*Rumored Lamar to FBS discussion*

[jdcurran235]

I think as weak as the conference will be we could easily become a conference powerhouse in that conference and easily make it to some nice bowl games. I like the idea of starting our transition to FBS in a weak conference.

[jdcurran235]

Interesting read from last month

http://collegesportsinfo.com/2011/10/26/wednesday-conference-realignment-wvu-louisville-news-wac-plans/

[jdcurran235]

http://www.kboi2.com/sports/132641133.html

[Guest bigred360]

I think as weak as the conference will be we could easily become a conference powerhouse in that conference and easily make it to some nice bowl games. I like the idea of starting our transition to FBS in a weak conference.

 

One thing to think about is if La Tech leaves and we join Lamar will be the eastern most school in the conference.

 

Coaching legend, former LU player, coach and AD Billy Tubbs has stated several times that it is harder on players and teams to travel west than it is to the east.

 

I don't know what his rational for the statement was. Time change or whatever but I know he hated going west. I remember him talking to Dave Hoffeth about traveling to BYU and how hard that trip was (after the game).

[coachacola]

I think several key factors will determine if Lamar joins the WAC or not. First, if La Tech leaves then Lamar won't join. Lamar needs a big rival in the WAC and that would be La Tech. Second, the WAC is looking west for teams so Lamar may not even get the invite.

 

If they WAC doesn't happen then I'd like to see Lamar go to the Sun Belt and both UALR and ULM go the SLC. To me that makes the most sense since those are low budget schools that fit better in the SLC. UALR would make a great travel partner for Oral Roberts. The Sun Belt could then add one eastern school and have 12 football teams with a championship game (maybe in New Orleans).

 

Maybe Dr. Simmons decides that Lamar can't afford to move up and Lamar stays in the SLC. We should know between now and this summer.

[jdcurran235]

I don't think UALR and ULM will move down to FCS. They know if they move down they will never move back up. I think our only hope is still the WAC. If the WAC can stay alive and if we get an invite, we go. If the WAC fails, then TxSt, Idaho and LU will be stuck at the FCS level for awhile.

 

I also think that even if La Tech leaves we still go to the WAC. TxSt will still be in the WAC so we will have a travel partner. Also I don't think anyone wants to be in a conference with HBU.

[jdcurran235]

http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=205&f=3864&t=8311438

 

BYU is not going to the big east

[Guest Crawfish]

I don't think UALR and ULM will move down to FCS. They know if they move down they will never move back up. I think our only hope is still the WAC. If the WAC can stay alive and if we get an invite, we go. If the WAC fails, then TxSt, Idaho and LU will be stuck at the FCS level for awhile.

 

I also think that even if La Tech leaves we still go to the WAC. TxSt will still be in the WAC so we will have a travel partner. Also I don't think anyone wants to be in a conference with HBU.

 

UALR is a non-football school, so a move to the Southland would not mean a change in their classification. Them staying or leaving is entirely their decision though, because they have been a long standing and loyal member of the Belt and they will not be forced out just because they do not play football. ULM is stubbornly trying to stay in the SBC but are rapidly becoming more and more uncompetitive in all of the conference sports. I do not see them raising the money to pay for the $2000 scholarship stipend which the conference has adopted. If they cannot do this, recruiting in all sports will become even more difficult for them. They currently have the lowest athletic budget among FBS schools. They should drop down, but they may not. The conference schools are all building new facilities, paying coaches better to attract better coaches, and raising athletic budgets.. except for Monroe. They are rapidly becoming the ugly spinster of the the SBC family.

[jdcurran235]

When do we think we start hearing more realignment news. The more I think about it we really have a good shot of LU and SHSU leaving for the WAC together. Especially since the conference will likely have to become more Texcentric. It looks like the MWC and CUSA are not going to expands as quickly as everyone thought, which means the WAC will still be around and desperate for members. I know McNeese would never move up but I would love to see McNeese move up. We have so much in common with them. Engineering school, cajuns, and good lookin women!!!.

[TexGator]

When do we think we start hearing more realignment news. The more I think about it we really have a good shot of LU and SHSU leaving for the WAC together. Especially since the conference will likely have to become more Texcentric. It looks like the MWC and CUSA are not going to expands as quickly as everyone thought, which means the WAC will still be around and desperate for members. I know McNeese would never move up but I would love to see McNeese move up. We have so much in common with them. Engineering school, cajuns, and good lookin women!!!.

