In case you missed it, turns out athletics atmosphere is better at Rice — not to mention Baylor, Pepperdine and Harvard — than it is at Syracuse.

SU athletics is much more on par with, say, Kent State.

At least that’s according to a Sports Illustrated project that, in the Oct. 7 issue, ranked the top 200 Division I athletics programs. The editors at SI decided that, based on five criteria, they could compare the schools.

How foolish.

“I have to wonder,” Syracuse Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel said, “why anyone would go through such an exercise.”

Probably because it sells magazines. But that doesn’t make the process legitimate.

Through some magical formula, SI decided Syracuse is the 58th-best sports college — by the way, what is a “sports college,” anyway? — in the country. That puts the Orange one spot ahead of Kent State and eight behind Pepperdine, which came in at No. 50. Texas and Stanford were awarded Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.

An SI spokesperson listed the criteria used in an e-mail:

(BULLET) Performance during the 2001-02 school year in the big five sports — baseball, football, hockey and men’s and women’s basketball.

(BULLET) Position in the 2001-02 Sears Cup NCAA all-sports standings. (The Sears Cup is a system that awards schools points based on where their teams finish in NCAA Championships.)

(BULLET) Number of varsity, club and intramural sports.

(BULLET) Range of recreational facilities.

(BULLET) Whether or not spirit-boosting activities, like Midnight Madness, were held.

Notably missing: graduation rate and Title IX compliance.

“It’s pretty subjective,” Crouthamel said. “I could put together a list with Syracuse higher.”

If he did, he’d certainly adjust the definition of “major sport.”

What hurts Syracuse most is that the editors decided that men’s lacrosse is not a major sport, even though it routinely attracts more than 5,000 fans at certain locales. And that’s not considering the nearly 30,000 spectators who turn out to watch the Final Four.

Syracuse’s men’s lacrosse national championship only factored in terms of Sears Cup standings, in which Syracuse ranks No. 65.

Texas received far more credit for its baseball championship and Minnesota for its ice hockey championship because SI deemed those sports major.

Kent State Director of Athletics Laing Kennedy, who originally considered the project legitimate because “Sports Illustrated is a responsible national magazine that specializes in sports,” paused when asked to consider the subjectivity of the term “major sport.”

“I can understand that,” Kennedy said. “There’s some subjectivity to that.”

Scott Stricklin, Baylor’s assistant athletics director for communications and marketing, discounted the project, even though his school came in 15 spots ahead of Syracuse.

“I don’t know if there’s any good way to quantify the success of a school’s athletic program,” Stricklin said. “I’m sure there were a lot of schools that had some beef.”

Especially schools from big conferences. Kent State finished one spot behind Syracuse even though the Golden Flashes compete in the Mid-American conference. Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Princeton finished higher than SU.

Notable Big East teams like Boston College (No. 54) and Virginia Tech (No. 78) also were left out of the top 50.

The SI editors failed to recognize that a school’s conference matters in terms of level of competition. The Syracuse football team plays Miami and Virginia Tech each year, while Kent State faces top conference foes Marshall and Northern Illinois.

So, how about instead of ranking schools from Nos. 1-200, divide schools by conferences — major, mid-major and minor — and by region — Northeast, Southeast, etc.?

That would eliminate two problems: The level of competition would be evened, and appropriate major sports could be chosen for each region or conference.

Or maybe a better solution is to leave the subject alone all together. Does anyone really care, anyway?

“I’ve got enough trauma in my life,” Crouthamel said. “I don’t need contrived trauma. If you’re in the top 10, I guess you could use that for some purpose, although I don’t know what.”

“It’s just something out there to stir up debate,” Stricklin said. “And it certainly has.”

Pete Iorizzo is an assistant sports editor at The Daily Orange, where his columns appear regularly. E-mail him at pniorizz@syr.edu.

Published on October 15, 2002 at 12:00 pm