Around the Big Ten

[WM Wolverine]

It's been explained how the CIC works, I gave a very detailed message about it.

[entropy]

btw.. I do enjoy Lacrosse more than soccer... not as much as hockey, but it is not bad and fun to play.

that said, I'm not sure you'd add someone for it.. in fact, I wouldn't. If anything this is a CIC grab like UofC.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Johns Hopkins had an exclusive tv contract with ESPNU to broadcast all of its home games on that network. They are the only lacrosse team in the country that has a contract like that. And they regularly sell out crowds of 8,000+

If the B1G needs a 6th team to start up a league and they want to join, why the hell would we say no?

Michigan and Ohio State currently play lacrosse in a conference with effing Denver, Hobart, and Fairfield (CT)

[hack]

And FWIW Michigan played for decades in a conference for another sport with Northern Michigan, Lake Superior State, and Bowling Green. If that arrangment "made sense" why get all hand-wringy over having a lacrosse-only member?

I don't care. It just lays bare the faulty logic behind saying that the CIC is involved. If you can join a sports conference in one sport only, why would you tie academics to any sports? My point is simply that what's been shared thus far just doesn't make any sense. There's probably something more to it, or perhaps it just doesn't make any sense.

[hack]

It's been explained how the CIC works, I gave a very detailed message about it.

Maybe it makes sense to you but what you, Whitley and others have explained doesn't make sense to me. I'm not buying it. Assert what you will, but it just doesn't add up. I'm open to whatever it is I'm missing here, but I've asked these questions before and nobody has pointed out anything to me that I've missed that makes sense. Universities simply do not need an athletic conference to establish a research pool that will save costs. There's no link.

[hack]

which also means.. why couldn't ND join and not be part of the CIC. Wasn't the church concerned about some of the research?

it was my understanding you needed to be both part of the CIC and the Athletic conference... which meant at least football and basketball

Yes. Further and further this unravels. It's about the Big Ten Network, but Johns Hopkins can get in and ND couldn't if they didn't join the CIC?

[Whitley]

which also means.. why couldn't ND join and not be part of the CIC. Wasn't the church concerned about some of the research?

it was my understanding you needed to be both part of the CIC and the Athletic conference... which meant at least football and basketball

University of Chicago (a founding member of the Big Ten) is the exception....more blow from FrankTheTank's blog....

(1) Big Ten Expansion and Johns Hopkins ? In a somewhat surprising bit of news, the Big Ten is apparently targeting Johns Hopkins as an associate member for lacrosse. Adding Johns Hopkins on top of Rutgers and Maryland would give the Big Ten the minimum number of teams for both men?s and women?s lacrosse (6) to garner an automatic NCAA Tournament bid. This has brought up the question as to whether the Big Ten would consider other associate members, such as adding Notre Dame or Boston University for hockey or all of the Big West to improve baseball. I don?t see that happening, though. From my vantage point, Johns Hopkins is about as unique of a situation as it gets since (a) as noted, its addition is the difference between the Big Ten having an NCAA auto-bid lacrosse league versus having none at all, (b) men?s and women?s lacrosse are the only sports that Johns Hopkins plays at the Division I level (all of its other sports are in Division III), so they would technically be an ?all-sports? member for the Big Ten since it is providing ?all? of the sports in which the conference sponsors a league (unlike Notre Dame or BU that obviously play at the Division I level in other sports), (c) Johns Hopkins happens to be an elite lacrosse power, so their combination with Maryland would instantly make the Big Ten into a top notch league in that sport and (d) in terms of academics and research funding power, Johns Hopkins is about as top notch as you can get outside of the Ivy League, which means that they can provide further gravitas to the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which is the academic research consortium of the Big Ten and the University of Chicago. All of those factors make Johns Hopkins into a unique expansion target for the Big Ten that I don?t believe would apply to other potential associate members.*

[Whitley]

Maybe it makes sense to you but what you, Whitley and others have explained doesn't make sense to me. I'm not buying it. Assert what you will, but it just doesn't add up. I'm open to whatever it is I'm missing here, but I've asked these questions before and nobody has pointed out anything to me that I've missed that makes sense. Universities simply do not need an athletic conference to establish a research pool that will save costs. There's no link.

CIC is the academic side of the Big Ten.

Here is a link to what Maryland Chancellor Brit Kirwan thinks of it

http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/local/article_e76ec78e-3d05-11e2-9068-001a4bcf6878.html

Another article (from 2010) does a good job talking about the CIC.

http://www.maizenbrew.com/2010/6/10/1511330/big-ten-expansion-and-the-cic-are

btw....AAU membership is REQUIRED to get a Big Ten invite according to the Maryland article.

[hack]

Thanks, Whitley. You linked to the diamondback one last time too.

The second one is more interesting. It does a good job explaining that the CIC's benefits are intangible and not measurable, so let's go from there. The point I am making kind of builds on it -- my point is that you can do all that without tying it to sports. There seems to me to be no substantial reason why you should establish instantaneous library linkups and facilitate professor exchanges simply based on your two schools sports teams playing each other. Were I an academic I'd hardly want to base my collaboration decisions on that. Many academics are in research fields so specific that they choose from maybe 5 other academics at other schools who have enough overlap for collaborate to make sense. ``Does my school's team play them in women's volleyball?'' isn't going to be a question those academics consider when deciding on these things. (Sorry Huskerz.)

So if you're like me and accept that there's no real reason to connect sports and academic research, then you can't help but wonder why the CIC is trotted out as a reason for membership in the conference when tangibles -- BIG ones like billions of dollars -- seem way more important. That kind of tail isn't going to be wagging that kind of dog, so to speak. So my point is either that there's still something I'm missing here that would make this all seem logical, or it's just a fig leaf and there's no sense in going on about it. That's just how I'm seeing it so far.

