Legend500

I think the Jackie Robinson comparison is clearly not apt, but its the best that can be done for those of us who cannot ever hope to understand the impact that such an event has on people we cannot sympathize with. The whole "which group suffered more" argument is beside the point - in some ways, the suffering of gays is far worse than African Americans - it is much easier to deny who you are when there is nothing physically apparent to force the issue, but what effect does hiding in plain sight have upon a person? Both suffered unimaginable cruelty - African Americans endured slavery and gays endured the Holocaust, but this is not a contest as to who has suffered worse. In fact, there are some keen similarities - Loving v. Georgia and Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Jim Crow laws and United States v. Windsor. The battles have ended up in the courts because when the Legislative and Executive branches of either the Federal or State governments have decided to act out against a disfavored minority for no rational purpose, it is the Judiciary which holds the great responsibility of righting that wrong. Jason Collins coming out is bigger than a name-only player. Collins may not have the name, but he seems to command the respect of his teammates and opponents - which is something far more valuable in the long run. It is men and women of astonishing courage such as Collins who will ultimately lead to a more perfect union for all of us. We owe him our thanks.

Looks like I gave GL2Greatness the vapors and made him forget everything he learned getting his MA in Teambuilding. Good. SMU's Carnegie classification was (finally) obtained in 2011 - which is why I did the "almost.".Further, I enjoy making anyone type: ...as SMU. Additionally, UNT is bouncing painfully along the path to RU/VH status along with UTA and UTD. Regardless of the order we make it in, it's nice to know that SMU is, at best, #4 in the metro area. As far as your other numbers, it's nice to have the opportunity to pick one's own data set. For example, you considered research spending, but somehow forgot to mention publications, citations and awards. Considering that some of the most important disciplines don't require billions of dollars in research grants (say, law, humanities, music, etc.), your analysis is, at best, fatally flawed. Perhaps we should go to another measure - UNT produces more research and offers more programs that SMU while charging its students around $35,000 less a year. The fact that UNT is state-funded is minimally important, as state funding only makes up for about a third of the difference. Regardless, I checked your numbers. Final numbers aren't released yet, but the National Science Foundation reports research spending for 2010 was $18.742 million for SMU and $70.398 for UNT. Of course I combined all UNT campuses in that number - SMU's "campuses" in Plano and Taos are in their numbers, too. Back to the topic, I don't want schools like SMU in our conference, mainly because of their poor academic value. Since research spending is the ultimate arbiter of such things, SMU should be in a conference with comparable institutions such as Prairie View A&M, TAMU-Corpus and TAMU-Kingsville.

Houston went to the 'Merica and needed a travel partner. The conference didn't take SMU for its market share (somehow worse than ours), fan base (laughable), academics (hey, they're close to being a research university, and a Master's in Teambuilding is a strong indication of the quality of their programs) or facilities (in a few years, they'll have the oldest non-renovated stadium in the state). 'Merica took SMU because it was the only option (the Big East still thought it could stay a major conference, so nobody from the Sun Belt was getting invited, no matter how good the case) for Houston. Don't confuse the last girl at the dance with the prom queen. Eventually, money, legislatures and ESPN will force the leftovers from this shakeup into something which can be compelling in a local market even if it won't fly nationally. At that point, everybody will end up with teams they don't want to be with.

There's a few things in here that make it more than the standard stump speech from Mac. He's never been this unequivocal - there are no "eventuallys," "maturing" or maybes" this time around. The number of people in camp says a lot, but I'll start believing it once the season starts and we stop cleverly disguising our wide receivers as the orange posts at the rear of the endzones.,

Ignoring that obvious trolling attempt, A&M's student council did expand the language to allow anyone who has a religious objection to any University fee to opt-out of paying it. That's not gonna happen, and even if they did, it's profoundly unenforceable (as a committed Pastafarian, all such "fees" simply deny pirates their Noodly-given booty, and are therefore objectionable).

Hey, the NY Times pointed out that our absence from the tourney was a disappointment - along with the absence of Texas and the Aggies. I'll live in that company any day, even for the wrong reasons.

The targets shouldn't be Houston or SMU - it should be Tulane, Memphis and ECU. Try to get the "lesser" schools to stay (because of the costs & uncertainty of the new league) and teams like UH & SMU will have no other choice.

Credibility set to unimaginable levels of negativeness.

I hear they offer great rates on CDs and 5 free ATM withdrawals per month!

Mere puffery.. Sadly, that is all. - 7L procrastinating while (still) at work.

