Looks like we aren't the only Pac12 school in AZ ....

[El Gato]

Was that they have the 16th most academic all-americans in the country and is ranked as the #1 most innovative. Now about those...

Academic All-Americans are relative. You aren't an AA because you are better than another student from another school. You are an AA because you do well in the classes your school put you in relative to those that the other students are put in. This is not inconsistent with Polian's tweet. If the school is "easy" then students should have an easier time making the grades relative than a more difficult school. It also didn't say which sports it applied to. Schools can stack the deck by recruiting academic achievers in sports no one cares about or students with high GPAs who never see the field. A friend of mine was a swimmer at UNLV who was recruited by the women's basketball team because she was 6'3" and had a high GPA. She never played a minute of basketball, before or after she was on the team.

As for #1 most innovative, a lot of that is innovative. Like giving away tuition for MBA students. It was an interesting approach, but I doubt it's sustainable. They tend to do other "interesting" things as well, often catching the accreditors by surprise, but I'm not sure how much of it affects the actual in the classroom education.

[Black Oaks]

As for #1 most innovative, a lot of that is innovative. Like giving away tuition for MBA students. It was an interesting approach, but I doubt it's sustainable. They tend to do other "interesting" things as well, often catching the accredits by surprise, but I'm not sure how much of it affects the actual in the classroom education.

When I think of innovative I think of Stanford, MIT, Cal Tec, even Arizona when you get into image processing and space exploration. ASu I think of curtain of fools. I guess that curtain thing is innovative.

Bearing Down on some innovation is really not worth much

[ValleyCat]

In ASu's advertising about being the #1 school for innovation, they say that Stanford is #2 and MIT #3 (or the other way around, I forget which). ASu does do some out of the box stuff, like its relationship with Starbucks and going all-in on Online degrees before a lot of schools did.

[FlagCat]

As for #1 most innovative, a lot of that is innovative. Like giving away tuition for MBA students. It was an interesting approach, but I doubt it's sustainable. They tend to do other "interesting" things as well, often catching the accreditors by surprise, but I'm not sure how much of it affects the actual in the classroom education.

Well, that's pretty clever. When I see the words "innovative" and "university", I immediately think of research related innovation. I don't think of gimmicks involving Starbucks or re-purposing a shower curtain for a basketball arena.

[El Gato]

As for #1 most innovative, a lot of that is innovative. Like giving away tuition for MBA students. It was an interesting approach, but I doubt it's sustainable. They tend to do other "interesting" things as well, often catching the accreditors by surprise, but I'm not sure how much of it affects the actual in the classroom education.

Well, that's pretty clever. When I see the words "innovative" and "university", I immediately think of research related innovation. I don't think of gimmicks involving Starbucks or re-purposing a shower curtain for a basketball arena.

They may be doing some innovative things in the classroom, but I'm not sure how one would rank those. As far as in labs, here are the top 20 universities to file patents

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/23/us-universities-dominate-international-patents - Neither AZ school is in the top 20.

and here are the top schools for R&D spending

http://www.bestcolleges.com/features/colleges-with-highest-research-and-development-expenditures/ - UofA is #22

[ValleyCat]

http://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/h ... /79687688/

Of course, the Republic defends ASu by ripping on Nevada. It ignores the most significant part of the tweet, the negative reference to the "bad guy" because it most likely refers to Cracker.

[El Gato]

That's cheerleading even by their standards. And how was Polian's statement wrong? He said "very average" which is exactly what I'd call #129 if I believed in rankings. UofA is #121, I think. Also very average. Not the elite. Not garbage. Average.

Yes, they buried the lede. This point of the DM was most likely to a) slam Cracker and assert that the assistants won't be staying long, and b) refute that ASu has better academics than UNR (if you believe in that kind of thing).

It's also naive to the point of mental deficiency to think that Cracker or any other coach doesn't do this stuff. Send negative messages, not tweet DMs - that's a special kind of dumb.