Best Football & Basketball Combinations

Pitt finished the 2009-10 season ranked in the top 20 in both football and basketball. Here are the combined final rankings for college football and basketball using the Coaches' Poll because it is the only one with a final basketball ranking taken after the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament.

rank school....... average

1. Ohio State...........8
2. West Virginia..... 12.5
3. Brigham Young... 17
4. PITT................ 17.5
5. Wisconsin.......... 20
6. Georgia Tech..... 20.5*

No other schools had both teams finish ranked even in "Others Receiving Votes".

*Georgia Tech finished in a hypothetical 28th place in basketball if rankings were extended into the "Others Receiving Votes".

If you were to include the final coaches' FCS football rankings, it would end up like this:

1. Ohio State..........8
1. Villanova............8
3. West Virginia.....12.5
4. Butler................15.5*
4. Northern Iowa....15.5
6. Brigham Young..17
7. PITT.................17.5
8. Wisconsin..........20
9. Georgia Tech.....20.5**
10. Dayton.............34***

* Butler in ORV in FCS football
** Georgia Tech in ORV in basketball
*** Dayton in ORV in both sports

That led to the eventual question, has Pitt football and basketball ever been this competitive at the same time. The answer is, of course, Yes. Here's a look at the best periods of combined football and basketball competitiveness.

2002-2004

In 2002-03, Pitt finished 18th in football and 8th in basketball including winning the Big East Tournament and Regular Season Championships. The following academic year Pitt cracked the top ten in football and had the Heisman runner-up. However, Pitt fell out of the rankings in late November and failed to return to the rankings after losing its bowl game. Pitt finished the 2003-04 basketball season ranked 7th along and added another regular season Big East Championship and a second consecutive Sweet 16. If you go through the end of the 2004 calendar year, you can add to that a share of the BE Championship in football, a Fiesta Bowl appearance, and a #25 AP ranking for football. 2002-2004 seems to be the high water mark in recent (i.e. 21st Century) Pitt athletic history, although that can (and hopefully will) change depending on the outcome of 2010-11 and beyond.

1987-1991
It could be said Pitt was competitive in both sports in the late 80s with probably the best combined year coming in 1987-88 with the football team finishing just out of the top 20 after losing to Texas in the Bluebonnet Bowl (the AP Poll only ranked the top 20 and Pitt dropped into the Others Receiving Votes listing at what would have been number 23). That spring the basketball team won a regular season Big East Championship and finished 8th in the final (pre-tournament) AP poll, although it was infamously upset as a two seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Both sports were competitive, but they never put it together in the same years as they have done in the 2000s.

1973-1983

Pitt was also strong on both sides from 1973-1983, although it was not nearly as nationally relevant in basketball as now. In 1974 Pitt went to the Elite Eight and finish ranked. Later, Pitt won Eastern Eight basketball tournament titles in '81 and '82 thus earning appearances in the NCAA tournament those seasons. Football's exploits are well known during this period, including a National Championship and six top ten finishes. There weren't combined final rankings to be had in the same seasons: Basketball only finished ranked in '74, and although football did crack the top 20 earlier that fall, it did not appear in the final rankings. However, football was so good that it helped to make up for basketball's lack of national notoriety.

1955-1964

Another period where both sports was competitive was 1955-1964. Although basketball only cracked the national rankings for one week early in the 1959 season, they made back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances in '57 (Sweet 16) and '58 on the shoulders of Consensus All-American Don Hennon. Pitt had another NCAA appearance in '63 and an NIT appearance in '64. Meanwhile the football team finished 11th/11th in 1955, 12th/13th in 1956, and 19th/20th in 1959, and 3rd/4th in the famous "no-bowl" year of 1963.