 

I think the less we hear, the less likely it is. The WAC seems to want places that are tidy trips for their members; look at the 5 schools they've added in the last 24 months- they're all in major cities (San Marcos is close enough to Austin to count) which means their members can fly to all the new members w/o having to follow it with an extended bus ride. To add either SHSU or LU, they'd be getting schools smaller than the other Texas schools (with smaller endowments than U-Denver or Seattle-U) that aren't within 30 minutes of a major airport- making the 3-4 hour flight feel even longer.

[jdcurran235]

San Marcos is no closer to the Austin airport than LU or SHSU is to Houston. I dont buy the tidy trip argument. It is only an 1hr drive to hobby and maybe an 1:20 to IAH.They do want in the larger markets though. The thing is they need football and I dont see them getting football teams any other way. They have no choice but to get teams in mid size cities. IE Bozeman, but they dont want to be in the WAC.

 

Has anyone talked to Jack from Bobcat report lately. Or can anyone contact him to ask if he has heard anything.

 

San Marcos to Austin 38 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:10 minutes)

Beaumont to Houston (edge) 64 miles (takes about 50 to 55 minutes depending on traffic. Drove this everyday for a semester in college while I was interning at Lyondell)

Beaumont to Downtown 83 miles

Beaumont to IAH 74 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:20 minutes. There is also a shuttle that runs between IAH and BPT if you ever want to take advantage of the free parking at BPT)

[TexGator]

San Marcos is no closer to the Austin airport than LU or SHSU is to Houston. I dont buy the tidy trip argument. It is only an 1hr drive to hobby and maybe an 1:20 to IAH.They do want in the larger markets though. The thing is they need football and I dont see them getting football teams any other way. They have no choice but to get teams in mid size cities. IE Bozeman, but they dont want to be in the WAC.

 

Has anyone talked to Jack from Bobcat report lately. Or can anyone contact him to ask if he has heard anything.

 

San Marcos to Austin 38 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:10 minutes)

Beaumont to Houston (edge) 64 miles (takes about 50 to 55 minutes depending on traffic. Drove this everyday for a semester in college while I was interning at Lyondell)

Beaumont to Downtown 83 miles

Beaumont to IAH 74 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:20 minutes. There is also a shuttle that runs between IAH and BPT if you ever want to take advantage of the free parking at BPT)

 

Don't know where you got your numbers, but Hobby is 90 miles from Lamar and IAH is 94 miles to Lamar.

 

While it doesn't seem like much to us who drive it all the time, but adding 2 hours of travel to go to a school that, honestly, has distinguished itself with success over the last quarter-century.

 

Beaumont is the 141st-largest media market. (the 5 schools the WAC added are all in top-40 markets)

Lamar has the following success in the sports that make decisions (by their relevance to most of America):

Football- 9 wins since bringing football back in 2010

Men's Basketball- 1 NCAA tournament appearance (0 wins)

Women's Basketball- 2 NCAA tournament appearances (3 wins- all in 1991)

Baseball- 6 NCAA Regional appearances (1 super-regional appearances)

 

What among that screams out "We're and FBS program!" We need winning before we need to worry about moving up to an FBS conference unless you can find an extra 300,000 people to move to the Beaumont area.

[jdcurran235]

I googled the numbers. Regardless the distance argument does not stand. If it was that important then TxSt would not be in the WAC. A history of winning does little to get you in a conference as we have seen with the recent adds. I agree, we need to win, but media market is what would get us a for sure invite. We have to be able to make some claim to the Houston market to up our chances of an invite. The reason we might get in is cause we are the school of last resort that is willing to move up. None of the Cali schools want to. The Montana's don't want to. It is just us and the conference needs football schools to survive.

 

Question for you and I am not trying to be rude. I have noticed that you have been fairly negative towards a LU to FBS move. Are you against LU moving up?

 

http://www.travelmath.com/nearest-airport/Beaumont,+TX Here is just one link. I saw many links with many different distances and tried to pick one that was in the middle. I also used the http://www.mapmyrun.com site which is usually fairly accurate and it came out fairly close to the distances I said.

