Academic Rankings of the Universities involved in Conference Expansion

Special Consideration 2: Network Affiliation
Each conference has their own contracts with television networks and service providers concerning media distribution rights. Each conference can have different rules as to what member institutions are allowed to do in regards to distribution of media. Many of the rules regarding media content distribution, revenue sharing, and other media rights are relatively new developments and may not be fully understood.

Some conferences control most of the rights at every level, while others may control only top level rights and allow member institutions to distribute their lower level content. Some conferences require some or all of the revenue earned by these media rights to be shared, while others may not.

Network affiliation and media rights considerations are based on ECONOMICS. Conferences and member institutions attempt to create a framework through which the broadcast of their media rights provides the most money to member institutions. Some conferences favor plans that provide equal revenue sharing, while others favor plans that allow individual members to maximize their own profits without concern for all conference members or the conference as a whole.

Of note:
- The B1G Conference distributes member institute content by means of the B1G Network. The conference also has rights deals with the ESPN/ABC family of networks, and with Fox Sports for the football conference title game through 2016.

- The PAC-12/14/16 distributes member institute content by means of paired regional networks within the PAC-12 conference network. The conference also has rights deals with Fox Sports for regular season games, as well as with both ESPN/ABC and Fox Sports for the conference title game.

- The SEC distributes member institute content by means of the SEC Network (in affiliation with ESPN/ABC). The conference also has rights deals with CBS, ESPN/ABC, and Fox Sports, and with CBS for the conference title game.

- The ACC distributes member institute content by means of the ACC Network (in affiliation with ESPN/ABC). The conference also has rights deals with ESPN/ABC and with Fox Sports.

- The Big East distributes content by means of the Big East Network (in affiliation with ESPN/ABC). The Big XII distributes content by through Fox Sports and ESPN/ABC.

- Notre Dame is affiliated with NBC. Texas is affiliated with ESPN/ABC (through the Longhorn Network vehicle).

- The SEC, ACC, PAC, B1G, and Big East have equal revenue sharing plans amongst member institutions (to an extent).

- The Big XII does not have equal revenue sharing, with television rights being weighted in favor of those member institutions that are broadcast more frequently. (The PAC-12 had a similar setup when it was still the PAC-10.)

It's not irrelevant to those conferences that are concerned with it, it's about economics. It's about money. It all boils down to money.

ETA: I'm not sure what direction I want to go here. I started off just trying to point out the academic aspect, but the important point is that these conference affiliations are about economic gains. Things don't work in a vacuum... no conference can afford to stand still, or the landscape around them could change the entire economic equation.

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Academic Rankings

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Nobody gives a good $%#$%$# what the academic rankings are, and anyone that says they do is a liar.

It's just another way to rationalize a move entirely based on $$$.

Can you perform and understand mathematics where time is a variable? If you can't, go educate yourself. If you can, stop and THINK for half a fricking second.

U.S. News Rankings are largely horseshite with a nonsensical weighting system which is severely skewed. The difference between the Top 15 is barely measurable. 15% of the ranking is based on peer evaluation of reputation and the opinion of high school guidance counselors? Who fricking cares what a guidance counselor says, and I challenge you to find a staff member at UF who speaks highly of FSU. Another 10% of the rank is established by philanthropic/graduate donations which puts schools located in major metropolitan areas particularly in the Northeast and West coast at a huge advantage.

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It's not irrelevant to those conferences that are concerned with it, it's about economics. It's about money. It all boils down to money.

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From an academic argument, the criteria for AAU membership is about as relevant and in touch with modern times as the NCAA rule book currently is. How anyone can convince me that Iowa State, Oregon, and Kansas were worthy of being AAU members 100 years ago while Georgia Tech didn't become worthy until last year tells you what a joke and what an elitist, racist good old boy club of Midwestern and Northeastern school administrators the AAU is.

Heck, UAB draws more federal research funding than quite a few of those long time AAU members but it will be a cold day in h### before they are even considered for membership.

Great information CrazyTigerFan. Thanks for putting the time and effort in. I've been curious about these rankings.

Academics are obviously not the primary consideration in all this expansion business, but I really hope that the SEC doesn't take on a bunch of lower rated schools (like WVU or USF). That is why Texas A&M is such a nice get for us...good football tradition, strong fan base and very solid academics.

The AAU seems like such BS. How is it that schools like Arizona, Iowa State, Kansas, Buffalo, etc are deemed worthy, while schools like Georgia, Alabama and Auburn are not? (And Georgia Tech was only recently admitted).

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The AAU seems like such BS. How is it that schools like Arizona, Az State, Iowa State, Oregon State, Buffalo, etc are deemed worthy, while schools like Georgia, Alabama and Auburn are not? (And Georgia Tech was only recently admitted).

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It's because the AAU has an extremely lame methodology on whether a school is worthy or not. You can basically kiss any hope of joining the AAU goodbye if you don't have a medical school tied directly to your school (why Alabama can't use its school of medicine and its $450 million in research funding which is technically under the UAB banner). Same with Georgia and Georgia Tech and the Medical College of Georgia. HUGE strike against those 3 schools. AAU also rewards large engineering graduate research programs which was barely enough to finally get Georgia Tech in due to their stellar engineering reputation. They also seem to now penalize schools with strong Agricultural research like Nebraska. Auburn, a very solid school that's every bit as good as several current AAU schools, would have to have engineering research at least on par or better than Georgia Tech to have any shot at AAU which is absurd.

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Thanks for the info. That really is a load of BS. I guess what is most annoying is that the AAU is kind of used as shorthand by some people for what is a "good" university, when AAU's focus is on a particular type of university which excludes many quality institutions.

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AAU is heavily skewed towards research universities with both large medical as well as engineering research programs. The fact that Alabama focuses more on the health of the Alabama "system" (UA, UAB, UAH) and has its flagship research programs split under 3 banners and no single university dominates in engineering research funding gaurantees they'll never make it. The same goes for Auburn. The AAU's methodology penalizes strong ag programs and although Auburn is very good across the board in engineering that doesn't make up for Auburn's lack of a medical school.

The fact that it took until last year before Georgia Tech got in and a very solid school like Georgia and a truly elite school like Notre Dame aren't in tells you all you need to know about how clueless the AAU is.