How Do the Power Five Conferences Perform Academically According to the World University Rankings?

How do the Power Five Conferences perform academically?

Football season has begun with a bang, and once again fans from around the country are in heated debate as to which schools and conferences are the best in the land.

Of course, most of those debates are centered around football. Especially down in SEC country, where football is much more important than academics.

The World University Rankings were released today and this article will look at where Power Five Conference schools landed on the Top 100 of the charts. 

This is a tough ranking because the Power Five schools are competing not only with each other but also other top universities from around the world.

In Grand Countdown Fashion, the list of Power Five Conferences from Worst to First. 

 

#5 -- The Southeastern Conference (SEC) -- ZERO

The SEC landed a big fat ZERO for schools on the "Wonderful One Hundred" list of top universities in the world. The closest to making the Top 100 was Vanderbilt at #105.

#4 -- The Big 12 Conference -- ONE

The Big 12 beat the SEC by one by landing the University of Texas on the Top 100. The Longhorns came in at #49 worldwide.

#3 -- The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) --  FOUR

The ACC landed FOUR schools on the "Wonderful One Hundred" that was released today. Those schools were:
-- #17 - Duke University
-- #33 - Georgia Tech University
-- #56 - North Carolina University
-- #100 - University of Pittsburgh 

#2 -- The Pac-12 Conference -- SIX

The Pac-12 landed SIX schools on the Worldwide Top 100, including four on the ultra prestigious Top 25. Those four were more than any other Power 5 conference.
-- #3 - Stanford
-- #15 - UCLA
-- #18 - California
-- #25 - Washington
-- #66 - USC
-- #100 - Colorado (tied with ACC's Pittsburgh)

#1 -- The Big Ten Conference -- TEN

The overall academic excellence award surely goes to the Big Ten, which placed 10 of their conference schools on the Worldwide Top 100. The Pac-12 may have had a few higher up in the rankings, but the Big Ten pounded the rankings like no other conference.
-- #20 - Northwestern
-- #21 - Michigan
-- #37 - Illinois
-- #43 - Wisconsin
-- #56 - Minnesota
-- #60 - Purdue
-- #69 - Maryland
-- #70 - Ohio State
-- #77 - Penn State
-- #83 - Michigan State


The verdict is in and three of the Power Five conferences put a total of 20 schools on the Top 100 worldwide. Those were the Big Ten with 10, the Pac-12 with six, and the ACC with four. The SEC, the self-proclaimed kings of college football had a total of zero.

Breathe Easily, Mike MacIntyre is rebuilding the Colorado Buffaloes the Right Way

With the most recent National Letter of Intent Day now come and gone, fans of the University of Colorado football program have breathed a collective sigh of relief. 

The Buffs ended last season knowing that attrition had ravaged the vaunted 2012 class (rated in the mid 30's nationally by the recruiting services) to the point that only 10 of the original 29 remained to graduate. The endless task of recruiting is what allows college football programs to bring in the annual wave of graduating high school seniors to replenish their programs.

With only 85 scholarships available for the entire team, most schools shoot to have an incoming class of 25-28 young men each year, with expected attrition bringing down the total so that the total always remains at the NCAA mandated 85.

Attrition happens for numerous reasons. Kids get homesick or have family issues and transfer to be closer to home. Some leave for greener pastures and greater opportunity to play, while some are forced to quit due to injury. Others fail to make the transition to college level student commitments and leave due to grades, and others are asked to leave because the have failed to live by the standards of conduct their schools expect of them. And some are taken from the school after society has determined that criminal activity has necessitated a move to local jails or state or federal prison.

One of the primary reasons that the Colorado Buffaloes had fallen so far from their gloried past was bad recruiting over the last decade. And that bad recruiting is not based on the amateur evaluations of the so-called recruiting services. No, the bad recruiting was based upon coaches prior to Mike MacIntyre not effectively determining which young men had the academic and social skills to make it in college life, or in some cases, which young men would end up as convicted felons instead of being student athletes.

The collective sigh of relief felt by the Buffs faithful was due to the team  bringing in 18 quality young men in this year's class. Mike MacIntyre and his coaches were able to recover from the  horrible hole left from a class with 67% attrition due to Mac having a number of young men who are scheduled to graduate ahead of schedule. Due to the severe time commitments of being a college football player, most young men take 5 years to graduate, and that fact is built into the system though the use of a redshirt year.