[Guest Crawfish]

Interesting read here:

 

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/utsa/2011/11/utsa-in-contact-with-cusa-sun-belt/

 

The last paragraph is kind of a kind of revealing statement about the WAC. I have been saying (on this site) that I do not see the WAC surviving as afootabll conference. I think their commish has been positioning them to be a non-football confernece with recent additions.

 

"Beyond that, a very credible WAC source did not shoot down the possibility that the league, if it is indeed crippled beyond all repair, could exist as a non-football entity, in which UTSA would complete in all sports while playing football independently. Another source wondered about the possibility of a Sun Belt/WAC merger, similar to the one the Mountain West and CUSA are mapping out."

 

I do not expect a WAC Sunbelt merger as there is nothing in it for the Belt. The SBC would likely take 2 or 3 of the WAC footabll schools as full members though. UTSA could very well be one of them considering their market and first year attendence average of 30K+.

[LUSportsFan]

San Marcos is no closer to the Austin airport than LU or SHSU is to Houston. I dont buy the tidy trip argument. It is only an 1hr drive to hobby and maybe an 1:20 to IAH.They do want in the larger markets though. The thing is they need football and I dont see them getting football teams any other way. They have no choice but to get teams in mid size cities. IE Bozeman, but they dont want to be in the WAC.

 

Has anyone talked to Jack from Bobcat report lately. Or can anyone contact him to ask if he has heard anything.

 

San Marcos to Austin 38 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:10 minutes)

Beaumont to Houston (edge) 64 miles (takes about 50 to 55 minutes depending on traffic. Drove this everyday for a semester in college while I was interning at Lyondell)

Beaumont to Downtown 83 miles

Beaumont to IAH 74 miles (airport with traffic is about 1:20 minutes. There is also a shuttle that runs between IAH and BPT if you ever want to take advantage of the free parking at BPT)

 

Don't know where you got your numbers, but Hobby is 90 miles from Lamar and IAH is 94 miles to Lamar.

 

While it doesn't seem like much to us who drive it all the time, but adding 2 hours of travel to go to a school that, honestly, has distinguished itself with success over the last quarter-century.

 

Beaumont is the 141st-largest media market. (the 5 schools the WAC added are all in top-40 markets)

Lamar has the following success in the sports that make decisions (by their relevance to most of America):

Football- 9 wins since bringing football back in 2010

Men's Basketball- 1 NCAA tournament appearance (0 wins)

Women's Basketball- 2 NCAA tournament appearances (3 wins- all in 1991)

Baseball- 6 NCAA Regional appearances (1 super-regional appearances)

What among that screams out "We're and FBS program!" We need winning before we need to worry about moving up to an FBS conference unless you can find an extra 300,000 people to move to the Beaumont area.

 

I'm having a hard time of following the athletic accomplishments you listed. What's the time period?

 

What I see for Men's Basketball is five NCAA tournaments and never losing in the first game until 2000. One run was to the Sweet Sixteen. Add to that, there were four NIT appearances. Lamar still holds the seventh longest home winning streak in NCAA history (80 games ... saw every one of them). If you are leaving out Lamar's NCAA tournaments in the 80's, consider that one of the news conference points made for Seattle's invitation to the WAC was it's basketball history even though the Division I portion of SU's history was mainly in the 1950's. They were NAIA from 1980 to 2001 and not back to DI until 2009-2010 season and will not be eligible for NCAA basketball championships until the 2012-2013 season.

 

For Baseball, we've been in the NCAA Regionals twelve, not six times.

 

Here are some observations concerning the other comments.

 

Below is an example of the kind of sports coverage a future WAC program, UTA, smack dab in the middle of the #5 media market gets. Articles for UTA are listed in "Other" on the Dallas Morning News website.

 

Link: http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/college-sports/

 

We received more or at least equivalent coverage from the Chronicle, a #6 media market newspaper, in our win against Tennessee Tech.

 

Link: http://www.chron.com/sports/article/Lamar-pulls-away-from-Tennessee-Tech-85-65-2293270.php

 

(UTA's game was in Arlington. Ours was an away game.)