1927-1938
Undisputedly, the "Golden Era" and pinnacle of Pitt Athletics was from 1927-28 to 1937-38. Consider these achievements during that 11-year period:

Football:
4 X National Championships as determined by NCAA listed "major selectors in 1929, 1931, 1936, and 1937
7 X Eastern Championships in 1927, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1936, and 1937
9 X One-loss or fewer seasons in 1927, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936 and 1937
4X Rose Bowl appearances following the 1927, 1929, 1932, and 1936 seasons (not counting the one Pitt turned down in 1937...remember, this was the only bowl until 1935)
21X First Team All-American selections
0.844 Overall winning percentage, zero losing seasons

Basketball:
2X Helms Foundation National Champions in 1928 and 1930
2X "National Championship Game" appearances in 1930 and 1935
4X Eastern Intercollegiate Conference Champions in 1933, 1934, 1935, and 1937
2X Scoring Champion and 1930 National Player of the Year
7X First Team All-American selections
0.761 Overall winning percentage, one losing season

Think about those achievements! That is sticking strictly to those eleven academic years and not extending it to the 1941 Final Four or the 1925 Eastern Football Championship. In any case, very few schools can claim such a dominant era.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that today we have long term stability seemingly ensured with supportive leadership in the university administration as well as both the football and basketball coaches wrapped up with long-term contracts. Both sports will follow their performance this season by entering the 2010-11 season ranked in the top 20 and among the favorites to win the Big East Conference. Things are definitely trending upwards and it is a very exciting time to be a Panther!

The issue of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's financial distress and need to close local branches came up in a thread on the Pitt sports message boards. Someone proposed that the city let Pitt and CMU take over the Carnegie Library System which I think would be a bad idea because all the branches would be a big long-term drain on their own library systems.

I came up with a proposal to make it worthwhile for Pitt specifically to get involved. Pitt has needed to expand Hillman for since the 80s (it was in the last Master Plan ten years ago and never got acted on). Here is my proposed solution.

Sell the Carnegie Library building to Pitt (say $30 million). Take that money and put it in an endowment for supporting the system and local branches (forget Andrew's intent of requiring public support, he never envisioned such a population drain and an inept local government). Make the sale to Pitt legally contingent that the Oakland branch and all of its existing holdings would remain open and free the public in perpetuity (e.g. the reorganized Carnegie Library at the University of Pittsburgh would coexist as a Carnegie Library branch and the main library for Pitt's ULS). Include stipulations that a majority percentage of all revenue (e.g. library fines) generated from non-university affiliate patrons would go to the Carnegie Library System and that some space must be reserved for the Carnegie's public programing. Consolidate the duplicative library services (like microfilm) and sell off duplicative holdings that exist at Hillman Library in order to free up space (probably could free up the entire ground floor of Hillman, maybe more). This would make the Carnegie the site for items that are of the greatest public interest (e.g. things like new releases, fiction, local history) as well as the major site of student and public study. In the subsequent space freed up at Hillman, the crowded specialty library centers (e.g. Latin American, Asian, etc) driving the need for expansion there can grow into the new spaces reducing/eliminating the need for a physical addition to Hillman. Hillman would become mostly dedicated to specific research specialty collections, specifically for UCIS, and its rarer collections still protected from non-university affiliate loss and damage. This benefits Pitt by giving it a historic, classic library space to call its own and reduce/eliminating the need to physically expand Hillman. It hurts Pitt by splitting its major holdings between two facilities across Schenley Plaza (perhaps they could build a tunnel in the future) and costing $$$ it really doesn't have (purchase cost and rennovation/consolidation costs, adding additional librarians/staff). It benefits the Carnegie by setting up a endowment that would generate about $1.35 million a year (at 4.5% rate of return) which would provide the same amount of money they are planning to save by closing the branches, plus eliminates the upkeep costs of maintaining (and staffing entirely themselves) their largest central branch in Oakland. Downside for the Carnegie is that the Oakland Library is would be much more crowded by students and it is embarrassing to divest itself of its flagship.

