Davidson to the A10?

[whaler11]

I think that is what has happened. Does that free up a slot for us?

 

[whaler11]

Siena is their other option? Davidson spurned the Colonial? If the goal is destroying college sports, then progress has been made.

 

[upstater]

Has the A-10 ever called Boston U.? If not, they have heads up arses.

 

[zls44]

BU just went from America East to the Patriot League. They voluntarily took a step down to a non-scholarship league.

So, I doubt the A-10 is on the horn.

 

[upstater]

BU just went from America East to the Patriot League. They voluntarily took a step down to a non-scholarship league.

So, I doubt the A-10 is on the horn.

That's not a step down. Patriot League is better than Am East. And they plan to STILL give scholarships in bball.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

That's not a step down. Patriot League is better than Am East. And they plan to STILL give scholarships in bball.

Not to mention that this will have no impact on BU's 1 major, money making sport, Hockey, which is in Hockey East.

 

[upstater]

Not to mention that this will have no impact on BU's 1 major, money making sport, Hockey, which is in Hockey East.

Best thing BU ever did was drop football. It stabilized the entire athletic department. Academically, it's been rising up the charts faster than any school I can think of.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

Best thing BU ever did was drop football. It stabilized the entire athletic department. Academically, it's been rising up the charts faster than any school I can think of.

I remember when BU announced it was dropping football. I think it was the next game, they played in Storrs and the entire team work electrical tape over their BU logo’s. Everyone felt bad for the team.
BU basically made a decision 20 years ago to, outside of hockey, drop-out of the money war that major college athletics have become. Their competitive focus since then has been on the two schools across the Charles on an academic basis – Harvard and MIT. Northeastern has since followed suit; but, they are not aiming to compete with that pair. Overall, I got my MBA from BU and found the school to be very over-rated with tuition and ego’s of an Ivy League school without the pedigree of one.

 

[zls44]

I agree on BU making the right move dropping hockey- that said, they are a horrible, horrible fit for the A-10. And an illogical one.

 

[zls44]

That's not a step down. Patriot League is better than Am East. And they plan to STILL give scholarships in bball.

It's not a step up to join a conference where significant number of schools don't give out scholarships. Ever.

 

[upstater]

It's not a step up to join a conference where significant number of schools don't give out scholarships. Ever.

Even if those teams are more successful head to head, year in and year out, with the conference you left?

And herein lies the difference between a scholarship and a grant-in-aid from schools like Bucknell.

Apparently, the athletes see very little difference between the two, and given the choice, they go to Patriot League schools over American East Schools.

 

[Da_Aisijimo_Gou]

As a university, how does BU suffer in switching from the declining America East to the academically more respected Patriot League which is now offering additional financial aid to student-athletes? Better league, and simply semantics with respect to financial support for their student-athlete team members.

In last weekend's Frozen Four NCAA national championship game, how many goals did Quinnipiac's scholarship hockey players score against grant-in-aid laden Yale? How'd that work out?

For a fairly decent educational opportunity some leveraged to greater degrees than other equivalent knuckleheads, friends who played hockey with Harvard paid almost nothing to absolutely zip. Tomato, tomato ... grant-in-aid, scholarship.

 

[zls44]

Even if those teams are more successful head to head, year in and year out, with the conference you left?

And herein lies the difference between a scholarship and a grant-in-aid from schools like Bucknell.

Apparently, the athletes see very little difference between the two, and given the choice, they go to Patriot League schools over American East Schools.

Bucknell, American and Lehigh are at a totally different level than the rest of the Patriot League (in basketball and wrestling only). The rest is complete unmitigated crap. Navy, Army (with all due respect to both for their greater mission), Holy Cross, Lafayette...these are meaningless schools who add nothing to Division I in nearly every sport.

You're confusing BU's academic rise with them being a good fit for a good basketball conference- they aren't, they never have been, they never will be.

 

[zls44]

To clarify- I don't think America East is better than the Patriot League, I just strongly disagree with the idea that moving from one to the other is a step up.

 

[upstater]

Bucknell, American and Lehigh are at a totally different level than the rest of the Patriot League (in basketball and wrestling only). The rest is complete unmitigated crap. Navy, Army (with all due respect to both for their greater mission), Holy Cross, Lafayette...these are meaningless schools who add nothing to Division I in nearly every sport.

You're confusing BU's academic rise with them being a good fit for a good basketball conference- they aren't, they never have been, they never will be.

I can tell you unequivocally that the people in the ADs office at BU consider this a step up in competition.

As for whether BU's bball has ever been good, or ever will be, it seems to me that you actually don't know much about it. The level of play used to be decently high for a mid-major until America East came along. In the old ECAC, the level of play was much higher than America East. Those were the days when Rick Pitino and Mike Jarvis were coaching, and they had top payers like Gary Plummer and Drederick Irving, and even gave Duke and Coach K. and run for its money in the NCAAs. It dropped a level in the 1990s but prior to that BU bball used to fill Walter Brown Arena.

 

[BUHusky]

I'm a fairly recent BU alum (my handle might give that away). It's pretty much universally known that the move to the Patriot League is a mostly academic one. No offense to U of Maryland Baltimore County, but schools like them in the America East just don't provide the academic peers BU wants at this stage. President Brown has really made academics the priority and focus since he took office in 2005, and finally getting an AAU invite along with the move to the Patriot League have been the fruits of that focus.

Also, I'm not sure why there has been all this discussion about the Patriot League scholarship situation. The Patriot League has been giving scholarships in basketball since 1998 (see http://www.patriotleague.org/school-bio/patr-school-bio-history.html), so BU basketball is fine. And the Patriot League also voted to start giving scholarships in football starting in 2013 (not that football matters affect BU).

