 minutes from Cincinnati

tiznow · Post by **tiznow** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:12 pm

BGFalconfromCincy wrote:
tiznow wrote:A few short hours south of Cincinnati?
according to mapquest Bowling Green Kentucky is 3 hours and 40 minutes from Cincinnati

Exactly. I quoted the article wrong. It said a few hours south of Cincinnati. Besides Oxford being four hours from WKU, no other MAC school is closer. How is this a good geographic fit for the MAC?

redskins4ever · Post by **redskins4ever** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:08 pm

Temple is 10 hours away from Most MAC schools or more... Buffalo is a haul... so is Northern Illinois... Temple is no short drive... but there is this new thing called airplanes, they take larges amount of people across the US in short periods of time.

Schadenfreude · Post by **Schadenfreude** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 5:50 am

JoeFalcon wrote:Bob Matthews has floated the idea of turning Ralph Wilson Stadium into the new home for the Bulls when they make the jump,

He floats a lot of ideas, doesn't he?

Lord_Byron · Post by **Lord_Byron** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:29 am

Schadenfreude wrote:
JoeFalcon wrote:Bob Matthews has floated the idea of turning Ralph Wilson Stadium into the new home for the Bulls when they make the jump,
He floats a lot of ideas, doesn't he?

Schad, I hate to dis one of your former co-workers, but on his radio show, he once said that Notre Dame is in Wisconsin.

He's good for a few wild ideas a week.

JoeFalcon · Post by **JoeFalcon** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 6:52 am

Lord_Byron wrote:
Schadenfreude wrote:
JoeFalcon wrote:Bob Matthews has floated the idea of turning Ralph Wilson Stadium into the new home for the Bulls when they make the jump,
He floats a lot of ideas, doesn't he?
Schad, I hate to dis one of your former co-workers, but on his radio show, he once said that Notre Dame is in Wisconsin.

He's good for a few wild ideas a week.

No, I can see it: UB will play at the Ralph and Steve Donner will have full authority over the financial operations.

Schadenfreude · Post by **Schadenfreude** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:01 am

redskins4ever wrote:No one besides Buffalo is cosidered a research institution, so why are we all high and mighty?

If you go back and read my post, you will see that I was pretty complementary of Western Kentucky.

Also -- and I didn't know this when I posted -- the Carnegie classification system has undergone quite a bit of revision since I last looked at it.

Essentially, they broke up the old pair of doctoral categories into three. As you alluded to, Buffalo was grouped with the largest research universities. On the other hand, many in the MAC can also accurately call themselves "research universities" in the latest system.

Here's how the MAC shakes out:

RU/VH (Research University/Very High activity): Buffalo
RU/H (Research University/High activity): Akron, Bowling Green, Kent State, Miami, Northern Illinois, Ohio, Temple, Toledo, Western Michigan
DRU (Doctoral/Research Universtities): Ball State, Central Michigan
Master's L (Master's Colleges and Universities, larger programs): Eastern Michigan.

Western Kentucky would fall into that last category, "Master's L." So does Marshall.

My point is just that, rightly or wrongly, the MAC presidents would probably prefer that a new member come from at or near the top of that list rather than from the bottom.

It's not everything. This is sports, after all. The size of markets matter. Tradition matters. Fan base matters.

But I believe academic groupings like also matter to the presidents, who know at a gut level what their institutional goals are, who their peers are and where they aspire to move their institutions.

Western Kentucky would be a decent add. But I'm glad we've waited. I'd rather keep an eye on Temple and see if anything can be done out east.

As far as Miami's perspective: Until Carnegie comes up with a way to group universities by their students' propensity for eating cheese and driving Audis, listings like I've outlined above will just have to do, I suppose.

Schadenfreude · Post by **Schadenfreude** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:05 am

JoeFalcon wrote:No, I can see it: UB will play at the Ralph and Steve Donner will have full authority over the financial operations.

I was trying to work in a Donner reference to that last post, and you beat me to it.

I was Googling the other day to see if there was any more Rochester-to-Major League Soccer talk, and I discovered the Rhinos are on life support.

I'm blown away by that. What in the world happened? The Rhinos have one of the best fan bases in America, period. Likewise for the Amerks. I'm stunned.