I believe stanford dwarfs ut's endowment, and alot of the ivy league dwarfs stanford.NIL is what is taylor made for the Longhorns. When they get the right coach, they will blast everyone away. There is no other school like them. No one has the alumni and financial resources that they do. Look at their endowment, only Harvard's is larger. As far as wanting to join an academically superior conference, nothing could be further from these top ranked players minds. There are exceptions, but as we learned from the North Carolina academic investigation/fraud, many if not most of their FB players, as in other sec/acc teams, were reading on a 4th to 6th grade level, thus the creation of the phony classes that were exposed. Academics are a problem for these players. We will soon be in the new era where these football players are not students at all. They will be employees of the incorporated Athletic Departments that are licensed to use a university's name and logo just as Lane Kiffin described about a month ago. As he stated, the sec is now a professional football league. They are triple A ball, the Big 10 is double A ball. Many schools outside the two super conferences will, in the next 10 to 20 years, drop the sport as their relevance, and then interest, declines.
but that doesn't matter I guess if a mini nfl draft and salary cap is imposed on the foreseen duopoly.
I think lane would agree with me that the sec, ohio state, usc etc.. have been professional football with the money just flowing in from under the table going on 2 decades now.
Nebraska has allways been considered the harvard of the plains, what with being aau before many big 10 schools, academic all americans, the only school supplying strat coms space force, etc...so thats never been a problem.
but I hear you, what with the basket weaving classes from oklahoma to miami (sec country). from the tiger king, to deliverance, we all have seen the results.
my hope in posting this thread is 2 fold, to make better recruiting available to the big 10 and to save as many teams possible for representation across the nation. with of course tv markets in mind.
I think Nebraska and texas have 2 common problems:
1. donors
a. Nebraska for some unknown reason went pass happy because solich could'nt get a running backs coach to replace him, thus dan and buck went on a fumbel escapade, and made Nebraska 1 dimensional, see crouch, lord etc...then we went callahan pass happy and down hill since...like we were going to out recruit everyone for the next joe montana, see the martinez's brothers...
b. texas donor problem is also evident with the t-sip 40 acre donors wanting to share their veiws with the coach over drinks, distracting him from coaching then a quick exit...only mack brown could pull this off...
2. past accomplishments
a. Nebraska should collect all the trophies and store them in the south endzone when they remodel... you don't want players walking by crystal trophies and getting delusions of granduer..they only need 2 things to see, the current record and horseshoe..
b. texas like wise it has been said the second they get a uniform they think they won the superbowl, thus the underperforming of a slew of 5 star recruits
finally, rice, baylor, tt, tcu, smu, ut, oklahoma, a&m, oklahoma state..thats 9 texas schools using texas recruits
if it was reduced to just 3, ut a&m oklahoma...thus my inclusion of smu and houston to the BIG, the 2 biggest markets