Macy's listens

Macy's downtown Pittsburgh store has removed the offending display. Currently, it is covered by a black curtain. One would hope that Pitt items will be displayed in the near future, but in any case, corporate Macy's, who was responsible for the display, has proven their willingness to listen to local concerns. Credit must be given where credit is due. Kudos for doing the right thing Macy's.

Macy's downtown Pittsburgh is no friend of Pittsburgh

It has come to my attention that somehow, Macy's downtown store has the gall to put a display of a school's team that must not be mentioned up in their store front window. And make no mistake, this university is a competitor to the University of Pittsburgh not just in the remaining sports it has the nerve to play Pitt in, but also student recruitment, government funding, and research grant applications. In fact, it has been noted for not playing nice with other institutions in the past, particularly the PASSHE, in stark contrast to the relationship shared by Pitt and its neighbor, Carnegie-Mellon University.

This just reeks of nose-thumbing imaginable at a university that has recently been ranked as the number one public university in the nation in terms of positive impact on its urban community, and that has also recently been celebrated in several national publications, including the New York Times and USA Today, as a key contributor in the revitalization of the Pittsburgh economy.

One can only assume that a lack of local sensitivities and local culture awareness are beginning to surface following the acquisition and re-branding of the local Kaufmann's Department Store chain. Kaufmann's would have never displayed such an affront to the local university in their storefront windows, in fact, it might have done the opposite.

How can Macy's think it is a good business model is to insult the alumni of a university with over 77,000 alumni in Allegheny County (well over 3 times as many as Penn State), 32,500 current students, and 200,000 additional alumni across the United States?

File your own complaint at the link below:

Macy's Complaints

2008 BIG EAST CHAMPIONS

• As some of you know, my record for Pitt games at the Garden (and the entire state of NY) is .000, so I stayed away from NYC. I’ve also worn the same clothes since Pitt-emblazoned clothes since Wednesday. In addition, I didn’t tape the game, because I think my record for taping games is equally depressing. You are all welcome.

• This has been an interesting rebuilding year hasn’t it? I’ll take more rebuilding years please.

• No lie, I had a great feeling about this game before it started. The players all said the right things. This team just seems really tight, and to have a camaraderie that was perhaps missing last year. A camaraderie I don’t think we’ve seen since Knight has been running the point.

• That said, my main concern was fatigue with memories of 2001 floating in my head

• I knew we had this game the moment I saw us diving for the lose balls early in the fist. Still, I was worried about our legs in the second, especially after Sam was short on some foul shots, and some open jumpers fell short, etc, but, there was an undeniable sense the whole time that this team just “wanted it” too badly. Reminded me of 2003 quite a bit.

• Lots have been said about this being Pitt’s Golden Era in hoops. No one can deny the successes of this era are the best that all of us internet-surfing fans have ever witnessed. But, lets give our great-grandfathers their due and indulge their memories with the following comparisons.

Let call Golden Era #1 the 16-year span from 1925-26 through the 1940-1941 seasons. The back-story for this era is that the legendary coach “Doc” Carlson had recently taken over the team in 1922. Carlson would coach Pitt for 30 straight seasons. He is sort of like our hoops version of JoePA in that while his early success was remarkable and completely innovative for the first half of his tenure (inventing the Figure 8 offense and experimenting with different training methods while playing a national schedule), he seemingly failed to adjust to the times and Pitt’s hoops program slipped in the later half of his career as coach. Unlike JoPa, the rosters of his later teams did not read like a police blotter and it is unclear if he chased officials across the court or soiled himself during games. That said, consider the results during that 16 year timeframe:

Record of 241-104 (.699)

13 winning seasons

1 undefeated season (1927-28)

2 Helms Foundation National Championships (1927-28 & 1929-30) Now before you scoff, yes even back then they were widely considered the best team in the nation and “National Champions” at the time (read the Owl student yearbooks at Pitt’s digital archive). Carlson was one of the first coaches to schedule “nationally”, annually taking his team on Midwest and West Coast road trips that included, for example, games against many Big Ten teams. Here’s a sampling from the 1927-28 schedule:
@ Michigan, @ Chicago, @ Northwestern, @ Iowa, Ohio State, Syracuse, WVU, @ Army, @ Colgate, PSU, Notre Dame, @ WVU, and @ PSU. That’s an impressive schedule even today, and Pitt went 21-0 that year.

