<p>that chart contains some awesome data - and totally validates much of the previous Revealed Preferences study...</p>
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MY clueless assertions? Your assertions are the ones that are clueless. Show me one piece of evidence stating that the scheduled games were more than just poor economic planning on the part of the athletics director, and I will believe you.
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<p>My assertion is based on my conversation with an "insider."</p>
<p>Your assertion that Northwestern playing an away game in Princeton is not highly unusual (yeah, your use of NU having played Duke and thus "wants to join the ACC" is really persuasive, nevermind your weak attempt at "sarcasm") was ignorant, since major conference schools never schedule away games with Div-IA schools, much less mid-major Div-IA schools (and the "poor economic planning" argument you use is stupid - b/c there is absolutely no economic benefit to playing the Ivy League in away games).</p>
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You can claim to have spoken with the person who was responsible for the scheduling of the games all you want. Any and all decisions to switch conferences would have to come from the board of trustees itself; moreover, any votes or measures taken on the action would be in the university archive, and yet they are not.
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<p>Right - and I just happen to enjoy making up factual details to a fabricated story. </p>
<p>Have you checked the archives? If not, how can you state that there is no such record (or are you just making another baseless assertion)?</p>
<p>Plus, you don't read carefully enough either - there was no need for board approval (at the time) since it was a trial period which involved the scheduling of games and no final decision by either party.</p>
<p>Talk to anyone who worked in the administration during Strotz's tenure - it was pretty common knowledge that he wanted to de-emphasize big-revenue athletics (mainly football) and took steps to do so.</p>
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This is further proof, that Georgetown and Duke should be members 9 and 10 of the Ivy League and would fit right in. On a de facto basis, they already fit in.
(Today Georgtown played a respetable game with the Ivy League's strongest team, Brown while Duke was annihilated by VA. Tech in the ACC. Athletically, this move makes increasing sense).
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<p>I'm sorry but no, it does not make any sense. Why oh why would schools in which athletics play such a huge role in campus life and alumni loyalty, such as Georgetown and Duke, give up their ability to recruit with scholarships?</p>
<p>Georgetown and Duke would join the Ivy League without hesitation. Both are known for basketball, a sport that Penn and Princeton have managed national success in without "scholarships." And you're naive if you think the Ivies don't get around no-athletic-scholarships rule easily. Like Harvard with the free ride if your parents make under $60k. The Duke and Georgetown alumni would melt at the thought of being retroactively Ivy grads.</p>
<p>“Plus, you don't read carefully enough either - there was no need for board approval (at the time) since it was a trial period which involved the scheduling of games and no final decision by either party.</p>
<p>Talk to anyone who worked in the administration during Strotz's tenure - it was pretty common knowledge that he wanted to de-emphasize big-revenue athletics (mainly football) and took steps to do so.”</p>
<p>There is a huge difference between scheduling games and attempting to join a new conference. Was the athletics department trying to “de-emphasize big revenue athletics”? Maybe, but this is VASTLY different from attempting to join the Ivy League. </p>
<p>Again, just like it’s pretty well documented that Notre Dame sought admittance into the Big 10 in the late 90’s, there should be some sort of record stating something to that end about Northwestern and the Ivy League, and yet, again, there is nothing. Why? Because it never happened, that’s why. Was the school trying to get rid of its focus on big-revenue sports? That’s a huge possibility. Does this in any way mean that it wanted to be in the Ivy League? No it does not.</p>
<p>TourGuide - Even with the generous financial aid packages Ivies tend to give to athletes, do you really think the Ivy League is comparable to the Big East and the ACC in big-revenue sports? I can't speak for Georgetown but I can tell you that being a part of the ACC is pretty darn important to Duke, and I'd imagine Georgetown takes a lot of pride in being part of the Big East. Not to mention Duke's jumping ship to the Ivy League would mean running away from one of the best conference rivalries in college sports. So no, I'm going to have to disagree that Duke and Gtown would go Ivy "without hesistation."</p>
<p>Imagine the cost of Duke sending its kids up to the Northeast for every game....I mean, academically sure it is a match but the athletics would be difficult to match up</p>
<p>Banana, it would be much much different if Duke and Georgetown were big in football. But since Duke is a joke in football, and Georgetown is barely up to Ivy level in football, I don't see where they'd be losing out so much. </p>
<p>BC sends its teams down south to play in the ACC, and I'm sure Duke has lots more money than BC. And Duke already sends its teams to Florida to play FSU and Miami.</p>
<p>I think this all just a nice hypothetical exercise, because as much lip service as the liberal Ivy professors and administrators give to inclusion and diversity, they'd probably rather sell their polo ponies to a glue factory than rub shoulders with the Papists at Georgetown and the rednecks from Duke.</p>
<p>I know the Kennedys going to Harvard so often makes the Ivies look Catholic-friendly, but the most Catholic thing the Kennedy clan has done lately was petition the Pope to add a few more Commandments because they were getting bored with breaking the existing 10.</p>
<p>Oh, good point about BC, but the revenues from being in the ACC makes it worhtwhile...</p>
<p>what does Papist mean?</p>
<p>It's a derogatory name for Roman Catholics.</p>
<p>TourGuide - Naw, I still disagree that Duke and Gtown would have little to lose. The athletic culture of the Ivy League and the ACC/Big East is too different. Granted I agree that Penn and Princeton are the most athlete-friendly Ivies, but how many students at those schools do you think could name at least three starters on the basketball team? Do you really think it'd be the same as the number of students at Georgetown and Duke who could do the same? </p>
<p>There's also a huge difference in terms of national attention and media coverage. No offense to the Ivies, but not many people outside of the Ivy League really care (or even know) about stuff like the Penn-Princeton basketball rivalry. Duke-UNC, on the other hand, is featured on a current ESPN poll asking about the best rivalry in the history of sports, competing against Yankees-Red Sox, Mich-OSU, and Cowboys-Redskins. If you look on the message boards, the Ivy League forum has a total of 25 posts, which is just plain sad compared to the 280 on the ACC board and 340 on the Big East. There is just no way to make the argument that the national interest in Ivy League sports is even close to the level of interest in the ACC and Big East. And I don't see schools who use elite basketball teams as a draw for students and a way to garner increased national attention giving up that spotlight so easily.</p>
<p>Papist=Catholic</p>
<p>My money would be on MIT and Chicago. Both schools are members of D-III the UAA, a conference that shares a similar academic/athletic philosophy as the Ivy League. UAA schools have prestege, active alumni, media presence, well developed athletic infrasturctures, and national fan bases.</p>
<p>Stanford has one of the best all-around athletic departments in the nation, a move to Ivy would be seen as a step down in any sport.</p>
<p>Duke's football team would probally be better off as a D-IAA program, however, the men's & women's basketball teams would have to fatten up their non-conference schedule to justify a move to Ivy.</p>
<p>Georgetown would make a good fit as well (especially for football), however, they too would have to beef up their basketball non-conference schedule each year. On a nonrealted note, I would like to see G'town football in match-ups with Delaware, Villanova, and William & Mary too.</p>
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And you're naive if you think the Ivies don't get around no-athletic-scholarships rule easily.
