<p>hawkette, out of curiosity, where are you getting those attendance figures?</p>
<p>rjko,
Maybe I'm an easy grader on this topic, but I like the fact that Notre Dame qualified for a bowl. They put on a great show for their students and their alumni and their fans are more numerous and more loyal than any other college in America. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Irish draw a crowd and attract a lot of attention, even when they only win half of their games. </p>
<p>On the matter of considering the Irish as mediocre, I would also like to put this in context. Compare the quality of play and, IMO more importantly, the quality of the scene at the games with a competitor school like Cornell or Brown and it's not close. ND attracts 80,000+ to each of their home games and they play one of the most demanding schedules in the country. It is a world of difference in what is on display in South Bend and what you will find at the more effete colleges of the Northeast in general and the Ivy League in particular.</p>
<p>I also think that it should be noted that ND's mens and womens basketball programs are among the best in the USA. </p>
<p>prestige,
The attendance data for almost all of the Division I colleges (including the Ivies) was taken from si.com. The attendance numbers for the Division III colleges came from the stories/boxscores of each game that is posted on the college's website.</p>
<p>thanks for that info hawkette - good to know.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think that Notre Dame does a pretty good job of mixing excellent academics and excellent athletics. Among the top academic colleges, probably only Stanford and Duke do it better.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Don't forget UNC. We beat both Notre Dame and Duke in football this year, are headed to a top-15 bowl game, and have the best basketball team in the nation right now. Our women's soccer team also just won their 19th NCAA title in 27 years. I would say that we probably balance athletics and academics better than almost any other school out there.</p>
<p>^There are way more sports than women soccer and basketball.
Last year, UNC was ranked 14th in US Sports Academy Directors' Cup. Behind Stanford, UCLA, Michigan, Texas, Florida, Cal, USC. Better than most? Yes. "Better than almost any other school out there"? Not quite!</p>
<p>Agreed, which is why I mentioned our football team as well. They are 8-4 this year, a lot better than last year. And I was referring to academics as well as athletics...UNC is better academically then Texas and Florida and is roughly equal to Michigan and USC.</p>
<p>The biggest college sports are without a doubt football and basketball. We had a good football season this year, and we are without a doubt the best college basketball team out there. Read into that what you like.</p>
<p>Also, according to your link, Stanford took home the cup last year after strong showings in Men's Gymnastics, golf, swimming, and water polo. According to you those sports don't matter. UNC is near the top this year when it comes to balance between the big sports and academics.</p>
<p>Additionally, that report doesn't even consider the top 2 college sports-football and basketball.</p>
<p>Sorry Cuse0507. Hawkette doesn't consider UNC a top academic college.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sorry Cuse0507. Hawkette doesn't consider UNC a top academic college.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes he/she does, considering that UNC is one of the UNSWR top 30 schools that Hawkette has been providing football scores for throughout this thread.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Stanford took home the cup last year after strong showings in Men's Gymnastics, golf, swimming, and water polo. According to you those sports don't matter. According to you those sports don't matter.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>According to "me"? :confused:
Stanford was strong in a lot of things, just not football last year. You are not trying to compare UNC with Stanford, are you?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Additionally, that report doesn't even consider the top 2 college sports-football and basketball.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It does. Read carefully; that pdf only shows the spring sports. You need to go to other files to see the scores for football and basketball.</p>
<p>By the way, the "big" sports are exactly the ones that have the most academic compromise when it comes to recruiting. I wonder where UNC basketball recruits stand when it comes to academic. My gut feeling is it's probably not very "balanced".</p>
<p>My mistake Sam, I misread your post.</p>
<p>All that I'm trying to say is this: when it comes to the big two (football and basketball) and academics, UNC is as about balanced as a top 30 school can get (alongside UCLA and USC). Of course the athletes will have lower GPAs, but that is true with pretty much any big-time sports school out there (other than Stanford, where I believe the football players still have to be admitted to the university first).</p>
<p>Cuse0507 -- That is not correct. There is <em>NO</em> university offering DI basketball and football that does not maintain and monitor different admissions standards for football and basketball (aka the "revenue sports"), and alumini and admiistrators seem to be fine with that compromise... so long as they can actually read and write at about a 9th grade level.</p>
<p>That includes Stanford, Harvard, etc. etc. The great majority of us observers of this phenomenon are comfortable with the tradeoffs involved in these different standards allowing for the recruitment of athletes that play to a level that allows these academic powerhouses to not go 0-11 or 0-33 every season in these two sports.</p>
<p>^It's ture that they all compromise but the extent of doing it is different. There's still significant separation between Harvard/Stanford and schools like UCLA/Texas. After all, it's one thing to not go 0-11/0-33 and it's quite another to be a Final 4 or BCS team.</p>
<p>Bowl Update!!!</p>
<p>Last night the Rice Owls beat Western Michigan in the Texas Bowl. It was a GREAT year for the Owls football team as they finish with 10 wins. Pretty darn impressive for a premier academic institution that only has 3000 undergraduates. </p>
<p>Other winners so far in the bowl season have been Wake Forest, Notre Dame Cal. Congrats to all.</p>
<p>^^ and today we will have a Vandy win! Go 'Dores.</p>
<p>"UNC is better academically then Texas and Florida and is roughly equal to Michigan and USC"</p>
