Time for St. Cloud, Mankato, UMD, St. Thomas?

[ProfessorBum]

It is nothing short of ridiculous that a state with 5 million people has only one Division I school. But it is 10 times more ridiculous that, with only one Division I school, this is the best crap we can come up with.

It's time to let UMD or St. Cloud or Mankato or someone else run with the Division I torch. The of U of M Twin Cities has squandered their monopoly in the state. In exchange for having our only Division I program, all that has ever been asked of the U is to please not embarrass Minnesota. And like clockwork, the U fails in this proposition annually, but offers the hope of less embarrassment next year.

The U of M is NOT representing us well in basketball or football (which are the two main sports by which the rest of the country judges our athletics program). And I'm sick of Wisconsin kicking our a$$ in everything.

Now I'm rambling. Sorry.

 

[From the Barn]

Most of the country judges the U by their academic programs and ground breaking research.

 

[howeda7]

Now I'm rambling. Sorry.

Yeah. You are. And adding a localized version of South Dakota wouldn't change anything. There'd still only be one major-conference school and it would still get 99.5% of the attention.

 

[CrocShots]

DERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP

Plus the skunks are not kicking our ass in everything, actually it's quite opposite.

 

[ProfessorBum]

Most of the country judges the U by their academic programs and ground breaking research.

Duh. I said "...judges our athletics program" Mr. Strawman. I didn't say "open a medical school at Bemidji State because our doctors suck."

 

[ProfessorBum]

Yeah. You are. And adding a localized version of South Dakota wouldn't change anything. There'd still only be one major-conference school and it would still get 99.5% of the attention.

Okay fine. But what about the part of my post that asks why we can't field something better while we DO have only ONE Division I school. And South Dakota would probably beat us right too, by the way.

 

[howeda7]

Okay fine. But what about the part of my post that asks why we can't field something better while we DO have only ONE Division I school. And South Dakota would probably beat us right too, by the way.

No, USD wouldn't beat us right now. But, yes being the only D-1 school in a state of 5 million is one of the reasons Minnesota is a good job, specifically in basketball. It can be successful. It's frustrating that it's not. But St. Thomas going D-1 doesn't help or change anything. It's illogical at best.

 

[zubb]

i for one think it would be fun. St Thomas...a small private school. shocked the rest of miac isn't sick of the domination.

 

[Rosemountian]

St Thomas would never go division one.
Just to keep football and mens basketball they'd end up giving away 7.8 million dollars in athletics scholarships per year due to title 9 requirements.

They have a lot of money. But not that kind of money.

 

[zubb]

why is it illogical....actually its not even a small school...rather large when compared to butler.

 

[zubb]

Really? they just spent something like $125 million in new buildings...

 

[ProfessorBum]

No, USD wouldn't beat us right now. But, yes being the only D-1 school in a state of 5 million is one of the reasons Minnesota is a good job, specifically in basketball. It can be successful. It's frustrating that it's not. But St. Thomas going D-1 doesn't help or change anything. It's illogical at best.

My post was intended primarily to be a rant about the generally lackluster performance in football and basketball year in and year out. I'm not trying to get a D-1 for SCSU thread going here. But our best sport is hockey. That's also the only sport for which the U has some intra-state competition. A lot of business folks on this board believe in competition in every other walk of life. But somehow, competition's tendency to cause one to become better ceases to have efficacy in the context of basketball and football. It is just dismissed as silliness and lacking logic. Frankly, I'm willing to try anything right now to force the U to dig deep and become better in my two favorite college sports.

 

[Rosemountian]

Really? they just spent something like $125 million in new buildings...

What's your point? You use a one time donation used to build a new student center and a top notch d3 facility as proof they could financially support d1 athletics. They'd probably need another 200 million dollar facilities upgrade to make the jump to d1.

They have no interest in d1

 

[zubb]

they could play 1AA in football. many big time 1AA teams draw 15k or so. the present stadium holds what 10k? gyms another issue

 

[FanSinceTheFifties]

Professor Bum: "... why we can't field something better while we DO have only ONE Division I school." Why indeed? In business, we'd analyze the situation. Since it doesn't make sense yet is true, we must not be considering something. Is it something that we don't have that successful programs (Madison, Iowa City, Lincoln, Fayetteville, Lawrence, e.g.) have? Or is there something we have that they don't that limits our success? Eliminate the things that are common between successful programs and us and see if there's something unique about UM that makes us underperform in FB and BB. I'm eager to read your findings.