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<p>TG, c'mon now. </p>
<p>You're going to compare the student-athletes that get recruited regularly by the Ivies to the superstar athletic phenoms that national powerhouses like Duke basketball recruits?</p>
<p>Nick Hartigan (who I mentioned earlier in this thread) serves as the perfect example between Ivy athletes and Big Time NCAA athletes.</p>
<p>Nick Hartigan broke nearly every Brown / Ivy League football rushing record in his illustrious career at Brown. Now think about that for a second. Think about how long they've been playing football at Brown. This guy was arguably the BEST runningback ever to come out of that program - yet, although he made it to the final round of cuts, he was eventually waived by the NY Jets.</p>
<p>Conversely, a record breaking runningback coming out of a national powerhouse D-I football program like USC or Notre Dame would be a lock for the NFL no. 1 draft.</p>
<p>Lastly, as I mentioned previously, Nick Hartigan was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. How many Duke basketball point guards or Notre Dame tailbacks even close to attaining that kind of academic recognition?</p>
<p>Middlebury and Bowdoin</p>
<p>Prestige, quit looking longingly at that photo of Nick Hartigan you have on your wall, get both hands back on the keyboard, and re-read my post. I said nothing about their academic qualifications, merely the fact that the Ivies aren't losing many if any recruits because the recruits can't afford the tuition/room/board. They will find some money for a top jock somehow.</p>
<p>But if you want to say that the Ivies have such stringent entrance requirements and that's why they they don't get the top athletes, I think that's a little farfetched too. Stanford certainly doesn't have any trouble getting tons of jocks, and its admission requirements are right up there with the Ivies. And there are endless anecdotes to that effect too. In that recent book about how various applicants got into Harvard, one was a jock with a 2.75 gpa. And when I was a senior in high school in Mass., I was a decent basketball player, and my coach took me to meet-and-greet for college coaches and potential recruits. I recall distinctly the Brown coach telling me that if they were interested, they would get me in. By the way, I also met Jim Calhoun (then coach at Northeastern) at this event. As I have mentioned in other threads, I ended up spending my freshman year at a tiny now-defunct junior college that was a basketball factory. We played the Brown freshmen team twice, and we got destroyed twice.</p>
<p>TG,</p>
<p>Again, I'm not saying that athletes don't get recruited at the Ivies.</p>
<p>I'm saying that a guy like, say, Vince Young (who purportedly didn't break double digits on the NFL Wonderlic test (for those who don't know its the NFL's version of the IQ test) would have had a very hard time getting into an Ivy - no matter what his talent level. I'm not going to call him "stupid", but let's put it another way, is it an amazing coincidence that the only two people ever to score a perfect 50 on the Wonderlic tests were both Harvard grads? Pat McInally and Ryan Fitzpatrick (currently the Rams QB).</p>
<p>I don't even know what we're arguing about any more. I'm not saying ANY dufus could get in an Ivy or stay in an Ivy. But a lot of the jocks wouldn't have even a remote chance of getting in if they were non-athletic. Just because some of the Ivy jocks are really smart (Hartigan, McInally, Fitzpatrick), it doesn't necessarily mean that all or even most of them are.</p>
<p>You can have both high powered academics and athletics at an institution.</p>
<p>The former Commissioner of the NFL, The Supreme Commander of NATO, and the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee all played varsity basketball at a certain educational institution.</p>
<p>So did the numerous NBA All-Stars like Patrick Ewing, Alan Iverson,and Dikembe Mutombo.</p>
<p>An institution can be truly great at both.</p>
<p>I agree. Many top universities mix academics and athletics nicely. Here are a few I can think of:</p>
<p>Duke University
Georgetown University (Vienna man's baby! LOL)
Stanford University
University of California-Berkeley
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapell Hill
University of Notre Dame</p>
<p>I got to know several high-profile athletes while in college, and some of them certainly were surprisingly smart.</p>
<p>I'm not sure Notre Dame belongs on there after the effort they put up against Michigan. BC's still undefeated, though.</p>
<p>Alexandre, if you're looking to meet more athletes from most of those schools check out the links in the last few posts in the "Ivies" thread.</p>