re: The next time someone says Big 12 is smarter than SEC,

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So wait a sec: Marshall isn't a fallback option for West Virginia instate students?

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From what I understand, Marshall isn't bound by the same "must-accept" standards as WV, but I could be wrong on that. Either way, Marshall is far from being the school that catches all the students not worthy of WV.

Another thing is Marshall's undergrad enrollment is only 9600. West Virginia has 22,300 undergrads. Even combined they are significantly less than UT and A&M are individually. There's 1.8 million people in the entire state, compared to 25.1 million people in Texas.

Think of it from a proportion standpoint: West Virginia and Marshall have 31,900 students combined in a state of 1.8 million; Texas and Texas A&M have a combined 75,300 for a state of 25.1 million. To proportionally be educating the same caliber of students, assuming a relatively similar bell curve of intelligence (which probably isn't the case given the tech sector jobs in Texas vs industrial jobs in WV--no offense intended WV folks), WV and Marshall would be reducing combined enrollment to 6300 students. That wouldn't exactly be serving the state very well, now would it?

This is the same problem that smaller population states run into across the nation from a selectivity standpoint--the bigger states just have a huge advantage because they can create a tiered system of colleges.