Sewanee, Tulane, and Georgia Tech

They all have something in common, well actually several things in common.  For starters, all three schools were, at one time, members of the SEC.  In fact, not only were they members, they were all charter members of the SEC when the conference was created in 1932.

Sewanee (The University of the South) left in 1940.
Georgia Tech left in 1964.
Tulane left in 1966.

Note: (In a previous post, we documented one of the main reasons why Georgia Tech left the SEC - basically they were unhappy with the gross oversigning of recruits.  Our reason for that post was to serve notice that oversigning is not a myth and not something we made up out of thin air.  Oversigning is real, and its historical roots are located in the heart of the southeastern conference.)

Back to the similarities: All three schools also have very high academic standards (US New and World Report Rankings):

Sewanee - 36th
Georgia Tech - 38th
Tulane - 50th

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings

Click the link to continue reading >>>

To help put that into perspective here are the rankings of the other schools in the SEC:

Arkansas - Tier 4 (meaning)
Mississippi State - Tier 3
Ole Miss - Tier 3
LSU - 129th
Kentucky - 128th
South Carolina - 110th
Tennessee - 106th
Alabama - 96th
Auburn - 88th
Georgia - 58th
Florida - 47th
Vanderbilt - 12th (again, we are still amazed that Vanderbilt hasn't left the SEC, truly baffling)

We see a massive gap between Vanderbilt and Florida, a gap that Tulane and Georgia Tech would have filled nicely and given the conference some desperately needed academic credentials.  In comparing the SEC rankings to the Big 10 rankings, the point become much clearer.  The lowest ranked Big 10 school (Michigan State) ranks higher at 71st than 9 of the 12 SEC schools.

Northwestern - 12th
Michigan - 27th
Illinois - 39th
Wisconsin - 39th
Penn State - 47th
Ohio State - 52nd
Purdue - 61st
Minnesota - 61st
Indiana -71st
Michigan State - 71st

Interesting side note: The University of Chicago (currently ranked 8th) was a founding member of the Big 10 Conference and the only member to ever leave the conference.  However, they maintained their relationship with the Big Ten Conference through membership in the CIC the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, something that still serves both parties well to this day.  This is a pretty sharp contrast to the SEC's relationship with GT, Sewanee, and Tulane who all left the SEC and basically have not maintained much of a relationships since leaving.  Tulane still plays LSU and Geogria Tech still plays Georgia and other SEC schools on occasion, but that's about it.  

When researching as to why these universities left the SEC we found a third similarity; one of the main reasons all of three of them left was because of their inability to compete with the state universities in college football.  In Georgia Tech's case it was their distaste of the recruiting practices of schools like Alabama; in Tulane's case it was their reluctance to lower academic standards to the level of the state universities so that they could compete for recruits; and in Sewanee's case it was because they believed in the wisdom of non-scholarship athletics and found out after going 0-37 against SEC schools that they could not compete.

http://blog.al.com/bn/2008/02/southeastern_conference_charte.html

Imagine for a second what the SEC conference would look like with some academic chops to go with their success on the football field.  Then again the next question is, how would things be different if Georgia Tech, Tulane, and Sewanee got their wishes instead of the other way around?  Would Alabama have been able to build the football machine it created due to oversigning?  Probably not. 

What does all this have to do with oversigning???

Let's put it all together: if you look back on the history of the SEC it is evident that the conference put winning football games above almost everything else, which resulted in losing all but 1 of their charter members with solid academics, Vanderbilt.  The practice of oversigning lives right in the heart of the situation - state universities favored oversigning and winning football, whereas private universities favored academics and ethics with regards to treating players.

Fast forward to 2010: the hot topic in college football is conference expansion.  The Big 10 announced recently that it will be looking very seriously at conference expansion; the Pac 10 followed suit and recently announced they are looking into the matter as well.  To the average college football fan the whole topic of conference expansion is all about football...but what football fans don't realize is that football is only one piece of the puzzle and there is so much more to it than that.  In fact, one of the top priorities for the Big 10 is to make sure that potential candidates align ACADEMICALLY with the rest of the schools in the conference.

The blog "Frank the Tank's Slant" covers all of this in such great detail that we are almost ashamed of what we post here and consider our coverage of oversigning shallow in depth in comparison to his coverage of Big 10 expansion.  He is without question the Shaun White of blogging on that topic.

When you consider the factors that go into conference expansion for the Big 10 and then look at the strength of the conference outside of its competitiveness on the football field (note: the Big 10 shares the all-time record for national championships at 27 with the SEC) and what it can do to strengthen itself through expansion by adding programs like Texas and other like-minded universities, it is clear to see that the long-term stability and strength of the conference is in really good shape, in fact it is unmatched, despite all of the reports about it being a rust belt conference that is dying on a vine.

So in the long run, it is pretty evident that the practice of oversigning has served no one well.  The players suffered and the SEC, although considered a powerhouse on the football field, is not as strong as everyone thinks that it is.  Proof: Do you think that Texas would honestly go to the SEC?  It will never happen, never, never, never in a million years.  We're looking for the article where a Texas official stated that the SEC's academic standards were far too low for Texas to join the SEC.  When we find it we will post it here.

Our whole point in this post is that eventually, one day, oversigning (and really just the general sliminess of recruiting in the SEC) is going to come home to roost, it has to.  As stated above, those things have already cost the SEC 3 outstanding universities and the opportunities outside of football that those universities could have provided.   And for what, bragging rights over a football game?  Essentially that is what it boils down to; but that's what happens when you let football boosters run your universities.