The 1930 team even played in a “National Championship Game” at then defending national champ and assumed #1 team Montana State winning by one point. Other wins that year: @Indiana, @ Northwestern, @ Iowa, defending Eastern Collegiate champion Dartmouth, Ohio State, Nebraska, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, PSU, @ PSU, WVU, @ Temple, @ Army. These teams were named National Champions for a reason, and the record Carlson racked up in these years against the competition he played against was incredible. Consider some of the other teams (not listed above) that we played (often repeatedly and on the road) during this era: Michigan St., Marquette, Creighton, Purdue, NYU, CCNY, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Penn, Butler, Kansas, Colorado, Kansas, Stanford, USC, Xavier, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tulane, LSU, Navy, Bradley, Richmond, Illinois. We played anyone anywhere at anytime.

4 Eastern Intercollegiate Conference Championships (1933, 1934, 1935, and 1937) out of the 7 years of its existence (1933-1939) with combined record of 45-19 (.703) in non-playoff conference play. In two of those seasons (1935 and 1937) Pitt finished tied for the regular season title and the champion was determine by a one game playoff. In 1935 this game was played at WVU and in 1937 at Temple. Pitt won both. Indefensibly, the Pitt media guide fails to even mention the 1937 EIC Championship. Members of this conference included Georgetown, Penn State, Duquesne, Temple, West Virginia, and Carnegie Tech.

1 Final Four. The NCAA tournament began in 1939 and Pitt got its first bid in 1941. Back then, it was only an 8-team tournament, selecting mostly conference champions, but it is true the NIT was just as if not more prestigious to play in. However, the NCAA was a truly “national” tournament with an East and West region. Pitt went to the East regional in Madison, Wisconsin where it defeated North Carolina (Pitt’s only win ever over the Heels), but then lost to host Wisconsin after blowing a sizable second half lead. Wisconsin went on to Kansas City to beat the West Regional champ Washington State for the NCAA championship and is considered that year’s National Champion by both the NCAA (not surprisingly) and the Helms Foundation (which should be trusted to look at these things more objectively), suggesting, perhaps a no less than equivalent value of the playing in that season’s NCAA tournament.

7 All-American selections: Charley Hyatt (3X and 2X consensus 1st team 1928, 29 & 30; one of only 18 players in history to have 3 selections), Sykes Reed (Helms 1928), Don Smith (consensus 1st team 1933), and Claire Cribbs (2X consensus 1st team 1934 & 35).

2 National Scoring champions (Hyatt 1928 and 1930)

1 National Player of the Year (Hyatt 1930)

2 Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Inductees: Hyatt and Coach Carlson (both ’59)

Also in 1940, Pitt played in the first ever television broadcast of a basketball game in a 57-37 win over Fordham at, you guessed it, Madison Square Garden. We just love that place.

We are all more familiar with the Current Golden Era. Let’s look at the 8-year span (half the timeframe of Carlson’s Golden Era #1 examine above) starting in 2000-2001 and take it through this year including our current 26-9 record.