Glen Gulutzan (Stars coach) did a great job down in Cedar Park, and coached a great game against (Stars ex-coach & Phoenix coach) Dave Tippett. He looked lost at times during the first year, and couldn't hold the Stars together down the stretch, but as there is no stretch this year, he may have a breakout coaching year. As good as Jagr was in his first game, he disappeared up at St. Paul - getting this group of grumpy old men playing with the Finns and some good but green talent will be Gulutzan's biggest challenge this year. The Stars look to be a good wild card challenger - which is the way they've been the last few seasons. The biggest change of late is their development program, which is incredibly deep.. If they can hold onto their young talent - Benn, Sceviour, Larson, Dillon and keep developing homegrown talent like Austin Smith - they've got a really solid future.

We could have prevented this from happening by preventing students from saying curse words at games, by redesigning our helmet, by making sure NCAA 13 has our fight song, by getting the GB to have a coherent pre-game performance and by turning Fouts Field into an opera house. Ultimately, SMU is responsible for these arrests, and Brett Vito Aliens. ...I think I got them all.

That bears repeating. As an alumni who is moderately successful, I have no problem with curse words being shouted during a violent sport which leads to permanent brain damage. Priorities seems to be pretty messed up around here. I'll take anything that engages the students and gets them active and involved. I recall my fairly well-respected Catholic high school, which repeatedly uses the once-shunned word "hell" and has a bluer version that memorably includes a reference to the "Holy Jumpin' Jesus Christ." The mature thing to do is to recognize that words only have the power one ascribes to them, and if one renders that power meaningless - you end up with a word like "humbug" -which was a word thought much bluer even then the f-word until recently.

Obscenities make it a better song.

Here's the list which (so far) has mattered a lot more than anything else. Conferences won't go too crazy - for the new teams there needs to be some possibility of competition, and generally must be in or near their catchment area (except for the Big East) - but guess what: Nate Silver is running the numbers in this "election" as well. The MWC's options are (by FBS market rank, school and reliable viewers): 43 BYU 709,864 57 Boise State 483,489 77 SDSU 242,126 86 UNT 202,188 92 LATech 179,991 96 Idaho 169,351 97 SMU 163,671 103 Rice 126,901 105 Tulsa 119,686 107 UTEP 114,592 111 Tulane 101,701 112 Houston 100,253 116 NMSU 70,427

There's a few reasons why no one is holding schools to the actual buyout provisions unless the school can easily pay it. An old common-law idea generally referred to as "frustration" allows people out of a contract if circumstances fundamentally change in a way which was not foreseeable to the parties at the time of contracting and which fundamentally alters the expectations of the parties when the parties contracted. It's an old doctrine that's an iffy proposition in litigation, but I could certainly see it applying in these conference realignments. Houston effectively negotiated a contractual "frustration" out when they were granted the opportunity to not join the Big East if certain things occurred. If any of this realignment stuff got to trial, it would be bad for everyone but the lawyers. The NCAA, conferences and ESPN would have to answer some tough antitrust questions, and the schools would have to answer some equally tough fiduciary questions. Not to mention how much money could be paid out for breaching contracts (by a school leaving a conference) or by fraudulent inducement (by a conference attracting new members with grand promises while it knew other members were out the door). It would be an epic litigation battle for all time.

The MWC doesn't need any more regional rivalries or geographic presence, and realignment (clearly) isn't being driven by those priorities anyway. The MWC is holding for five possibilities, two of which still have to play out. 1. Boise State and San Diego State return. If this happens, it's probably gonna stop for now. 2. The CUSA gets done being raided, and the MWC executes the merger plan by taking those CUSA teams with with either the market or the credibility to be good for them. In this scenario, MWC takes Texas-El Paso, Texas-San Antonio, North Texas, Rice, Tulsa and Louisiana Technical School for the Criminally Insane. 3. The Big East dies, and MWC takes back San Diego State, Boise State and adds Houston-Telephone and University Park Senior High School. 4. The MWC decides to expand to the traditional 12 via a cynical TV market play. MWC adds North Texas and Rice. 5. The MWC does nothing. Still a lot to shake out here, folks. The Big Whatever still isn't done, nor is the Big Less Than Whatever. The Big Everywhere is still going to lose members - whether to the Anywhere near a Coast Cnference or to the Big Less Than Whatever. There is still a strong possibility that the basketball schools defect from the BE as well.

No to all three. Egypt's AD is facing a lot of questions from his Board, Syria's AD has the Alumni up in arms, and Libya's AD is still trying to find the best place on campus to hide in. That said, ODU is an interesting choice. The CUSA East is weak, but realignment has yet to fully shake out, so it's too early to think that anything's set in stone.

