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Sorry this is a mobile link:
http://m.athlonsports.com/college-football/ranking-big-tens-expansion-wish-list

If academics are a concern then Cougar Town should be way lower on the list.

We only make sense as a package, they would have to stomach UH. Maybe all the state investment in research funding there will help.

Interesting mention of Nebraska. We may be a legit option just for recruiting purposes more than even market.

academics are a big issue for SMU joining the big 10? give me a freakin break

I'll believe this when it happens, and not before.

Going to the Big 10 would be a ridiculous financial change. The Big East supposedly turned down a TV contract (SMU didn't have a vote, of course) that would have paid each school about $10 million a year, and now is looking at a contract that pays about 20 percent of that. But end up in the Big East and nobody will remember the missed Big East contract. Big 10 payout dwarfs anything the Big East can offer.

Based on the US News college rankings here is what I found:
12 Northwestern
29 Michigan
41 Wisconsin
46 Penn State
46 Illinois
56 Ohio State
58 SMU
65 Purdue
68 Minnesota
72 Michigan State
72 Iowa
83 Indiana
101 Nebraska
184 Houston

academics are a big issue for SMU joining the big 10?

Huh???

Other than maybe Northwestern, none of those schools can even hold our jock strap when it comes to academics. This guy obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. SMU and UH as schools go have very little in common. The only thing they have in common is that they are in the same state and their athletic programs have been in the same conferences for a long time. The similarities stop there.

And, according to Wikipedia, although they have over 65,000 students their endowment is only $660M million versus ours at $1.4B with only 7,000 students.

Not going to allow myself to hope for this ... but it would be awfully nice.

I'm also a little leery of a story written by a website and not by a human being with an actual name.

We have very little research credibility and dollars, unless you count Southwestern Studies. We aren't as hot academically as we think.

SMUer wrote:We have very little research credibility and dollars, unless you count Southwestern Studies. We aren't as hot academically as we think.

Southwest Studies is where it's at!

Seriously though, SMU took decades too long to get an engineering program up and running. We're lagging behind in many key engineering and science research sectors. Those public ivies in the Big 10 are hot spots of graduate research activity, we can't really say the same about SMU. That's what matters to these Big 10 schools. Hell, University of Chicago is still affiliated with the Big 10, largely due to research affiliations.

University of Chicago was a founding member of the Big 10

Stallion wrote:University of Chicago was a founding member of the Big 10

And the very first Heisman Trophy winner was Jay Berwanger from the U. of Chicago "Maroons".

research dollars do not equal quality. it usually just means you have a medical school.

it does help however, but at least our research dollars have doubled lately but we are still pretty far behind. interestingly, our education school will help in this area, as will engineering continuing to improve. Perkins, Meadows and Dedman are worthless as far as research goes.

in any event - except for a few we are above most of the big 10 in academics.