207-64 (.764)

8 winning seasons

1 30 win season

7 NCAA appearances, 1 NIT appearance

4 Sweet 16s

7 Big East Title game appearances

2 Big East Tournament Championships (2003 & 2008)

3 Big East Regular Season Championships (1 outright, 1 West Div., 1 West Div shared) including an overall regular season conference record of 88-42 (.677)

3 All-American selections (2X Wooden, 2nd & 3rd team Brandin Knight 2002, 03) and Aaron Gray (3rd team 2007)

1 National Coach of the Year (Howland consensus 2002)


So yeah, wow, which era is better? Try to take the natural bias of the current era out of it and I think you have to go with the earlier era because of the 2 National Titles and the “greater” talent (at least nationally recognized talent with the POY, 1st team All-Americans, etc). Plus, you have to factor in the lack of an opportunity in the early era for post-season slots since there was not a 64 team NCAA + 32 team NIT and include the fact that there were only postseason tournaments in existence for 4 of the 16 years of the early selected era. Also, a lack of conference affiliation for over half of those years probably reduces the number of conference championships (especially in the 20s). However, there is no doubt that the current era is certainly more consistent since we haven’t had any “off” years with losing records, and we could be on pace to smash that era if it can get over the NCAA “hump”.


• Speaking of history, we are building today what Kentucky, Carolina, and Kansas look back on as evidence of their pedigree. These banners are all important because they make up the mystique of tomorrow. I really hope that soon people will look back over our history in the Big East…including our 2 Big East titles in the 80s and our 12 post-season appearances from 1980 to 1993… and ask “What happened at Pitt for those 7 years in the 90s?” That should be the anomaly, not the sort of seemingly constant surprise at Pitt’s string of successes in the 2000s.

• Speaking of those 7 years in the 90s…. Look what the wrong coaching choice can do, even when at the time all indications point to it as a homerun selection. How many of us were doing back flips when they named Ben Howland coach in 1999? I’ll answer that for us: zero. How many schools coaching changes have flopped or gone stale/mediocre in the last 8 years? We are soo, sooo lucky to have had Howland/Dixon. As others have pointed out, anyone that doesn’t see that flat out doesn’t understand college basketball in the least.

• Speaking of Golden Eras, how great was it to be a Pitt fan in the 20s and 30s. Football (MNCs in ’29, ’31, ‘36, & ’37, named by at least one selector in ’25, ’27, ’33, ’34, and ‘38) and Basketball (MNCs in ’28 and ’30, Final 4 in ‘41) national dominance! That is a true “bling” Golden “bling” Era. With a nod to another mini-golden era from ‘74 to ‘84, could we be about to embark on a 2nd Major Golden Era of all-around Pitt athletics?

• And whom do we really have to thank for our current Golden Era? Well here’s a little nod to the bumbling ACC! My distain for all things ACC, Boston College and Miami continues, but think of what they have given us. We were all set to have Skip Prosser (RIP) come on board as coach in 2003 until the impending raid scared him off. Our ACC hand-delivered “booby prize”:…Jamie Dixon. Plus, we all know what opportunity there is laid out before us in the Big East football side. Thank you ACC.

• Every so often, some people like to start threads about how the Big East should break up or how Pitt should try to wiggle its way into the Big Ten (as if that later idea is even remotely realistic). Folks, the connection we have to NYC and the opportunities we’ve had to play there thanks to our Big East membership, is a huge reason for our success the past eight seasons. Remember that. Hopefully, our presence in NYC will continue to grow…and I mean in the media and consciousness of the sports fans. Selfishly, that means I hope St. John’s program (& Rutgers and Seton Hall) continues to be stagnant. Red Storm fans must despise hearing about our New York kids all the time and our team calling MSG our second home. Becoming a favored team in NYC area through hoops can only be helpful for us in other aspects, like football and student recruiting, as the school seeks to advance its national and regional following.

• Oh yeah, BTW, Hail to PITT!

A closer look at recently released institutional rankings

As you are probably aware, I track institutional rankings pretty closely. There has been a couple of significant rankings released in the last couple of weeks that paint Pitt is a pretty good light. I’ll take a closer look at these below.

