aTm / Mizzou fans - Explain to us the tangible benefits of the AAU

Your acting like we are the ones pumping our chests in front of you about it. When have you seen a Mizzou Fan or Aggie brag about the AAU?

PRESIDENTS make decisions regarding conference affiliation.....Presidents care about AAU status.

It really doesn't matter if we fans care or not. LSU's chancellor/president cares, as do other SEC presidents.

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I don't think it's as important as some would like to believe.

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Maybe, but it is the reason why NC, Duke or Virginia thinks your school is full of ignorant inbred yokels and the main reason why they would never join the SEC.

Shaka:

I don't know a whole lot about it but from what I can tell it helps Universities in getting a lot more money for research projects and more research projects also. It is apparently recognized around the world as signal that it is a top notch University.

The reason it helps the SEC is you already had 2 members in your conference and now will have 4. People seem to have the opinion that the SEC is all about football and lacking on the education side. Which in reality isn't true but it is thought by some. There may be some members of the SEC who are pretty close to qualifying to be an AAU member and having 4 AAU universities in the conference can maybe help those who are qualified maybe get an invitation.

Here is a link I found from Texas A&M staff explaining what the AAU means. Hope it helps you understand it better.

LINK

Personally I don't see MU as a bad football team and only an AAU member or TV sets. Yes they are struggling this year but sometimes that happens when your best QB and DE leaves early for the NFL draft. The DE Alton Smith was drafted 7th and has 5.5 sacks already in his rookie year, and the QB Blaine Gabbart is starting in his rookie year for Jacksonville.

Since Gary Pinkel took over Missouri has been a much better team and over the last 4 years won 40 games.. They have also had 5 1st round, a 2nd round and a 3rd round pick in the draft over the last 5 years. Several of those players are starting in the NFL right now. Bad teams don't have 5 players drafted in the 1st round of the the NFL draft over a 3 draft period of time.

I'm not claiming they are an elite program that's going to come in and Beat your best right now but they're not terrible.

Please just give us a chance we're a hungry fan-base and an elated fan-base that the best conference in the country wanted us. It's more then we could have ever dreamed of but it looks like it's going to happen.

Give us a chance this is a fan-base that at the mere mention of an anonymous report that the SEC may be interested started a grass roots campaign to get in. We began flooding every official who had any power with thousands of e-mails,tweets and texts say stop talking and go if the SEC wants us. This is a fan-base that is excited at mere thought of playing in the SEC. As for the supposed lack of passion for football part it is possible that kissing Texas feet in the Big 12 for years and not having a voice may have caused a little apathy. But basically I think we have a lot of passion and you will see that passion if it is true and we get in.

The AAU has very little to do with academic standards at the school and a LOT to do with research dollars. Schools inside a conference tend to share/cooperate on research, and there is SO much more money in research than in athletics. One of the B1G's biggest advantages as far as money goes is the CIC, an enormous cooperative of of the entire conference (and the U of Chicago) that rakes in money for their schools.

One of the things the AAU does is work as a group to lobby for federal grants. In 2008, that was worth about $20 billion that got channeled back to member universities. Grants take many shapes, but they all have a percentage that the university will get to keep for itself instead of channeling to the project.

The primary mission of an R1 is not to grant degrees; it is research. I'm a Ph.D. student at one, and I see how the sausage is made daily. Undergrads are not hated or maligned, but they also don't get as much focus as one might think. Dollars are weighted heavily based on what a university's student make up is, grads students vs. undergrads, in particular at universities where the individual colleges are responsible for their own budgets. To attract those graduate students, a pretty robust research community needs to exist.

Money makes that research possible, and in turn, that research also generates money for the university. If the University of Florida invents a new cancer treatment technology, not only does that "save lives," but it is also a source of income for the university.

Football at Florida nets less than $10 million a year for the university. Last year federal grants contributed something like $600 million to research dollars. Being in the AAU helps those universities secure the lion's share of what is available, and as budgets get tighter, this is a very big deal.

If you attend school to have fun and watch football, it doesn't matter - at least you will probably never see where it matters. However, if you care about going to a university that might actually be doing cutting edge stuff on the academic side and like the idea of learning from the people doing it, then it makes a huge difference.

Does that mean the AAU thing is a big deal as far as athletics and the SEC goes? I can't answer that, though I am excited about the possible strengthening of collaboration that will now be available between Florida and the two new schools. However, you asked what the tangible benefits were - billions of dollars for research.

Texas A&M and Missouri Have worked together on several projects in the past and them moving into the SEC will make Florida and Vandy really happy. They will probably all try to partner up in research projects and get more grants.

For instance Texas A&M and MU put together a team of scientists to apply for a grant and on April 15 of 2011 it was announced the MU and Texas A&M received a 14.2 million grant to study Bovine Respiratory disease. Long story short it's study to find a way to keep cows more healthy thereby making our food supply more plentiful and safer.

It could also add to the appeal of the SEC to an ACC School that is a member of the AAU if they want to switch conferences. The amount of research dollars brought in by a conferences AAU schools can be a lure to other AAU schools.

Oklahoma not being an AAU school was said to be a reason why the Pac 12 wouldn't consider them without Texas who is an AAU school. Whether we like it or not the AAU adds to the prestige and budget of those schools that are members.

Really? From what I've heard Oklahoma is a university that could possibly qualify for an AAU invite.

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MU and Texas A&M received a 14.2 million grant to study Bovine Respiratory disease

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Anyone else find this funny given the circumstance?

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Thanks for the responses from everybody. I was aware of the research dollars and the the AAU lobbying efforts. Most of the responses confirmed that AAU membership is all about the money. I didn't hear any concrete examples of anything the AAU schools have created for the betterment of humanity, but I did hear about the awesome pork barrel spending that the AAU enjoys.

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when you call it pork barrel spending you are implying a negative.

do you believe gov't funded research at universities is a bad thing?