Friday, November 26, 2010

I can't believe I'm defending Ohio State

As some of you may have heard, Ohio State president Gordon Gee complained that some unnamed college football teams played a schedule consisting of "the Little Sisters of the Poor. Boise State president Bob Kustra not only bitched about Gee's comments, but added the following remark:

"I just hope that when he speaks about his research profile or the quality of his university he’s a little more believable than he is about athletics, because he’s just so wrong on this one."

Are you sure you want to pick an academic fight with Ohio State, Bob?

Per US News and World Report, Ohio State is the #56 national university in the USA. Boise State is the 51st best regional university in the West, behind such luminaries as Central Washington, Northwest Nazarene, and Cal State-Stanislaus.

Ohio State has the 21st best graduate business program in the country. Boise State's program is unranked.

Ohio State's school of education is the #15 program in the country. Boise State, again, unranked.

In graduate-level engineering, Ohio State is #25. Boise State's program is undergraduate-only.

Ohio State has the #35 ranked law school and the #27 medical school. Boise State has no law school and no medical school.

Ohio State has 20 colleges. BSU has seven.

Ohio State has produced nine Pulitzer Prize winners and four Nobel Laureates. BSU has produced zero of each.

Ohio State's alumni include Jesse Owens, George Steinbrenner, Arthur Schlesinger, Roy Liechtenstein, Paul Iams (of pet food fame), Richard Lewis, Bruce Vilanch, Dwight Yoakam, Jack Buck, Howard Metzenbaum, and Teflon inventor Roy Plunkett. Boise State's alumni include Bob Kustra.

There are certainly legitimate reasons why someone would want to attend Boise State, but if Kustra thinks BSU is in the same academic weight class as Ohio State, he's as crazy as he was when he burned his bridges with another local university.