Why Nebraska never will leave the Big Ten
I'm a Nebraska alum and have been reading your columns for the past five years to gauge the sentiment of the Oklahoma fans to college realignment. My message is prompted by your occasional calls for reactions from Cornhusker fans to the move to the Big Ten as well as all of the speculation ignited by President Boren's comments last month. I also have some perspective on this issue from the administrative side as I've been in academia for over 35 years. Apologies for this extremely lengthy missive!There is a small (and extremely vocal) fraction of the Nebraska fan base that in 2010 proclaimed We must escape from evil Texas! Get us into another conference where we won't be handicapped! We'll win the Big Ten Championship every year! and then, a few years later, when reality set in, whined Oh I wish we were back in the Big 12 with our friends. The Big Ten is terrible. No offense, but I suspect that the Sooners have a similar contingent of rationality in their midst.My sense is that the vast majority of Nebraska fans are pleased with the move, but are not ecstatic. I believe most would love to return to the Big Eight, where we played 10 scrimmages and then faced Oklahoma for the conference championship, but those days are long gone and never to return.Those of us my age (one of my first memory of sports is the crushing 1964 loss in Norman that broke our 16-game winning streak) do miss the games with our neighbors, and particularly rue the demise of the Oklahoma contests, but time passes, and in another decade the Big Eight will be but a distant memory of grandparents and the idea of Nebraska in a conference other than the Big Ten will sound absurd. Yes, there are a number of less-than-inspiring conference games (last year's home conference schedule of Rutgers, Illinois, Purdue, and Minnesota was particularly lackluster, but then we have no right to complain if we fail to win them all!), but that will be the case in any conference.We very much do like the Big Ten Network, and the collegiality and stability of the Big Ten is an enormous improvement (although my alma mater is not blameless on these issues regarding the Big 12). If you asked the fans to vote whether to return to the Big 12 or stay in the Big Ten, my sense is that an overwhelming majority would support the Big Ten, and the Big 12 fraction will dwindle yearly.I realize that you write a sports column and most of your readers don't consider academics to play any role in these matters, but let me describe my evaluation of Nebraska's move and the crucial role that academics played in their decision. A popular question in the realignment discussion is Who was the biggest winner in this process? Was it A&M, Rutgers or TCU? In my mind, the undisputed winner was Nebraska, and it is not even close.Let us recall Nebraska's situation in November 2009. I have a high regard for my alma mater and am grateful for the education I received, but by any objective standard the future was bleak. While the state was not severely affected by the Great Recession, the demographic projections were of a slow, steady decline with respect to the rest of the nation. The university was one of the earliest members of the AAU (the prestigious American Association of Universities), but this status was in grave danger, as the university had been warned earlier in the decade that they faced expulsion unless radical improvements were made (this situation could have been largely remedied if they had slightly revised their administrative structure to allow the medical school research to be attached to the Lincoln campus, but to my astonishment they refused to do so!). The one aspect of UNL that had national recognition, their football team, had experienced nearly a decade of mediocrity, and while the new football coach had made us competitive on the conference level, only the most starry-eyed Cornhusker fan could dream of the return to the glory days of being an annual challenger for national honors; the best we could hope for was to be an Iowa or Missouri. I envisioned only a greatly diminished future for all aspects of the university.When the Big Ten announced their plan for expansion, several people suggested that Nebraska was a strong candidate. I have to admit that the first time I heard this proposal I burst out laughing; there was no way that the Big Ten would admit a school with Nebraska's academic record into the conference. Unlike the other conferences, the Big Ten is both an athletic and academic collaboration. The Big Ten takes academic stature (particularly research) extremely seriously; the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which includes the Big Ten schools and the University of Chicago, is an academic partnership, and while it does not dispense funds as do conferences, it is a relatively close-knit group. I cannot recall how many meetings that I attended at my institution where the questions Where do we rank in this area in the CIC? How can we improve? arose; there was intense pressure to improve academic standing, and the results were evident in the most recent National Research Council Rankings of Graduate Programs (this is what the Big Ten presidents value, not the US News et al rankings).I recall the near-universal surprise in November 2012 when Maryland and Rutgers were asked to join, but if one thought as a college president and not as a fan in the street, the moves were quite straightforward. One item that has not received much attention on the sports pages is that Johns Hopkins, which is another truly elite university, has just placed all of their Division I sports in the Big Ten; I would not be surprised if they joined the CIC in the near future.I can still remember the moment (6:46 a.m. on 9 June 2010) when I heard the announcement that Nebraska was going to be invited to the Big Ten; I nearly leapt up in bewildered joy! If this was true it was the greatest event in the history of the university since its founding. I felt that I was experiencing an ending to a Victorian novel: the grim, forbidding fate inevitably closing in was suddenly replaced by an improbable twist leading to glorious future! Nebraska was now, by association, in the academic environment of Chicago, Wisconsin, Northwestern, et al. There is a saying in real estate that the best investment is to own the least expensive house in the most expensive neighborhood, and this is essentially where Nebraska finds itself.Last year while flying into Lincoln, I was sitting next to a UNL Engineering faculty member, and he remarked that the pressure to improve performance had considerably increased since joining the Big Ten. I doubt Nebraska will ever rise to the level of a Michigan (unless Warren Buffet leaves UNL a couple of billion dollars), but the university's long term survival as a top tier institution is assured.I do believe that even if the Big 12 had been relatively stable and there had been no difference in the finances Nebraska still would still have seriously considered an opportunity to join the Big Ten if the option was available.There has been considerable speculation about the actions that Oklahoma may take regarding conference realignment. If OU can mitigate the impact of the Grant of Rights and separate itself from OSU, I can see why the lure of the SEC would be overwhelming for the fanbase. If I was leading the University of Oklahoma, however, I would be pushing for a Big Ten invite. OU is much like Nebraska: a good, but not particularly prestigious, university in a small state, with a nationally-recognized athletic program. I for one would love to see the Thanksgiving week contests between the Sooners and the Cornhuskers resurrected, and the academic benefits for Oklahoma would be enormous!I cant disagree with much of anything the professor wrote. Academic standing does a play huge role in most conference realignment. I know that when OU and OSU were considering jumping to the Pac-12, the academic side of OU (and I assume OSU) was thrilled at the prospect of joining a conference that included the likes of Stanford and Cal-Berkeley.I would have liked to read more about Nebraska and the AAU, which unceremoniously kicked out Nebraska from the association in 2011. Some speculate that the Big Ten would not have invited Nebraska without its standing in the AAU. I know that one of Borens long-term goals is to get OU admitted to the AAU.I do think that the professor is understating Nebraskans affection for the old days. I dont have anything but anecdotal evidence for that, but that ember is kept alive more by the Nebraska than the old Big 12 side. I was on a Nebraska radio station last week and was asked how the Big 12 would receive the Huskers should they return to the conference. I told the hosts that fans of the schools would line the freeways, from Nebraska City on I-29 to Las Colinas on the John Carpenter Freeway, to welcome back Nebraska. I thought it was a great answer, but I thought it was an even better question. http://m.newsok.com/why-nebraska-never-will-leave-the-big-ten/article/5436874
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XXJefferson51
9 years ago
So I think the hunger for the old days is more than just the passion of a small minority. I also think the academic standing for NU in the Big Ten is something the university leadership never can walk away from.