 

We don't control the Houston market, but we are close enough (adjacent counties) to have some influence and interest. It's not like a wall was built at the Jefferson / Chambers / Liberty county lines. (Houston market extends to Chambers and Liberty counties according to the maps.) Another interesting tidbit is that the DFW media market consists of 13 counties while the Houston-Galveston-Baytown market includes only 9 counties. I personally think there is enough interaction between the Houston and Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange areas that a reasonable case could be made that they should be combined, but BPO probably wants to be separate for at least a couple of reasons. No. 1 would be the possibility of increased EPA restrictions if the two areas were combined. No. 2 would be the natural desire to be recognized as a separate entity.

 

True, Beaumont-Port Arthur is ranked 141 in tv markets, but the markets for a couple of other WAC candidates are even smaller. Missoula is ranked 165. Butte-Bozeman is ranked 189. (Beaumont-Port Arthur actually lost some of its share during the conversion from analogue to digital tv signals, but I don't think those people went away.) I'm not sure that market share would be as much of a consideration now for a conference that is trying to stay viable in football.

 

Bozeman and Missoula are not exactly airport hubs. I would think travel to IAH and Hobby and then to Beaumont would be easier and less expensive than getting to Montana. There aren't very many direct flights to either Bozeman or Missoula while airflight to Beaumont via the Houston airports is extremely convenient. Convenience of the Houston airports is one of the main ridership challenges for the Southeast Texas Regional Airport.

[LUSportsFan]

Interesting read here:

 

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/utsa/2011/11/utsa-in-contact-with-cusa-sun-belt/

 

The last paragraph is kind of a kind of revealing statement about the WAC. I have been saying (on this site) that I do not see the WAC surviving as a football conference. I think their commish has been positioning them to be a non-football conference with recent additions.

 

"Beyond that, a very credible WAC source did not shoot down the possibility that the league, if it is indeed crippled beyond all repair, could exist as a non-football entity, in which UTSA would complete in all sports while playing football independently. Another source wondered about the possibility of a Sun Belt/WAC merger, similar to the one the Mountain West and CUSA are mapping out."

 

I do not expect a WAC Sunbelt merger as there is nothing in it for the Belt. The SBC would likely take 2 or 3 of the WAC footabll schools as full members though. UTSA could very well be one of them considering their market and first year attendence average of 30K+.

 

I think the recent additions were made to shore up the non-football sports and to show some progress toward conference viability. I suspect that there was some short-sighted reasoning as to the importance of shoring up the conference in all sports as soon as possible. That short-sighted reasoning may lead to a non-football conference, but I don't think that was the intent and certainly is not in the best interest of the remaining football members.

[The Truth]

As a long time reader of this forum, my biggest complaint has to be when Lamar supporters fudge their own numbers, diminish the facts, skew the information, and make brash statements based on faulty premises. jdcurran is probably among the worst. He blatantly fudges travel distances (increasing the time from San Marcos to Austin airport, while knocking 30+ mins off the travel time from BMT to Houston airports) and then uses that "data" to support a flawed idea that somehow THAT one fact alone should reveal some incredible insight about how Lamar is being screwed out of chance to join the WAC.

 

Here's a FACT. The Beaumont market, regardless of its size, is not a DESIRABLE market for an FBS conference. The Austin, San Antonio and Dallas markets ARE desirable.

 

Here's another FACT. The football program won TWO conference games this season. The two wins came against the ONLY TWO WORSE TEAMS IN THE CONFERENCE (one opponent went WINLESS). In what reality would Lamar be successful at a HIGHER level of competition?

 

Third FACT. UTA has 34,000 students, UTSA has 32,000 students and Texas State has 34,000 students. Those institutions are LARGE. Lamar has less than 15,000 students and is generally regarded as a regional university, which is a completely different kind of school, with a much smaller reach than any of the schools moving to the WAC.

 

If, and I say IF, Lamar gets an FBS invitation, it will come from a conference looking to pick up a school for no other reason than to stay afloat as an FBS conference. In which case Lamar will quickly become the bottom feeder in that conference and compete against teams that no one in Beaumont has ever heard of (or has any traditional rivalries with).