This is MacIntyre's fourth class at Colorado, although he was not responsible for most of the first class. Unlike many coaches who take over at a Power Five conference school, MacIntyre did not rescind any of the scholarship offers that the prior coach had made. He felt that the University of Colorado needed to honor those commitments, and that integrity from his first months as head coach has carried over to this day.

Recruits and their parents KNOW that Mac and the University of Colorado are committed to these young men not only getting an education, but also graduating before they leave. Many schools try to sign up to 30 young men a year knowing that 30% of them will be pushed aside before graduation ever has a chance to come along. Those schools are known as football factories, where football takes precedence over academics.

That is not the University of Colorado, and that is not the Pac-12. MacIntyre has rebuilt the program the right way. His young men are here for the long haul, and when they leave they will have a real degree to take with them.

And fans of the University of Colorado football program can breathe better knowing that winning days ahead will have been achieved honorably and without lowering the standards of the university and the Boulder community. The players for the CU football program are the very proper definition of student-athletes.

National Letter of Intent Day and Spring Practices are Just Around the Corner: Hope Springs Eternal for CU Buffs

Counting down to National Letter of Intent Day (February 3rd) and the upcoming Spring football practices, college football fans from Boulder and around the country are starting to get excited. Every team is undefeated, and hope springs eternal.

For the top 25 level teams from last season, there is hope that 2016 will be the season that their team will be one of the final four playing for a National Championship. For those playing in a lower tier bowl, there is hope for a better bowl this year. For those sitting on the outside looking in when the bowl season rolled around, there is hope that their team might make one of the 41 bowl games which now follow the regular season. In fact, there are so many bowl games these days that some teams that were not even officially "bowl eligible" (6 wins) were able to go to bowl games last season despite only winning five games.

Of all the teams in the Power Five Conferences (Pac-12, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, and the ACC), no team has gone longer without going to a bowl than Colorado. The Buffs last went to a bowl way back in 2007. Only Kansas and Kentucky join Colorado as Big Five teams that have not been to a bowl game in more than five years.

Buff fans who have suffered through nearly a decade of futility are aching to get off the list of teams going through a bowl drought. The same goes for Buff players and coaches. Bowl games are a reward for the hard work of the season. It also allows a team to have a more practice time on the field.

Contrary to what many fans think, bowl practices are NOT limited to 15 days, like Spring practices are. That means having a trip to a bowl game allows a team to have TWO springs for coaches to work directly with the players. That's a reward for teams getting bowl berths, for sure, but it also widens the gap between teams that are bowl eligible and those who are not.

Coaching in Division 1 is always a tough business, and every coach not named Saban knows that a bad year or two could lead to a loss of their job. In some places, even coaches who have won national championships have hot seats (see Les Miles) because their fans and schools expect top 10 finishes every year.

Coaches like Colorado's Mike MacIntyre who have never been to a bowl game as a head coach face harsh and sometimes creepy criticism as fans demand that heads roll. Many fans seem to forget that Colorado was by far the worst Power 5 team in the country when MacIntyre was hired. In fact, some say the Buffs were the very worst team in Division 1.

The cupboard was bare when Mac got to Boulder and the Colorado was still paying off a sizable number of ex coaches who were fired. That put them in no mood to spend money on quality coaches. Jon Embree was the lowest paid coach in the Big 12, and then the Pac-12, before he was let go. Good coaches are a rare commodity, and they earned, on average, more than $2 Million a year. Embree was paid significantly less than half of what his fellow conference coaches earned. It showed. Colorado also has state laws which severely limit the number of staffers which can have multi-year contracts. It makes it hard to attract top coaching talent when you can only offer a one year contract.

Despite the obstacles, Colorado went out and got a home-run hire for Athletic Director in Rick George. He has been a fundraising machine and finally got the money together so Colorado could build facilities that are among the very best in the entire country, college or pro. MacIntyre has taken a team that used to give up 60+ points a game (and was usually playing against the 3rd string by the 3rd quarter) to a team that has put overtime scares into some very good opponents.

The players have gotten bigger, faster and stronger, but they were so far behind that they are only now getting to the point that they are not pushed around every time they step on the field. They are  competing, but they have not yet started to win consistently. Fans hope that 2016 is the year that the bowl drought ends and the joy of playing in the postseason brings smiles to the faces of fans and players alike.

It's January now, though, and hope springs eternal. New players will be signing on to play for the Buffs, and spring practice is just around the corner. And right now, the Buffs and every other team are undefeated.