Interesting, A&M not playing nice...

Seriously, Chip Brown must have compromising photos of every University President and AD in the midwest to get the scoops he's gotten...



http://twitter.com/ChipBrownOB



"Texas A&M turned down invite to join P10 in mtg today with P10's Larry Scott and Kevin Weiberg in College Station, a Big 12 AD confirms."



Interesting. Lotsa thoughts. First, does this guarantee the Big 12 splits, with the other 4/5 (Kansas?) heading west? Second, if not Kansas, does Utah go? Third, is this A&M's way of trying to wear the Texan pants for a bit, not really wanting to degrade themselves to the level of the SEC, but also not wanting to be beholden to the Banana Slug Kissin' Tofu Fartin' Hippies out west, so, forcing Texas and the pips to stay together with them in the Big 12? Fouth, if A&M DOES still go to the Special Ed Conference, is Beebe's $17mil (and 3 teams' desertion fees) good enough to cause the other 9 to stay together? And fifth (oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please) invite BYU to round them out at 10?



Still, I'm proud of A&M for shoving the Pac's invite... that is, if Chip actually DOES have those compromising photos like it seems he must...

I don't get MWC fans calling the SEC Special Ed Conference. Have you seriously not looked at the academic rankings of the MWC? They are much, much worse.



Let's compare:



MWC: SEC:

AFA 1 Vanderbilt 17

BYU 71 Florida 47

TCU 110 Georgia 58

U of U 126 Auburn 88

CSU 128 Alabama 96

SDSU Tier 3 Tennessee 106

New Mexico Tier 3 South Carolina 110

Wyoming Tier 3 LSU 128

UNLV Tier 4 Arkansas 128

Kentucky 128

Mississippi State Tier 3

Mississippi Tier 3



So, for those keeping score at home, 8 of the top 9 SEC schools have higher academic ranks than the MWC according to US News and World Report. Or even if you want to count from the bottom nine schools of the SEC, 5 of them are higher ranked than the MWC, while the MWC is only ranked better than two of the SEC's bottom nine schools. You know what they say about those who live in glass houses...

If there is one school in the Big XII that will make a stand on tradition, it is A&M. They almost scrapped their last stadium renovation because the expansion would block the view of the dead dogs in the mascot graveyard. The only thing that moved the project forward were donors stepping in to relocate the graveyard and to put a scoreboard on the outside of the stadium so the dead dogs could see the score. For reals.

Yeah, I found Sno's comment a lot more interesting than 87's. :roll:



I don't CARE about the SEC's overall academic prowess, and to be perfectly honest, I don't care about the MWC's overall academic prowess either. I only care about BYU's, and I don't even do THAT in context of sports. I just heard the alternate acronym, kinda liked it, and generally enjoy poking fun at the SEC as much as most other Cartel conferences. Hyperbole abounds! No harm no foul. But as long as we're talking about it, I'd about have to say my biggest endorsement of SEC's athletic-academic standards would be a line from the first interview I ever saw Shaq give. His prose included the sentance, and I quote: "I wouldn-a-diddit." That's an LSU education in action right there!!!

:lol:



And Sno, I'd never heard that before. That's AWESOME!!!

Oh, and apologies, I made a mistake. SEC isn't an acronym (unless you actually pronounce it "seck"). SEC is actually an initialism.



That's my lowly BYU education in action right there!

;)

I think that SPORTS FANS refer to the SEC as the Special Ed Conference because of how much their standards fall when it comes to football players. I'd be willing to bet that they're nowhere near on par with the rest of the school...

True Story. There was a certain soccer player that went to my high school that could not score high enough on the ACT to get into BYU. She was a fantastic athlete. They ended up combining the different section scores from different ACTs she took to get her the minimum score she needed to get in.



Anyone who really thinks BYU is above lowering academic standards for athletes is just naive.



This is not meant to diss the school because I loved my time at BYU. It is meant merely as a reality check that BYU is not above lowering the admissions standards for athletes. Just ask yourself how many athletes have the B+ high school GPA and the ACT score of 28 that is BYU's average for incoming students. They don't have to meet those same academic requirements.



One place where I am proud of BYU is the way the professors treat athletes. I never saw a professor give athletes special treatment simply because they were on the football team or basketball team--and I had classes with several football players and at least one basketball star. They had to earn their grades and I saw them working hard to do so. Other schools may be a little more nefarious in that regard, such as the school (I can't remember which one it was) that had a final exam on basketball with questions such as "How many points is a three point shot worth?"



The real sticking point with me is who gives a crap anyway about academics when we are talking about sports conferences. Do the PAC 10 professors refuse to work with other professors outside of the PAC 10. I know that isn't true. The whole thing is a smoke screen, especially when you dig a little and find that the bottom half of the PAC 10 is terrible, academically speaking. Doesn't the AC stand for Athletic Conference? Maybe I am assuming too much and it really stands for Academic Conference.

Texas A&M had to take out a 16 million dollar loan to help pay for athletics and had to start paying it off last September.

http://www.theeagle.com/am/A-amp-amp-M-athletics-reworks-budget-to-pay-loan



So the question is, how can A&M afford to leave the Big 12 and pay that exit penalty of 10 million dollars?



If the other schools leave and the Big 12 dissolves then maybe that means the exit fee is voided? Or does the SEC fork over the 10 million in behalf of A&M?

Mars wrote:

Other schools may be a little more nefarious in that regard, such as the school (I can't remember which one it was) that had a final exam on basketball with questions such as "How many points is a three point shot worth?"

Texas Tech under Bob Knight?

Actually the test for Bobby Knight would be:



How many F bombs does it take before Coach is mad at you?

How many games suspension do you get if you throw a chair onto the court?

How often does Coach Knight have to trim his eyebrows?

Mars wrote:

Other schools may be a little more nefarious in that regard, such as the school (I can't remember which one it was) that had a final exam on basketball with questions such as "How many points is a three point shot worth?"

Texas Tech under Bob Knight?

That test question is courtesy of the University of Georgia