 

The travel budgets for ALL sports will increase significantly, and the school will be forced to draw a MUCH larger portion of it's athletics revenue from student fees. The COST of moving up to another conference would be placed on the shoulders of a student body that already pays a large sum for college athletics.

 

Why don't the crazy fans on this board spend more time trying to support the school in a positive way? Instead of trying to go FBS, the school should just dominate the conference they're in now. Then the school can capitalize on the headlines "Lamar Wins SOMETHING".

[Guest NorthoftheBorder]

As a long time reader of this forum, my biggest complaint has to be when Lamar supporters fudge their own numbers, diminish the facts, skew the information, and make brash statements based on faulty premises. jdcurran is probably among the worst. He blatantly fudges travel distances (increasing the time from San Marcos to Austin airport, while knocking 30+ mins off the travel time from BMT to Houston airports) and then uses that "data" to support a flawed idea that somehow THAT one fact alone should reveal some incredible insight about how Lamar is being screwed out of chance to join the WAC.

 

Here's a FACT. The Beaumont market, regardless of its size, is not a DESIRABLE market for an FBS conference. The Austin, San Antonio and Dallas markets ARE desirable.

 

Here's another FACT. The football program won TWO conference games this season. The two wins came against the ONLY TWO WORSE TEAMS IN THE CONFERENCE (one opponent went WINLESS). In what reality would Lamar be successful at a HIGHER level of competition?

 

Third FACT. UTA has 34,000 students, UTSA has 32,000 students and Texas State has 34,000 students. Those institutions are LARGE. Lamar has less than 15,000 students and is generally regarded as a regional university, which is a completely different kind of school, with a much smaller reach than any of the schools moving to the WAC.

 

If, and I say IF, Lamar gets an FBS invitation, it will come from a conference looking to pick up a school for no other reason than to stay afloat as an FBS conference. In which case Lamar will quickly become the bottom feeder in that conference and compete against teams that no one in Beaumont has ever heard of (or has any traditional rivalries with).

 

The travel budgets for ALL sports will increase significantly, and the school will be forced to draw a MUCH larger portion of it's athletics revenue from student fees. The COST of moving up to another conference would be placed on the shoulders of a student body that already pays a large sum for college athletics.

 

Why don't the crazy fans on this board spend more time trying to support the school in a positive way? Instead of trying to go FBS, the school should just dominate the conference they're in now. Then the school can capitalize on the headlines "Lamar Wins SOMETHING".

 

One thing is obvious from your post, you are not a lamar supporter, or you are a LU supporter of the ilk that Lamar has no business being any better or desiring to be better than it is now. Let me educate you a little, winners succeed in spite of the obstacles in front of them. Losers look at the obstacles and say it can't be done.

[jdcurran235]

For one thing I have never said LU is getting screwed out of a WAC invite. I look at most of this stuff matter of fact. I use the IAH airport all the time as I travel back and forth from Houston to Beaumont as I live in Alaska and it is my only way to go see my family. In the worst traffic, it has never taken me more than an 1:30 to get home from the airport. That is just experience. I have a friend in San Marcos who I asked about travel time to the airport in Austin and he said it always takes him more than an hour cause of traffic. The I35 corridor is the worst in the state. But maybe that is fudging the truth. Maybe the I35 corridor is not really all that bad. When there is no traffic I have made it to the airport in houston in about an hour. That is just how long it takes. There is no fudging in these numbers, that is just what they are.

 

No one has ever claimed that the Beaumont market is some sort of pie in the sky market for an FBS conference. That is why people keep saying that we have to sell ourselves as part of the houston market. Whether that can truly be done is still unforeseen. But I guess even suggesting that we are part of the Houston market is fudging in your mind.

 

As far as being successful in a higher level, noone expects LU to go up to FBS and start dominating right away. We are building a program. It takes time and money. But just cause we are not going to be competitive right away does not mean we should not try and move / improve our position.

 

Lamar is classified as a national university and I will just leave that at that. But that is probably fudging the facts to.

 

You are obviously not a supporter of LU if all you think we bring to the table is keeping a conference afloat. We have the best attendance in conference and a strong basketball history. We have proven our ability to raise funds. There are many other attributes that we bring to a conference that someone like the WAC is looking at. You insult LU with your comments and doubt you will get much sympathy from the people on this board.