<p>This is true only if you consider USNEWS ranking your source of what is "better". Both UF and Texas offer more opportunity, more classes and a higher number of majors to select. With that comes a compromise, a higher s/f ratio, which USNEWS penalizes for. Not everyone feels that lowering the student faculty ratio is an academic panacea, though. </p>
<p>In the case of UF, the admissions standards are roughly on par with UNC with UT following close on their heals. </p>
<p>Now, if one is to chose among these three schools based on a blend of overall athletics and academics, the ranking would have to be UF=UT>UNC.</p>
<p>Hawkette,
I guess because Florida is ranked by US NEWS in the 40's it doesn't deserve the accolades doled out below, even though they have an average Freshman SAT Score this year of ~1280, are playing for the football national championship for the second time in 3 years, have last years Heisman winner and the player with the most #1 votes again this year? Oh, and they have 2 national championships in basketball in the past 4 years AND yielded athletes representing the USA in the Olympics (Matthew LaPorta, Juan Carlos Sulbaran, Bradley Ally). UF is also competitive in almost EVERY other (non money) sport they participate in. No love for the Gator Nation?</p>
<p>Pretty elitist to think that the academic and athaletic experience is unique to USNEWS top 30 schools, no? The academic and athaletic experience at, say Wake Forest is unique to the top 30 fraternity and a school like Florida or Texas couldn't match or surpass? WOW!</p>
<p>"Congratulations to these schools which have demonstrated their unique ability to deliver a premier academic experience and a nationally excellent product on the football field. Enjoy the festivities and the games, all of which will be shown on national TV.</p>
<p>Eaglebank Bowl (12/20): WAKE FOREST vs Navy</p>
<p>Hawaii Bowl (12/24): NOTRE DAME vs Hawaii</p>
<p>Meineke Car Care Bowl (12/27): U NORTH CAROLINA vs U West Virginia</p>
<p>Emerald Bowl (12/27): U CALIFORNIA (Berkeley) vs U Miami</p>
<p>Alamo Bowl (12/29): NORTHWESTERN vs U Missouri</p>
<p>Texas Bowl (12/30): RICE vs Western Michigan</p>
<p>Music City Bowl (12/31): VANDERBILT vs Boston College</p>
<p>Rose Bowl: (1/1): USC vs Penn State"</p>
<p>The whole purpose of this thread was to identify schools that actually have requirements for their athletes that are in Division I. Don't tell me either Florida or USC actually care about their athletes' SAT scores or HS GPAs. Heck, UNC, Notre Dame, and Berkeley sure don't care about that stuff (not as if UNC's #1 ranked BB team has stellar academic records). Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Rice are the only schools I've seen that care about academics in sports. But to think for a minute that the Duke administration TELLS Coach K to recruit only "smart" BB players is a joke, Duke's basketball players won't win any academic awards, but they have given Duke much more notoriety nationally by winning 3 national championships. </p>
<p>Do you think Rice's admistration tells Wayne Graham, the Joe Paterno of college baseball, he can't get that stud JUCO center fielder because he can't make the grade? Of course not, because their team's national championship and constant appearance in the top 10 in polls puts a small university like Rice on the map. The 10 win season by the Owls and possible top 25 finish in football is just another great deal for the university.</p>
<p>Stanford doesn't have academic issues with baseball players either, as they are also a frequent competitor in the College World Series. Their national championships in gymnastics, synchronized swimming, tiddlywinks, and go fish don't really help because they aren't on TV. Nevertheless Stanford is always a model for balancing decent sports and academics.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt's pretty good at baseball, and their basketball is also great, but to say their football is on the same level, isn't true. Their pregame scene is better than most of the other 4 school, but the product on the field hasn't been anything to write home about until this season's promising 7-6 finish. The tough problem Vandy faces is they play in the SEC, an academically horrid conference, which a football conference. No one cares about B-ball in the SEC, they just see Vandy as perennial doormats in the SEC (this year being an obvious exception). Duke plays in a conference where no one cares about football, basketball is the main deal, so they get more pub.</p>
<p>Northwestern also probably had the best football performance this year, although they'll finish outside the top 25. Northwestern's struggled, unlike the other four schools, to be a national power in a relativel commercialized sport though</p>
<p>AJC</a> investigation: Many athletes lag far behind on SAT scores | ajc.com
"The biggest gap between football players and students as a whole occurred at the University of Florida, where players scored 346 points lower than the school’s overall student body. That’s larger than the difference in scores between typical students at the University of Georgia and Harvard University.
Nationwide, football players average 220 points lower on the SAT than their classmates — and men’s basketball players average seven points less than football players.</p>
<p>Those figures come from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution study of 54 public universities, including the members of the six major Bowl Championship Series conferences and other schools whose teams finished the 2007-08 season ranked among the football or men’s basketball top 25.</p>
<p>While it’s commonly known that admission standards are different for athletes, the AJC study quantifies how wide the gap is between athletes and the general student body at major universities.</p>
<p>Georgia Tech’s football players had the nation’s best average SAT score, 1028 of a possible 1600, and best average high school GPA, 3.39 of a possible 4.0 in the core curriculum. But Tech’s football players still scored 315 SAT points lower on average than their classmates.</p>
<p>At the University of Georgia, the average football SAT was 949, which is 239 points behind the average for an undergraduate student at Georgia — and 79 points behind Tech’s football average. The Bulldogs’ average high school GPA was 2.77, or 45th out of 53 teams for which football GPAs were available. Their SAT average ranked them 22nd.</p>
<p>Nationwide, coaches who would never offer a scholarship to a player who was 6 inches shorter or half a second slower than other prospects routinely recruit players whose standardized test scores suggest they’re at a competitive disadvantage in the classroom."</p>