Sports & Educational rankings...

[tarun262]

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day - how do highly ranked educational institutes do in the 2 major sports in general. If you look at the Top 30 undergrad schools in the country, it's interesting to see that none of them are actually great in both sports, except Notre Dame:

Take out the Ivy League schools or schools that are not prominent in sports at all and you get the following:

• Stanford - great at Football, terrible at Basketball (except women's basketball)
• Duke - great at Basketball, respectable at Football. NCAA championship last year in BB.
• Northwestern - terrible at Basketball, toss up at Football (good this year but average the rest)
• Notre Dame - great in both Basketball & Football over the past few years
• UC Berkeley - pretty terrible in both sports though they should be decent in basketball soon
• UCLA - good in both sports, not great
• USC - good in Football, terrible in Basketball
• UVA - great in Basketball, terrible in Football
• Wake Forest - terrible in both sports
• Michigan - average in both sports
• BC - average in both sports
• UNC - great in basketball, good in football this year but not in general

Not sure what the heck my conclusion is except that given the higher standards of education that most top academic universities require, being great at both sports is becoming harder and harder. Arguably the best 2 sport program over the past 5 years has been Michigan State, with schools like Ohio State & Florida also being able to have similar claims over the past decade. As much as I dislike Notre Dame, they are probably the finest institute that offers a combination of education & sports today. Michigan used to be that way back in the early 90s but seems to have faded. Having said that though, we do now have 2 coaches that you could argue are in the Top 10 as coaches in their respective fields. Hopefully that gets us over the hump in both sports, but we still have some ways to go!

Go Blue!