 

Travel budget increases will happen but to say they will increase significantly might be fudging the truth. But I am not sure of this fact so I am not commenting on this. I don't work for the budget office of LU.

 

To say that fans on this board that would like to see us in an FBS conference don't support LU in a positive way is bogus. Most of the people on this board are season ticket holder. I donate yearly to the school and I am a season ticket holder. Since I live in Alaska I usually have to give the tickets to my friends in town but I am getting actual butts in the seat by doing this. Everyone on this board wants us to dominate the conference we are in right now. We may get our wish with the basketball team this year. Just because we support LU to FBS does not mean that we don't spend 99% of our time supporting the school in other ways. IE actually showing up to games. Personal attacks on LU to FBS supports will get you nowhere on this board or with the LU faithful. You can have an opinion that you don't think we are not ready to move up and that is fine. But keep the personal attacks out of the equation.

[TBonesLU]

As a long time reader of this forum, my biggest complaint has to be when Lamar supporters fudge their own numbers, diminish the facts, skew the information, and make brash statements based on faulty premises. jdcurran is probably among the worst. He blatantly fudges travel distances (increasing the time from San Marcos to Austin airport, while knocking 30+ mins off the travel time from BMT to Houston airports) and then uses that "data" to support a flawed idea that somehow THAT one fact alone should reveal some incredible insight about how Lamar is being screwed out of chance to join the WAC.

 

Here's a FACT. The Beaumont market, regardless of its size, is not a DESIRABLE market for an FBS conference. The Austin, San Antonio and Dallas markets ARE desirable.

 

Here's another FACT. The football program won TWO conference games this season. The two wins came against the ONLY TWO WORSE TEAMS IN THE CONFERENCE (one opponent went WINLESS). In what reality would Lamar be successful at a HIGHER level of competition?

 

Third FACT. UTA has 34,000 students, UTSA has 32,000 students and Texas State has 34,000 students. Those institutions are LARGE. Lamar has less than 15,000 students and is generally regarded as a regional university, which is a completely different kind of school, with a much smaller reach than any of the schools moving to the WAC.

 

If, and I say IF, Lamar gets an FBS invitation, it will come from a conference looking to pick up a school for no other reason than to stay afloat as an FBS conference. In which case Lamar will quickly become the bottom feeder in that conference and compete against teams that no one in Beaumont has ever heard of (or has any traditional rivalries with).

 

The travel budgets for ALL sports will increase significantly, and the school will be forced to draw a MUCH larger portion of it's athletics revenue from student fees. The COST of moving up to another conference would be placed on the shoulders of a student body that already pays a large sum for college athletics.

 

Why don't the crazy fans on this board spend more time trying to support the school in a positive way? Instead of trying to go FBS, the school should just dominate the conference they're in now. Then the school can capitalize on the headlines "Lamar Wins SOMETHING".

 

Please note that regardless of UT-A's "size", their athletic attendance is sometimes a third of what Lamar pulls (thus denoting their poor interest on the subject). The area of the university, in this case, is not the focal point that should be driving an invitation. Lamar is in an area with no other D-I university within an hour's drive. We are not competing with the likes of the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars, North Texas, SMU, TCU, Dallas Baptist, UT-Dallas, TAMU-Dallas, Grand Prairie Air Hogs, Frisco Roughriders, and about 40 5A/large 4A schools (Plano has three 5A schools). I realize that some of that list may be a little bit of a stretch, but they're all there to prove my point.

 

I've been to a couple of UT-A/Lamar games at Texas Hall in Arlington. They sometimes get 800 (maybe) in attendance for a CONFERENCE game. It doesn't even look like that much sometimes as we all know that that number is for tickets sold. Lamar averages between 2,400-3,500 per game with the occasional Texas Tech in town for an 8K turnout. UT-A's place (Texas Hall and the one just built) doesn't hold over 6,500.

 

While I understand we aren't a "successful" program in a lot of people's eyes right now, we're moving in the right direction. We won two conference games we were NOT supposed to win. Our schedule was tougher this year, so we actually may have had a better season than our 5-6 season last year. While winning equates to being successful, understand that a second-year program is going to need its time to get there. I believe we are making the right strides. If we indeed got an invite to the WAC, it would not entirely be based on the fact that we have a winning program, but that we are a "winning" university and are a truly viable option.

