Academic Rankings and Conference Realignments: What Texas Can Do

My Longhorn buddy takes some exception to what I have to say in the first "Academic Rankings and Conference Realignments ." He notes that different rankings systems come out with different results.

That is a given, but here is what is also a given: any rankings system that places the Pac-10 even almost equal with the ACC is as seriously flawed as a system that ranks MWC football as roughly equal to SEC football. Of conferences that play Bowls Championship football, two stand head and shoulders above the rest: the ACC and Big Ten.

If Texas is truly serious about joining an academically premier conference, it has two choices: the ACC and Big Ten.

The Pac-10 is a step up from the Big 12, but adding two Tier three Big 12 schools to the Pac-10 will only drag it down farther in any legitimate academic rankings. If the Pac-10 were serious about raising its own academic rankings, it would have nixed talk of Oklahoma State and Texas Tech and suggested Baylor (#80 on the US News & World Report list, only three behind Colorado), SMU (# 68, nine better than Colorado), TCU (#110), or, best of all academically, Rice (#17).

If Texas truly cared about its own conference's academic rankings and planned to join the Pac-10, it would have taken the lead to demand that OSU and TTU be replaced in the plan by a pair of Texan private schools.

So maybe SEC fans are correct when they assert that Texas trumpeting its refusal to join the SEC as being about academics is a lot of old fashioned BS.

My Longhorn friend says that Texas must balance two things: academic ties and ties to southwestern schools. Texas needs to strike the balance, he says, between two things that are traditionally opposites

Obviously, Texas, for all its bluster about its power, cannot save both. That is the reason that three of the private schools that were members of the SWC are not members of the Big 12. Texas, it should be noted, has chosen sports and Tier three schools over private schools with much better academic rankings. It is that which SEC fans say marks Longhorn hypocrisy.

Texas can arrange to take care of both and get itself into a truly superior conference academically, though the plan would require two BCS leagues both expanding to 16.

The starting point is to note that Texas Tech was not a charter member of the SWC. It joined almost as late as did Houston. The next fact to digest is that the Red River Shootout was a non-conference game for most of history.

So why must Texas be in the same conference with OU (and also with Oklahoma State) and TTU?

Here is how Texas can play the mastermind: arrange things so that six southwestern schools in the states of TX and OK get planted in BCS AQ conferences.

Behind the scenes, Texas persuades A&M that the two of them will select two TX private schools and present the foursome as a package deal to the ACC. The ACC loves private schools, and as much as what Texas and A&M would bring, the thought of helping Texas and A&M keep, or make, two private schools as BCS league members would thrill the hearts ACC ADs and Presidents.

That would go double if Rice is included.

Texas also should explain to state legislators and power brokers that it will use its power to persuade the SEC to take OU, OSU, TTU, and one TX private school. Baptists are big in SEC country, which means Baylor might be the best bet to sell to SEC ADs.

The SEC would love to have OU, with or without Texas, and it would be happy to have two schools in TX as well as OSU.

The deal could be cemented with the ACC and SEC agreeing to play in the Cotton Bowl. The SEC would agree to send the best team it has from the states of TX, OK, AR, and LA that is not in a BCS bowl, and the ACC would agree to send the best team it has in TX that is not in a BCS bowl (unless that team has eight or fewer wins and the Cotton Bowl committee prefers another ACC team).

Everybody wins—well, except for one TX private school and the University of Houston, and SEC academic rankings.

Is it remotely likely that Texas would make such moves?

No.

Texas is not truly serious about being in an academically superior conference. Nor does it want to be in the toughest football conference.

Texas prefers the double mediocrity of the Pac or the fawning neediness of Tier three schools on the Plains.

At least the Aggies want the best in at least one thing.