All of the scenarios for further expansion wrongly assume that performance, facilities and geography matter in the current alignment battles. Clearly (Tulane, SDSU, Maryland, West Virginia, etc.) they don't. What's driving this is media markets. If the MWC wants to move east, they'll target 4 teams: SMU, Houston, North Texas and Rice. It should be obvious why.

There's absolutely no doubt that a Big East with Idaho, NMSU, Lamar, UH, SMU, Temple and UCF could get a very good TV deal with Versus.

Considering that the Big East no longer has an AQ slot in the new playoff system, and that the ACC is no where near done, I really think that UH and UCF would add a great deal to the CUSA, but we need to be careful not to take any of the BE's dead weight. Memphis would be a good add for basketball.

When you consider that the the only other thing to do on a Saturday in San Antonio is to go to the liquor Costco and get fondled at the Bonham, the attendance really isn't all that good.

Well, I'm late to the party, but do have some basic thoughts that I can kind of throw into the mix. I'm not quoting because it would make my comment unreadable to those with epilepsy. 1) Lee Jackson was made chancellor for several reasons. The fact is that we didn't even have an endowment of any real amount and didn't even have an office in Austin when he started. Jackson didn't step into a situation which was great at the time - he stepped into a system that had historically undervalued itself and had no interest in making even minimal efforts to improve its standing statewide. It takes decades to turn that around - it's much harder to do that than even to start from scratch. 2) Bill Lively's impact hasn't been felt yet, but I can absolutely 100% ninja-face guarantee that it will be within the next 3 years. 3) Anyone who has done the Austin education dance knows that the Horns and Aggies lock arms and walk into the Capitol together every session. There are ways to break that monopoly, but it involves getting the Dallas, Houston and other non-Austin delegations to work together. It also involved making alliances with other systems with similar interests - which are out there, but we have to start playing the game. Finally, it involves emphasizing the rivalries within the U Texas system itself: UTD and UTA hate each other while we are on great terms with both (the UCD thing has no impact on that). UTEP and UTSA, and their friends, hardly talk to each other. UTT wonders if anyone in Austin knows they exist. 4) There are plenty of legislators willing to help UNT in Austin, but UNT's never engaged there. UNT hasn't had a lobbyist until extremely recently, and has always hid up north and assumed that everything is ok. 5) As far as the THECB is concerned, they just want an updated description of the bonding procedure (every system is super-bonded at the moment, so that's not unusual), some actual numbers on usage (UNT just submitted a general "we're bigger than the last one we built") and is also making a pro-forma rejection in a period when any spending is going to be initially rejected just for show. Plus, few people listen to the THECB anyway. The THECB was very much against the NTDLaw idea, has repeatedly questioned the need for additional universities like UNTD and TAMUSA, and has approved ideas which have never gotten taken care of. 6) Because of the laws in Texas, the University and System can't lobby the state at all - it has to go through the Alumni Associations of the schools. I hope I don't have to explain that UNT's alumni Association hasn't really been in a position to do that. On the other hand, if you're interested in talking to some legislators on behalf of UNT this upcoming session, PM me. I may or may not know of an initiative to do just that in the upcoming session. 7) The Tier One situation is going to continue to suck for a while. We don't have the endowment because we didn't think we needed one until a few years ago. Plus, we've always been the state's fine arts/liberal arts school. Unfortunately, the areas where we excel at - music, psychology, political science, urban planning, etc. - are not the biggest draw for qualifying research spending. It's just who we are, and while there are very strong efforts to fix that, it's gonna take a while. Oh well. 8) An additional point that always gets overlooked is that we don't command the same intense loyalty that the other systems have in their local areas. Texas, A&M and Tech all have complete control over their local legislators and officials for good reasons - they're the only game in town. UH has the advantage of a huge market that they share with only one other state school of note (A&M) and other non-system schools (PVAM & TSU). UNT doesn't even control Denton or the area north of DFW. If we're going to get anywhere, it means that we need to continue to wait for the blue-hairs which defend the independence of TWU and Midwestern State to retire. The point is coming soon where a push for integration of those schools, plus TAMU Commerce and Texas Tyler would be possible for UNT, and it's extremely necessary for the future of the System.

The travesty of it is that if the CUSA is out to screw SMU (which they would be) and if the Big 10 can't fill its slots (which it can't) among many of the possibilities is an SMU -UNT game for the Heart of Dallas Bowl.

This. If it turns out to be the sort of game that the 2000 MTSU win was, absolutely. if not, it was just a fun win against our old conference.