BleedGopher
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per the Wall Street Journal:
The college football universe is unabashedly obsessed with rankings. Teams are ranked before they even play a game every season, and the magnitude of a win or less is measured by its reflection in the polls. Then the real arguments begin when the College Football Playoff releases its official rankings later in the season, which turns into a weekly exercise in euphoria and hysteria for the various teams in the hunt.
But one idea is lost in the endless comparisons: The players involved are representing actual universities where people take classes and learn things. For football fans, this opens an extra dimension of bragging rights.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education published a new set of rankings that measures U.S. colleges and universities based on their academic strength and other factors such as the salaries earned by their graduates. And now with the college football season in full swing, it’s time to put academic and football success side by side.
Big Ten
Average Academic Rank: 107
Ohio State has ruled the Big Ten over the last 10 years, but rival Michigan rates higher academically. (Any Michigan fan will likely remind of you of this within five minutes of starting a conversation.) Northwestern is the cream of the classroom but middling on the field. Then there’s Maryland and Rutgers, the two newest additions to the Big Ten—they didn’t do anything to boost the league’s academic or football profiles. In a conference that boasts the best average academic ranking, Nebraska, another relatively new addition, is the biggest outlier: The Cornhuskers rank 469th on the WSJ/THE list, more than 300 spots behind the next closest Big Ten school.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/college-rankings-football-vs-academics-1476293728
Go Gophers!!
The college football universe is unabashedly obsessed with rankings. Teams are ranked before they even play a game every season, and the magnitude of a win or less is measured by its reflection in the polls. Then the real arguments begin when the College Football Playoff releases its official rankings later in the season, which turns into a weekly exercise in euphoria and hysteria for the various teams in the hunt.
But one idea is lost in the endless comparisons: The players involved are representing actual universities where people take classes and learn things. For football fans, this opens an extra dimension of bragging rights.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education published a new set of rankings that measures U.S. colleges and universities based on their academic strength and other factors such as the salaries earned by their graduates. And now with the college football season in full swing, it’s time to put academic and football success side by side.
Big Ten
Average Academic Rank: 107
Ohio State has ruled the Big Ten over the last 10 years, but rival Michigan rates higher academically. (Any Michigan fan will likely remind of you of this within five minutes of starting a conversation.) Northwestern is the cream of the classroom but middling on the field. Then there’s Maryland and Rutgers, the two newest additions to the Big Ten—they didn’t do anything to boost the league’s academic or football profiles. In a conference that boasts the best average academic ranking, Nebraska, another relatively new addition, is the biggest outlier: The Cornhuskers rank 469th on the WSJ/THE list, more than 300 spots behind the next closest Big Ten school.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/college-rankings-football-vs-academics-1476293728
Go Gophers!!