[WM Wolverine]

What Whitley stated a long time ago (didn't read his last couple message right above due to me not having time) was nowhere near (in terms of $ potential) what I've heard, read from my own research online...

CIC is largely collaboration of working on federal research grants. It simplistic form, just like any research grant; the professors/researchers need to apply for such grants to the government. These grants (which total billions of dollars) are than awarded to those researchers at universities, where they can collaborate with numerous other professors (& of course their pupils, assistants) with other CIC members. If you don't think this results in better academic prestige for the CIC members, than I won't waste my time or the internet's bandwidth to sway your opinion. Regardless, the CIC is a B1G deal to B10 presidents and they are the only deciders about expansion matters. No, it's certainly not driving expansion but it's playing a major role for the presidents.

[iam416]

Mgoblog had an entry on the value of the CIC. It had some factual errors, but the premise was that the CIC adds value as a "lobbying" arm. The AAU gets bulk of federal research grants. The CIC is the largest faction within that block. Adding JHU is a significant boost that faction. That increases their leverage, power, etc to get grants.

When it comes to the CIC, I generally defer to the University presidents. If the B10 adds JHU, it's almost purely for the CIC and almost purely driven by the Presidents.

I agree with Hack that there's no particularly compelling reason why sports conference affiliation ought to be linked with academic research. In particular, there's no good reason to look at sports if you're making an academics add. The B10 ought to be able to add JHU to the CIC without regards to sports because, TBH, no one knows much about the CIC. The converse, though, is not true, IMO. I can find compelling reasons to look at academics when adding a team for sports. The B10 conference is widely known and who you add for sports does affect your reputation.

In any event, adding JHU for all sports -- heh -- isn't a bad thing in my book and, IMO, a decent addition. I firmly believe Delaney and the B10 presidents are trying to build an association that is the premiere research and athletic association in the world, and second only to the Ivy in academics. Platinum all around in as many different fields as is possible.

[hack]

Yeah I just don't see it. You can do that with or without the CIC. Put yourself in the shoes of the govt agency deciding what academic research to spend money on: do you really think they are going to award that money based on whether certain professors in certain projects come from schools that play each other in sports?

Again -- there is no practical way that making a link between athletics and sports improves academics, so there's no reason to simply take at face value any statements about the CIC in this story without more information that helps this make sense. Criticize if you will, but it seems prudent to me to wonder just exactly how or why a group with no tangible, measurable impact is playing any role whatsoever in influencing any creature that lives at the intersection of television and money. Academics and sports are separate. Read Three and Out's early chapters for a good history of the natural tension and difficulty in working together between university boards and athletics. Maybe this needs to be run through that filter -- perhaps the CIC is a way for the ADs to pretend they are doing something for the academics? I don't know. Seems like a crudely transparent strategy of limited use, frankly.

[iam416]

Put yourself in the shoes of the govt agency deciding what academic research to spend money on: do you really think they are going to award that money based on whether certain professors in certain projects come from schools that play each other in sports

No, but do really think influence doesn't matter? Academics/former academics review grants. Where do those academics come from? Universities lobby NIH and other Federal grant bodies. Is it better to lobby by yourself or with 15 others?

I completely get the point on linking the CIC with sports. I completely disagree with the suggestion that the CIC is meaningless/of limited value consortium.

I don't think that CIC membership ought to be sports-dependent in any way.

I do think B10 membership has to consider academics.

[Hannibal]

Yeah I just don't see it. You can do that with or without the CIC. Put yourself in the shoes of the govt agency deciding what academic research to spend money on: do you really think they are going to award that money based on whether certain professors in certain projects come from schools that play each other in sports?

This.

Any two, five, or fifteen universities can pool their resources and form a lobbying organization for research money, and they can do it at any time. They don't need an athletic association to do it.

The only legitimate reasons to change your sports affiliations are to find synergies and economies of scale. i.e. value added that comes purely from sports. We've already got a CCG and a basketball tournament, so those sources are out. If we destroy the ACC, then we get rid of their tournament and CCG, so that is the opposite of value added. It is value destroyed. There's legitimate value added in adding a ninth conference football game or a few more conference basketball games. You get some economies of scale by getting more events on the BTN, but they are going to be low quality events. Beyond that, I have yet to see anyone make a compelling value added argument. Most arguments that favor expansion identify a revenue stream that is already being captured by somebody and isn't new.

In the absence of value added, expansion becomes a redistributive exercise. In our case, I see it as redistributing money from the old Big Ten members to the new ones. We share our huge pie and in return, they share some of their small pie. Whatever small value added there is in the equation doesn't make up for it. The Michigans and OSUs of the world end up worse off, not better. Bleh. In the meantime, Fox gets richer, and Jim Delaney gets more prestige.

I completely disagree with the suggestion that the CIC is meaningless/of limited value consortium.

I don't think that anyone is making the point that this organization has no use outside of sports.

[hack]

My point is that it is playing no significant role when decisionmakers in this expansion process make their decisions. It may be useful to pretend, or it may be useful in ways that are unexplained here.

Universities lobby NIH and other Federal grant bodies. Is it better to lobby by yourself or with 15 others?

Individual professors (or their grad students) write grant applications. They send them off to relevant grant writers. Where's the CIC involved in this? Does every school pitch in someone to write praising letters and make phone calls on behalf of every academic's pitch? Are there CIC lobbyists in DC paid to take the grant writer out for lunch on behalf of Professor Jones' ongoing research on lichen sexual reproduction on boulders in Minnesota on Tuesday and then the grant writer deciding on Professor Smith's study on Arab-American attitudes towards gender and class in the 1980s on Wednesday?