And finally, as has been mentioned before in this thread, BU hockey, the bread and butter of BU athletics, remains in Hockey East, the premiere conference in college hockey, so no worries on that front.

All that said, I'm firmly in the camp that believes moving to the Patriot League is indeed a big step up for BU.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

The Patriot was the right move for BU as the above post noted.*** AE is a crap league from an academic perspective, and it's one of the worst competitively as well. Patriot is far better academically, and BU's profile fits in better, and athletically a mild step up. BU was the only private school in AE, whereas most Patriot's are private.

The problem with BU's non-hockey sports is that the men's basketball team has not been that competitive in the AE over the long term. They've been good, but not great, and certainly not good enough for the A-10. On the flip side, their other big olympic programs have absolutely dominated the AE, to the point that it was becoming laughable. The soccer teams are both regular NCAA tournament qualifiers, the women's basketball team has frequently been at the top of the league and received multiple at-large WNIT bids, the women's lacrosse team is perennially in the top 10 nationally, the tennis team won the AE title something like 10 years in a row, and we've won the Commissioner's Cup (best overall performing team in the conference) for the past decade straight or something like that. But the crutch has always been the performance of men's basketball, which is really all that would matter with respect to getting an A-10 invite. We have the facility in Agganis that's suitable for the conference, but until the basketball team starts winning, the bid won't be there.

BU actually turned down an invite to the CAA in 2005 when they invited BU and Northeastern, which NU accepted. It was widely speculated that BU was holding out for an eventual A-10 bid.


***How recent of a grad are you? I'm '09 - the good year.

 

[upstater]

'90

I don't think AE was that bad academically. Even had some AAU schools in it--probably more than most as a % of total.

But you're right about UMBC. And perhaps Hartford. Other than those, it was not bad at all academically. It was actually pretty good.

 

[pj]

I remember when BU announced it was dropping football. I think it was the next game, they played in Storrs and the entire team work electrical tape over their BU logo’s. Everyone felt bad for the team.
BU basically made a decision 20 years ago to, outside of hockey, drop-out of the money war that major college athletics have become. Their competitive focus since then has been on the two schools across the Charles on an academic basis – Harvard and MIT. Northeastern has since followed suit; but, they are not aiming to compete with that pair. Overall, I got my MBA from BU and found the school to be very over-rated with tuition and ego’s of an Ivy League school without the pedigree of one.

When I think of BU I think of a money-making institution with educational and research functions on the side. Their large foreign student population is there for profitability reasons. Their research is there for the overhead income; their medical school benefits by being in Boston with a number of prestigious hospitals / medical schools -- sort of a poor man's Harvard, you get to rub shoulders with more prestigious folks. I'm not surprised they dropped sports they weren't competitive in.

Not that this is a dumb decision, and you could say much the same about Harvard, which is more or less a hedge fund and a prestige-selling business with a university on the side.

 

[upstater]

When I think of BU I think of a money-making institution with educational and research functions on the side. Their large foreign student population is there for profitability reasons. Their research is there for the overhead income; their medical school benefits by being in Boston with a number of prestigious hospitals / medical schools -- sort of a poor man's Harvard, you get to rub shoulders with more prestigious folks. I'm not surprised they dropped sports they weren't competitive in.

Not that this is a dumb decision, and you could say much the same about Harvard, which is more or less a hedge fund and a prestige-selling business with a university on the side.

Research is a net money loser, not money maker. Overhead gets plowed into research facilities and salaries. I can't wait until schools get rid of the liberal arts. You want to seen tuition skyrocket? Just wait.

I don't see Boston U. as much different in how it goes about business than any other school. Because of its initial large footprint, it has tried to up the quality of its students in any way possible. It needs 20k high caliber kids. Hard to do in this day and age. Much easier when you're small. A poor man's Harvard. Harvard is Harvard. comparatively, everyone else is a poor man.

The foreign student population adds to the international reputation of the school. It really has come a long way.

 

[Pudge]

ahem ... I think the University of Maryland - Baltimore County has a bright future. It has a dynamic President and really not what you are portraying. They have a chance, with consistent focus and drive, to be a solid second school in an important state. Who else? Towson???

 

[gioff23]

There are whispers UDelaware may head to A10 as well. the CAA is dying on the vine and schools there are looking for other landing spots. It'll be interesting what happens to the FB schools of the CAA

 

[zls44]

Thanks for setting me straight on the scholarship situation for basketball.

Competition-wise, turning down the CAA was pretty dumb. Even the bargain-basement version of the CAA is better than the PL or AE basketball-wise. There's other factors at play here, for BU, I suppose.

 

[zls44]

ahem ... I think the University of Maryland - Baltimore County has a bright future. It has a dynamic President and really not what you are portraying. They have a chance, with consistent focus and drive, to be a solid second school in an important state. Who else? Towson???

Heck yes, Towson. They're building the campus up very nicely. The new arena is going to be incredible.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

Thanks for setting me straight on the scholarship situation for basketball.

Competition-wise, turning down the CAA was pretty dumb. Even the bargain-basement version of the CAA is better than the PL or AE basketball-wise. There's other factors at play here, for BU, I suppose.

The CAA rejection was a bad idea in hindsight. At the time, the explanation was the travel costs would be very high, as the league would be BU, Northeastern, then a bunch of teams primarily located in Virginia. I don't know how good of a reason or not that was, but competitively, it was a bad decision.