 

[dpodoll68]

What's your point? You use a one time donation used to build a new student center and a top notch d3 facility as proof they could financially support d1 athletics. They'd probably need another 200 million dollar facilities upgrade to make the jump to d1.

They have no interest in d1

The question is not whether they want to go DI, the question is whether they have the capability. And they absolutely do.

Just for comparison's sake, let's look at St. Thomas endowment/enrollment figures compared to the teams in the 2011 Final Four:

St. Thomas University - $557 million, 10,534 students

University of Kentucky - $779 million, 27,209 students
University of Connecticut - $329 million, 21,881 students
Virginia Commonwealth University - $350 million, 32,303 students
Butler University - $155 million, 4,034 students

The endowment is not an end-all, be-all indicator of everything, but it does show that St. Thomas has a strong donor base and is operating with a solid financial backing. Their financial picture is as good as or better than almost every non-BCS D-I school out there. They could easily go D-I (I-AA for football) if they wanted to, and frankly, it's kind of a joke that they're not at least D-II already.

All of this being said, the athletic status of all the other Minnesota schools has no bearing on the University of Minnesota whatsoever.

 

[sunnyday2]

I would settle for St. Thomas moving up to D2. Only 1 D2 school in the metro is not enough. Cody Schilling played college ball in the Twin Cities like 3 times his entire career and 1 of those was at the U.

But I agree it would be fabulous if they went all the way to D1. What does Marquette have that St. Thomas doesn't have?

 

[zambam]

St. Thomas making the jump from D3 to D1 would be ridiculous.

 

[Rosemountian]

St Thomas making the jump to d-2 would be dumb.
What would moving to D2 do for them? Absolutely nothing.

 

[Rosemountian]

UST is over 50% grad students also.
Macalester is about 48% the size with larger endowment. Maybe they should go D1.
What about university of Chicago?


Why is it some idiot on a message board's decision that it's a "joke" they aren't d2 already?
What does that even mean?

 

[dpodoll68]

UST is over 50% grad students also.
Macalester is about 48% the size with larger endowment. Maybe they should go D1.
What about university of Chicago?

It's pretty hilarious that I'm the idiot when you can't grasp the obvious answer that has already been laid out before you. St. Thomas has both a commitment to athletic excellence and a sh*t-ton of money. Both are essential to competing at high levels. Macalester has the latter, but nothing even remotely resembling a shadow of the former. They are also about 1/5 the size of St. Thomas. The University of Chicago is a terrible comparison for a number of reasons. First, St. Thomas is basically an SEC school academically (comparable to South Carolina or Kentucky), while Chicago is one of the elite institutions in the world. No BCS conference schools even compare with the exception of Stanford. Second, when Chicago actually did emphasize athletics, they were a major-conference powerhouse. They won several titles in several sports, and even a couple mythical national championships in football. Third, I've been saying for years that it's stupid for Chicago to be in D-III as well. That Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. can all be competitive in D-I/I-AA and that Chicago has relegated itself to D-III is even more of a joke than St. Thomas being in D-III.

Why is it some idiot on a message board's decision that it's a "joke" they aren't d2 already?
What does that even mean?

They are playing on a different playing field than nearly all of their competitors. St. Thomas to D-III is like Kentucky basketball, Alabama football, Texas football, etc. in terms of their money and willingness to compete relative to their peers. The problem for Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, etc. is that they have no higher place to go. St. Thomas does. Macalaster is a joke for a different reason (the same reason as Chicago is a joke) - they have a sh*t-ton of money too, but they want to "compete" in sports as cheaply as possible. St. Thomas doesn't want to do that, to their credit. But they'd rather stay in the lowest NCAA division possible and beat up on opponents rather than make a commitment to move up and playing against a level playing field. That is why it is a joke that they aren't at least D-II.

 

[Gopherocious]

My post was intended primarily to be a rant about the generally lackluster performance in football and basketball year in and year out. I'm not trying to get a D-1 for SCSU thread going here. But our best sport is hockey. That's also the only sport for which the U has some intra-state competition. A lot of business folks on this board believe in competition in every other walk of life. But somehow, competition's tendency to cause one to become better ceases to have efficacy in the context of basketball and football. It is just dismissed as silliness and lacking logic. Frankly, I'm willing to try anything right now to force the U to dig deep and become better in my two favorite college sports.