National Merit and Achievement Award winners numbers for ’07 were released earlier this week. These are two nationwide high school academic competitions run by the same organization, the later competition being specifically for African-American students. The total of National Merit and National Achievement scholars is a measure of undergraduate excellence used in the The Center’s annual study, “The Top American Research Universities”. [http://mup.asu.edu/]

Here are Pitt’s trend numbers over the last couple of years (*2006 does not include numbers of National Achievement winners, simply because I haven’t had time to track them down).

Year: total winners
2007: 30
2006: 14*
2005: 21
2004: 23
2003: 13
2002: 7
2001: 13

National Merit and Achievement finalists are selected on a regional/state-by-state basis, it is worth comparing to other PA institutions.

National Merit, National Achievement; Total
(Numbers in parenthesis indicated the number of scholarships provided to National Merit finalists through individual university funds.)

1. Penn: 115, 30; 145 total
2. CMU: 31, 1; 32 total
3. PITT: 20 (3), 10; 30 total
4. Swarthmore: 20, 5; 25 total
5. PSU: 15 (5), 0; 15 total
6. Bucknell: 8 (6), 0; 8 total
7. Haverford 5, 1; 6 total
8. Bryn Mawr: 5, 0; 5 total
8. Lehigh: 5 (4), 0; 5 total
10. Grove City: 4, 0; 4 total
11. Dickinson College: 3 (3), 0; 3 total
11. Drexel: 2, 1; 3 total
11. Franklin & Marshall: 3 (3), 0; 3 total
12. Lafayette: 2, 0; 2 total
13. Allegheny College: 0, 1; 1 total
13. Geneva: 1, 0; 1 total
13. Muhlenberg: 0, 1; 1 total

Next, onto something I think is fairly impressive. The number of Peace Corps volunteers that is produced per institution. The Peace Corp press release (seen here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/stats/schools2008.pdf) breaks all schools down into 3 categories: large (over 15,000 undergrads), medium between (5,001 & 15000), and small (less than 5000). Pitt, with 17,246 undergrads, finishes 13th among all “big” schools. However, some well known, prestigious institutions fall into the medium category (UVA, Georgetown, Penn, Yale). Among all schools, only 14 in the nation produced more Peace Corp volunteers than Pitt. Pitt's graduate school also ranked 10th among all graduate schools for most alumni that serve as Peace Corps volunteers. Considering Pitt's size compared to some other “big” schools on that list, it speaks volumes for the character of our students.

Here is a Top 30 ranking of the top overall Peace Corp producers among universities of all sizes.
1. Washington 113
2. Wisconsin 99
3. Colorado 94
4. UNC 81
5. Michigan St 80
6. Michigan 80
7. Texas 78
8. Cal-Berkley 75
9. Virginia 72
10. Minnesota 71
11. Oregon 67
12. George Washington 66
13. Boston University 60
14. Colorado St 57
15. PITT 54
16. Indiana 53
16. James Madison 53
16. Western Washington Univ 53
19. Cornell 52
20. Illinois 51
20. William & Mary 51
22. Florida 50
22. UC-Santa Cruz 50
24. Cal-Santa Barbara 48
25. Arizona St. 46
25. UC-San Diego 46
27. Penn State 45
27. UC-Davis 45
28. American 45
30. Purdue 44
30. UCLA 44


Finally, the National Institute of Health (NIH) released their updated figures for funding among institutions for fiscal year 2006. NIH no longer releases ranking lists as they have done previously, citing the difficulty in tracking awards to across multiple investigators/departments and the development of web based analysis and downloadable data (available here) that allows you to generate your own reports. Since 1997, Pitt has been ranked in the top 10 of all institutions. This is incredibly impressive, considering these awards are based on a highly competitive peer review system in which the grants that are submitted for review are in competition with those from other institutions in the same subject area. In addition, over the last several years, funding levels have stalled which has in actuality lead to a decrease in available NIH funding at a time when applications for research grants has doubled.

