Wall Street Journal says we're better than Akron.  That's about it.  Every other MAC team is more powerful than us and/or more admirable than our team.

And yes, I do get all my sporting news from the WSJ.

 

The "admirable" dimension is most odd. My best guess is that it it based on information from several years ago, rather than current information. If you go back to 5-9 years ago, there were a lot of individual issues that gave the team some bad press, where things like horse-punching, bar fights, or running through a glass door during a robbery come to mind. I draw a blank, though, when it comes to problems in the last few years. By contrast, up near the top in admirability is Nebraska. By contrast, they have had their share of bad press lately, including a starting linebacker who was arrested for stealing bicycles - he and a track team member had 7 stolen bikes on their truck, and told police he was planning on selling them on the internet. Felony charges were dropped, but it still is a black eye for the program.

I'm not trying to knock Nebraska here; I'm just pointing out that I don't understand how that program is dramatically more admirable than Ohio. I think both programs are similar - mostly good, with an occasional bad apple.

Notre Dame is the most interesting to me on here.  I would guess they would be near the top for admirable.  The cheating scandals there are a result of their much tougher academic requirements and strict enforcement.  

All I can think of looking at this grid is how well respected the Ohio State program is considering their band is a bunch of sexual degenerates.

Hopefully FIU fans or Ohio State fans who claim they put Ohio first don't find this post offensive.

The new intern has a grudge, not just against Ohio, but against the entire MAC. There are huge drops for almost every MAC team:
Ohio drops from +7/8 to -1/2, drop of 1 3/8
CMU falls from +7/8 to -1/4, drop of 1 1/8
Miami drops from +2/3 to -1/3, drop of 1
U.Mass drops from +1/8 to -3/4, drop of 7/8
BG drops from +3/4 to 0, a drop of 3/4
Buffalo drops from -1/8 to -3/4, drop of 5/8
NIU drops from +3/8 to -1/4, drop of 5/8
Akron drops from -1/4 to -7/8, drop of 5/8
Kent State falls from +1/2 to 0, drop of 1/2
WMU drops from +7/8 to +3/8, drop of 1/2
EMU falls from -1/4 to -3/8, drop of 1/8
Toledo drops from +1/4 to +1/8, drop of 1/8
Ball State rises from -1/2 to -3/8, increase of 1/8

Overall the MAC moved from 9/13 teams with a positive admirability to 2/12 teams, and from an average of +.32 to an average of -.31. I think this is just wrong. I see a lot to admire about most of the MAC programs, programs that do a lot with a little, and which are generally run cleanly.


Yes, Ohio State has vaulted up the admirability rankings in the wakes of their various scandals, They were at -1, and now are at +1/2.

It's hard for me to imagine what tangible data they could be putting into their data to come out with the shifts that have happened over the last two years.
 

My thought in looking at the grid is that I wonder if success in fundraising is part of the measure of  "admirability"? After all, people presumably give to programs they admire, right? There are a few programs with high fundraising, like Oklahoma and Penn State towards the bottom, so it's clearly not the only factor, but if it's included as one of the weights, that would explain moving the SEC and B1G up, while moving the MAC down.

You don't remember the "infamous" horse punch? 

I had forgotten about that!

LaVon, is that you?  You need to put the pipe down. 

Why would ND be near the top?  The Cheating scandal a "positive" - spoken like a true homer...I mean domer.

"They were however responsible for the video intern dying a couple of years ago, and the rape cover up that resulted in a suicide" - but you "guess they would be near the top." 

Sony7,  I am so in agreement with you!  Yet, it seems we drool over this crap time and again, especially the party school one.  I, for one, have never been able to figure out how anyone could "legitimately" rate schools as 1 to .....whatever.  I've been to enough other schools to know that if we are at the top, we have plenty of company that never gets recognized.

I would rate my BA posts right around the FIU mark on that grid.

I think the new intern has sort of conflated the "admirable" and "powerhouse" dimensions.  They seem more correlated to me in the 2014 graph than the 2012 one -- as if being a powerhouse, in itself, makes a team "admirable."  Now, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but I conclude from this that the intern has confused his priorities and could use some soul-searching about what in life is really admirable.  Here is my plot:


            Intern

That is possible, mf. Student fees are no doubt strongly inversely correlated to whether or not a school is a powerhouse and the level of giving.