Dragon, you A-hole...you beat me to it. My headline was going to be "Suck it Hays and Vedder"....

I got it from Rovell's tweet:

My heart says that Dragon and Love are right, but my head says that Flomo is right.  

I work in undergraduate admissions and find it extremely unbelievable that this late in the game, a school of nearly 8,000 undergraduates had only 200 applications (unless they're talking about underclassmen).

I ready somewhere that late into last year's tournament, Butler's admissions website crashed due to the heavier traffic.

There are some extreme examples where a highly visible athletics program has made a difference. I can think of Duke, VT, UConn all of which while quality institutions really were not on the radar of students nationally prior to success. I have been to all 3 campuses and they nothing to get excited about like the way you can get with the Ohio campus. Playing in BCS football and basketball conferences adds to the perception that those schools within those conferences are a step up from the run of the mill university. My grandfather has been a fan of UConn basketball since the early 90's and one of the things he told me is that president of UConn realized that to keep the best students in-state that they had to be good at athletics. First they built up the basketball, next the goal was to do it with the football program. UConn has moved way up the college rankings in the last 15 years as they've ascended to the top. Ohio doesn't have the ability to make such a transformational rise in athletics but the sky is the limit for men's basketball. I guess maybe not the entire sky but the potential is there to be a regular NCAA team like a Temple or Xavier with only a rare off season (CIT, NIT 20 wins). The problem has been over the last 20+ years at Ohio, LHunt and TOS were not the real deal and were only good at having enough sporadic success to keep their jobs. That has really been the modern era of men's basketball and us fans were stuck with mediocre coaches all this time. Groce looks to be something different, at least better than TOS and LHunt he's coached in more post season games than either of them in only 3 seasons. He's getting this program loaded in talent and if he is successful enough to take off to the Big Ten or Big East someday the program will be better for it.

This one win by Morehead won't change that school.  But, several wins like that can.  You gotta hold on to your coach though.  That's the toughest part.

I'm gonna go ahead and say Donnie Tyndall isn't leaving Morehead anytime soon. 

There is no doubt in my mind that this is good for the school academically. Every single one of those applications would have to be below average, for it not to be good for the university. There is no way that is the case. Having more students apply to choose from allows the university to be more selective.

Now, this gave the university a look from students that otherwise might not have applied. But ultimately it's up to the academic programs to draw these potential students interest.

You mean he didn't ask about our Classics Dept.?

We have a classics department?

So the local analogy is that the more money spent and the more titles won by Ohio A&M, the more borderline applicants we can look forward to, too? 

This alone should be the academic argument for strengthening the Ohio athletic profile.  Somebody call Steve Hays.

Interesting fromthe other side. The Prez here at ETSU is stronglyoppposed to intercollegiate athletics and has been vocal about dismantling the programs and cutting funding. We sat ina bar fullof folks last night talking aboutthe loss of Football and the rise of Appy State who got all the local recruits who normally came here to play.

It is really strange to hear the moaning and anger from folks who were pretty much hard core fans of ETSU that really hold the president in poor regard due to his outspoekn sqnce regarding athletics. On the bright side their Golf has been nationally relevant for some time now despite the effort of admin.

Giacomo:  This doesn't affect the basic point you were making, but just wanted to mention that Omaha metro population is 900,000, while Cincinnati metro population is 2.2 million.