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One word - Stillwater.

Gundy needs to take a better job

Monty_The_Mustang wrote:Gundy needs to take a better job

but the mullet works so well in Stillwater

gostangs wrote:One word - Stillwater.

You can categorize B12 cities into 3 groups:

Turds
MaMa-HuHu
Austin

Why UT can’t dominate this conference is truly remarkable.

Is there a positive correlation between the quality of the town/city and football success? I'd guess there would be more of an inverse relationship. Check out Tuscaloosa

"quality" of the town/city doesn't necessarily correlate to size. Plenty of small college towns that are attractive to kids...I know both of mine really enjoyed their experience at Clemson and that is a typical "hard to get to" small college town. Close enough to Greenville or Atlanta for those who need their "city fix" but not everyone likes living in places like Dallas or Houston or Los Angeles, etc...

Oh please, don't go there. You really don't want to go there.

Virtually every Big10 university is located in a 'quaint' college town.

The only schools that qualify in the B12 are probably Iowa St, Kansas and K-State, but they have limited CFB success (Bill Snyder was a once-in-century hire?) and simply don't have the football skins to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, Austin probably competes against Ann Arbor and maybe, maybe Chapel Hill or Berkley as the ULTIMATE college town.

To quote a famous American, Waco and Lubbock are 'crap holes'. Stillwater can't be much better, I wouldn't know, I have no desire to visit there. Fort Worth is better but it's still Cowtown. That's a huge advantage to UT.

UT should hands down be one of the 5 most successful CFB programs in America. Absent RKR, they really haven't done much.

Below are rankings, best football team to worst, for the SEC last season. In parentheses are the ranking of the college town, based on this voting panel:

Tim Brando, FOX Sports
Dari Nowkhah, SEC Network
Tony Barnhart, AJC/SEC Net
Zac Ellis, Sports Illustrated
Chris Low, ESPN
Wes Rucker, 247Sports
Laura Rutledge, SEC Network
Chad Withrow, 104.5 The Zone-Nashville
Kayce Smith, ESPN/SEC Net
Seth Emerson, Macon Telegraph
Josh Ward, WNML-Knoxville
Braden Gall, Athlon Sports/SiriusXM

1. Alabama, Tuscaloosa (6)
2. Georgia, Athens, GA (2)
3. Auburn, Auburn, AL (7)
4. Miss State, Starkville (14)
5. LSU, Baton Rouge (5)
6. South Carolina, Columbia (13)
7. A&M, College Station (10)
8. Missouri, Columbia, MO (8)
9. Ole Miss, Oxford (3)
10. Kentucky, Lexington (9)
11. Florida, Gainesville (11)
12. Arkansas, Fayetteville (12)
13. Vanderbilt, Nashville (1)
14. Tennessee, Knoxville (4)

As regards this data set, there is a very slight negative correlation (corr coefficient: -0.05) in terms of how nice the town is compared to how good the football team is.

This just in - there is a one to one correlation to the quality of the program (Players/Staff) and success on the field. Go figure.

I am pretty sure there are some other reasons "enticing" a lot of top recruits to these desolate locations.

Maybe its because it is a LOT easier to keep some extra benefits quiet in a small college town where everyone is on the same page and will look the other way.

The NCAA investigators do not want to spend a year camping out in some desolate location.

SoCal_Pony wrote:Oh please, don't go there. You really don't want to go there.

Virtually every Big10 university is located in a 'quaint' college town.

The only schools that qualify in the B12 are probably Iowa St, Kansas and K-State, but they have limited CFB success (Bill Snyder was a once-in-century hire?) and simply don't have the football skins to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, Austin probably competes against Ann Arbor and maybe, maybe Chapel Hill or Berkley as the ULTIMATE college town.

To quote a famous American, Waco and Lubbock are 'crap holes'. Stillwater can't be much better, I wouldn't know, I have no desire to visit there. Fort Worth is better but it's still Cowtown. That's a huge advantage to UT.

UT should hands down be one of the 5 most successful CFB programs in America. Absent RKR, they really haven't done much.

Most potential recruits could give a you know what whether a certain locale is culturally "desireable". Saban has already proven that success is attainable in what might be considered a cultural backwater. Mullin and Sherrill were both able to attract a fair degree of talent to... Starkville. Clemson is a tiny place that is at least as geographically isolated as Stillwater if not more so.

K-state and Kansas are both located in a state that emphasizes Basketball. You think Indiana is ever going to have an elite CFB program anywhere in that state? It could happen but overcoming larger cultural problems such as that states love of Basketball are far more relevant than whether a particular campus is seen as "cool" by potential recruits.

Frankly, what recruit really thinks about the fact that UT is in Austin? or that Cal is in the Bay Area? few I would argue. College Station is by the far the biggest craphole imaginable yet Sherrill was able to consistently draw athletes to that dump (the majority of whom chose tamu over UT). And FYI: I would take Stillwater over the Hitler Youth Academy any day as far as "ambience". Very friendly place with a beautiful campus. It may not be "cool" since snobs like you would never visit but Gundy has built something there.

Ummm.... isn’t Notre Dame in Indiana?