solomouse wrote:let's see...notre dame...is it the only private school that competes? how about stanford,miami,baylor,usc,maybe tcu,byu,as well as duke...they seem to compete and really,so does smu except in the money sports...
This is my statmemnt: "They are one of the few private universities that has shown that it can compete with the big public state schools in athletics, while also being one of the best academic universities in the country".
This meant top academic schoosl with top athletic programs that have been successful over an extended period (70+ years). I should have mentioned Stanford as well. Stanford doesn't have the same historical football history but it has been very competitive in other sports.
As for baylor, tcu and byu being part of my criteria, they're not even in the same zip code. First, they're not top academic schools. Second, they haven't been competitive across various sports for an extended period of time. You could make an argument for USC, but I was focused on schools with smaller undergraduate enrollment (ie, less than 10,000). USC is one of the largest private schools.