I'm trying to figure out how UMD or SCSU moving up to D1 would help the Gophers at all. If anything, players that walk on here, or even get a scholly for that matter; could then easily head to one of those schools for more playing time, hometown team, etc

 

[AO54]

St. Thomas would like to become the Boston College of the MidWest, but it wouldn't really be worth it to them to switch to D-1 if they had to settle for the Horizon league playing against UW-Green Bay. Maybe they could play in a Big East type conference in the Target Center. They choose not to build a big gym despite having unlimited funds, not believing in the high school girls hockey motto of playing in a big arena with no fans.

Maybe if the NCAA changed it's rules and allowed individual teams to move between divisions independently of the other teams, we would could see it someday. The teams that were grandfathered in like Colorado College Hockey or Johns Hopkins lacrosse, haven't really seen a boost to the rest of their d3 teams.

 

[zambam]

It's pretty hilarious that I'm the idiot when you can't grasp the obvious answer that has already been laid out before you. St. Thomas has both a commitment to athletic excellence and a sh*t-ton of money. Both are essential to competing at high levels. Macalester has the latter, but nothing even remotely resembling a shadow of the former. They are also about 1/5 the size of St. Thomas. The University of Chicago is a terrible comparison for a number of reasons. First, St. Thomas is basically an SEC school academically (comparable to South Carolina or Kentucky), while Chicago is one of the elite institutions in the world. No BCS conference schools even compare with the exception of Stanford. Second, when Chicago actually did emphasize athletics, they were a major-conference powerhouse. They won several titles in several sports, and even a couple mythical national championships in football. Third, I've been saying for years that it's stupid for Chicago to be in D-III as well. That Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. can all be competitive in D-I/I-AA and that Chicago has relegated itself to D-III is even more of a joke than St. Thomas being in D-III.



They are playing on a different playing field than nearly all of their competitors. St. Thomas to D-III is like Kentucky basketball, Alabama football, Texas football, etc. in terms of their money and willingness to compete relative to their peers. The problem for Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, etc. is that they have no higher place to go. St. Thomas does. Macalaster is a joke for a different reason (the same reason as Chicago is a joke) - they have a sh*t-ton of money too, but they want to "compete" in sports as cheaply as possible. St. Thomas doesn't want to do that, to their credit. But they'd rather stay in the lowest NCAA division possible and beat up on opponents rather than make a commitment to move up and playing against a level playing field. That is why it is a joke that they aren't at least D-II.

If St. Thomas was really in a situation where they were dominating all of the competition at D3 I would agree with you. But they aren't. Just cause they're beating up on some of the D3 schools in Minnesota doesn't mean much.

 

[UST82Gopher]

First, St. Thomas is basically an SEC school academically (comparable to South Carolina or Kentucky), while Chicago is one of the elite institutions in the world. No BCS conference schools even compare with the exception of Stanford.

As the name suggests, I might have a just a little bit of insight to the St. Thomas situation. I am not sure even where to start - so I'm just going to let all this St Thomas talk pass by chalking it up to standard message board babble.

But your generalization of the academic standing of other BCS schools can't go unchallenged.

US News and World Reports list the flowing BCS schools in the top 50 academic institutes:

Duke, Rice University, Vanderbilt University, University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill and University of Texas--Austin.

That's quite a few BCS schools - many of whom are higher rated than many of the Big Ten schools. Quite frankly, the reason Texas was so aggressively pursued (before Nebraska was admitted) was not just for athletics - their academics would have raised the brand value of the Big Ten.

 

[zambam]

As the name suggests, I might have a just a little bit of insight to the St. Thomas situation. I am not sure even where to start - so I'm just going to let all this St Thomas talk pass by chalking it up to standard message board babble.

But your generalization of the academic standing of other BCS schools can't go unchallenged.

US News and World Reports list the flowing BCS schools in the top 50 academic institutes:

Duke, Rice University, Vanderbilt University, University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, University of Southern California, University of Virginia, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill and University of Texas--Austin.

That's quite a few BCS schools - many of whom are higher rated than many of the Big Ten schools. Quite frankly, the reason Texas was so aggressively pursued (before Nebraska was admitted) was not just for athletics - their academics would have raised the brand value of the Big Ten.

I'm not disagreeing or agreeing but rankings of schools are fairly arbitrary. My school was considered a top school in the Midwest by some place but I would really disagree with that after being here.

 

[bruster]

I'm sad that Winona State wasn't even put in the discussion

 

[Rosemountian]

Dpdoll is such an idiot on this subject it is amazing. What's more amazing is his insistence that he is correct on a subject he clearly has a small amount of knowledge on.