 

You spoke of being a "regional" university. I can see why some would say that (despite getting recruits from all over the world; Matt Hancock being the latest MBB recruit from Australia). I honestly don't think that. I think with us being a Doctoral Research University, growing with the number of students, and increasing interest in everything Lamar, we are no longer a local university. On that same note, while I believe we are not a regional university, look at the map of the SLC teams (I think it's on Wikipedia). There may not be a more regional conference. If we do, in fact, stay in the SLC, no one here is saying that we won't support Lamar. However, if you support Lamar, you can at least understand that this is quite possibly our best way to grow outside of being the local university.

[coachacola]

Since Dr. Simmons has publicly stated that Lamar would like to join a FBS conference and be bowl eligible by 2015 then it's something worth discussing. I guess according to "the truth" he's crazy like the rest of us.

 

Lamar is a national research university. Texas State is a regional university so I guess they made a mistake by joining the WAC. Oh wait, they have a lot of students so that must make then a national university. La Tech, Troy, Idaho and a bunch of other FBS schools also don't belong at the FBS level because they are not in large metro areas and don't have large student bodies.

[The Truth]

Just to clarify. A university is classified by where it gets it's students primarily from, not from where it gets it's athletes. The term 'regional' was not meant to offend, but as a descriptor to designate that the other schools get their enrollment nationally or internationally, while Lamar serves a more narrow population.

 

Lamar University's enrollment is primarily made up of students from Texas (roughly 93%) and of that 93% most of them are from the greater Beaumont, Golden Triangle, Southeast Texas region. Roughly .045% of students are international students, and the remaining 6% come from various parts of America.

 

Here is it's Carnagie profile:

 

http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/lookup_listings/view_institution.php?unit_id=226091&start_page=institution.php&clq=%7B%22ipug2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ipgrad2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22enrprofile2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ugprfile2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22sizeset2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22basic2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22eng2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22search_string%22%3A%22lamar+university%22%2C%22level%22%3A%22%22%2C%22control%22%3A%22%22%2C%22accred%22%3A%22%22%2C%22state%22%3A%22%22%2C%22region%22%3A%22%22%2C%22urbanicity%22%3A%22%22%2C%22womens%22%3A%22%22%2C%22hbcu%22%3A%22%22%2C%22hsi%22%3A%22%22%2C%22tribal%22%3A%22%22%2C%22msi%22%3A%22%22%2C%22landgrant%22%3A%22%22%2C%22coplac%22%3A%22%22%2C%22urban%22%3A%22%22%7D

[TBonesLU]

Just to clarify. A university is classified by where it gets it's students primarily from, not from where it gets it's athletes. The term 'regional' was not meant to offend, but as a descriptor to designate that the other schools get their enrollment nationally or internationally, while Lamar serves a more narrow population.

 

Lamar University's enrollment is primarily made up of students from Texas (roughly 93%) and of that 93% most of them are from the greater Beaumont, Golden Triangle, Southeast Texas region. Roughly .045% of students are international students, and the remaining 6% come from various parts of America.

 

No, and I understand that. My point is we are branching out. Anytime we get a recruit from out-of-state or internationally, it only increases Lamar's branding. This is especially true with athletes, because of their families having interests in the sport their child plays.

 

What about the rest of the stuff I posted? Any thoughts? I'm honestly interested in what you think in the most sincere and least sarcastic way possible.

[jdcurran235]

6. What are National Universities? There are 280 national universities—172 public, 101 private, and 7 for profit—based on the 2010 Basic categories established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. National Universities offer a full range of undergraduate majors as well as master’s and doctoral degrees. In many cases, they place strong emphasis on research and receive federal money to support their research endeavors.

 

This is according to US News. Does anyone know what in the Carnegie rating system that made us move from being classified as a Regional University to a National University?

[jdcurran235]

Nevermind, found the answer:

 

Based on categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “National Universities” include institutions that offer a full range of undergraduate majors, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees with a strong emphasis on research. The Carnegie Foundation defines these as Research Universities – very high research activity (RU/VH), Research Universities – high research activity (RU/H), and Doctoral/Research Universities (DRU.)