In a recent press release (http://mac10.umc.pitt.edu/u/FMPro?-db=ustory&-lay=a&-format=d.html&storyid=7904&-Find), Pitt tabulates its standing by combining all NIH funding for itself and its affiliates which consists of associated institutions in the geographical area (such as Magee and the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Institute). It is very hard to combine this on my own to check for accuracy, as I do not have easily access or time to identify all the possible affiliates for other universities. Pitt released the following rankings for total overall money for institution+affiliates:
1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. University of Pennsylvania
4. Cal-San Francisco
5. PITT ($447 million)
6. UCLA
7. Duke
8. Michigan
9. Washington University

This is highly impressive. Pitt also mentions that for total number of awarded grants (each having a separate peer review process), Pitt trails only Harvard, John Hopkins, and Penn. This is likewise highly impressive as it is an indication of Pitt’s overall competitiveness in the health, medicine and biosciences fields. I ran some numbers on my own from the NIH data. It does not include affiliated institutions (and so reflects more closely the rankings data released previously by NIH).

School ($ in millions)
1. Johns Hopkins ($598)
2. Penn ($455)
3. U Washington ($449)
4. UCSF ($434)
5. Duke ($431)
6. Michigan ($396)
7. UCLA ($388)
8. Washington Univ (St. Louis) ($378)
9. PITT ($377)
10. Yale ($338)

Running the numbers again, I tried to combine campuses together. For example, I combined Baylor University and Baylor University College of Medicine which were listed separately. Interestingly, Pitt has two separate listings: University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh. I have no idea what the difference is between these two listing (if there even is a real difference or just data a data entry quirk), but combining them increases Pitt’s research total (without affiliates) to $390,950,510. However, trying to combined campuses together gets into some institutional issues that I don’t have answers for. Specifically, which University of Texas Heath Centers would be considered part of the Univ. of Texas in Austin that most are familiar with? I didn’t combined distinct branches like UTEP with UT-Austin. Like the different universities in the Cal system, they both have very distinct university cultures and identities. However, to what degree do UT Health Science Centers in Dallas, Houston, Tyler, San Antonio, Galveston, and the MD Anderson Cancer Center fit into the culture of the flagship in Austin, to another “branch” campus in the UT system, or should they remain independent (as UCSF is clearly an independent graduate-only university in the Cal system). I don’t have an answer to that, so for now, they remain listed separately as they are typically seen in most rankings. I think part of it gets into the “geographical” requirement for affiliates listed in Pitt’s press release. However, you can start to see the difficulty in deciding what to, and what not to merge in some situations. Anyway, here are rankings with combined campuses (that seemed to make sense to me (not including affiliates).

1. John Hopkins ($598)
2. Penn ($455)
3. U. Washington ($449)
4. UCSF ($434)
5. Duke ($431)
6. Michigan ($396)
7. PITT ($391)
8. UCLA ($388)
9. Washington ($378)
10. Washington U (St. Louis) ($378)

Here, Pitt is 7th. It’s pretty clear, no matter how you massage the numbers, Pitt is in the top 10 of NIH funding. What is really striking is how Harvard goes from #31 with separated campuses ranking, to 13th with combined campuses, to number 1 when affiliates are included. My impression is that, knowing the reputation and size of Harvard research in the health sciences, that including affiliate institutions are probably a legitimate way to go, and thus the #6 ranking for Pitt included in the university press release is probably very legitimate.

Welcome to CrazyPaco's Blog

This is my first blog entry. With this blog I'm just going to cover things about Pitt that pop into my mind.

First topic: wikipedia. This is, probably regrettably to some extent, the first place people go now for information. Therefore, it may also be the first and/or only impression some people get of our favorite university. I and some others have worked on Pitt related entries over the last couple of months and I think we have greatly improved the Pitt material there. There is still a lot that could be done and expanded on, so if you have time, take a look at Pitt's Wikipedia entries and feel free to contribute info, pictures, or whatever....you might just learn something about Pitt too. I know that I have learned a lot due to the research I've done to uncover the little known, but impressive details about Pitt's history and buildings.