University of Idaho still has an alumni base (from actually being old enough to have a substantial one) that Boise State dreams of. Boise has only been elevated from junior college for about 35 years. Heck, some of the programs BSU offers (Truck Driving School is the oft-named culprit) are still in the JC mold.

Now, the money has poured into Boise lately. Northern Idaho may get growth around Coeur d'Alene, but is stagnated elsewhere- that's really rather true of a good chunk of the non-urbanized areas of Idaho. The growing urban areas- as opposed to mission and curriculum changes- have caused growth in the "urban" schools.

Actualy, I think it's because it's in Normal, IL.


Overall, these "commuter schools" are making way more money because they enroll more students and have better athletics teams.

And Normal, IL was named as a city after the fact that they had the Illinois State Normal Schools.

"Normal School" is a term that is used to describe people being trained after they finished their elementary education, to be trained as public school teachers, as described in this link:

http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/normal.html




Here's the background on the history of Illinois State University, or what was originally called Illinois State Normal University:

http://www.mlb.ilstu.edu/ressubj/subject/isuhist/home.htm




And here is a quote from the following website, that shows the original name of Normal, IL was North Bloomington, IL, and then they changed it after the city was chosen as the site of the Illinois State Normal University:

http://www.normal.org/AboutNormal/History.htm




I see that you are probably a North Dakota State University fan, by your user name. So, in the state of North Dakota, most likely schools such as Minot State University and thingyinson State University were most likely estasblished as "Normal" schools. Every state has at least 1, and many time, multiple regional "Normal" schools. These are usually the "directional" named schools, such as Northern Iowa, Northern Illinois, Western Illinois, Southern Illinois, Eastern Illinois. I believe Minnesota State University-Mankato, Minnesota State University-Moorhead, Bemidji State University, and St. Cloud State University (all in Minnesota) were originally "Normal" schools, just like Illinois State University.

Interesting.

It's also interesting to see some of the smaller state's "flagships" lose their footing as the state's top university.

Heck, even in big states!

Southern Mississippi and Louisville are clearly the top universities in their respective states, for example.

What do you mean by "top universities"?

USM has the largest enrollment of Mississippi compared to Ole Miss and MSU. But as far as academics, Ole Miss and MSU are still slightly better.

University of Kentucky has more enrollment than the University of Louisville, and is also a slightly better university, academically speaking.

USM was better than Ole Miss and MSU on the football field this year, as they were the only one of the three to go to a bowl. Last year it might've been Ole Miss, tieing LSU for the SEC West title. USM won CUSA last year, so very close last year. However, both Ole Miss and MSU attract ~50K in the stands, and USM is in the 30-36K in their stands.

UK is worse on the field compared to Louisville, that is true. But still they get 60K in Lexington at UK home games, and Louisville get 40K.

Flagships are consistenly the top universities in academics and in football following across the country. The only exception is Idaho, where UI is better academically compared to BSU and ISU, but BSU draws more fans. For Nevada, well UNLV is only slightly drawing a little more fans than U of Nevada flagship in Reno. I think it was ~23K for UNLV this year and ~21K for Univ. of Nevada. University of Nevada had a slightly better record. The University of Nevada flagship is also better academically than UNLV. Enrollment is greater at both UNLV and Boise State compared to the flagships of U of Nevada and U of Idaho. But so what. Enrollment can change through time. History, mission, purpose is more fixated.

All the other flagships following the Flagship 1/Flagship 2/Consolidated Flagship Model that I described above exceed the commuter schools in all other states in football following except for Idaho and Nevada. All flagships in every state exceed their commuter schools academically. Otherwise they wouldn't be flagships. Thats where the state places the most fiscal resources, such as undergraduate education, research, number of faculty, number of degrees offered, infrastructure, etc. All flagships, for the most part, are peers with each other across the nation. In most cases, commuter campuses are not a peer institutions to flagships located in other states. Minot State is not a peer institution with the University of Oregon or Kansas State. Whereas the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University are peers with the University of Oregon and Kansas State University.

I invite Bison to take a poll in Kentucky on whether Louisville football is more popular than Kentucky basketball. I know how I'd bet, and I've never set foot in the state. I have talked to "natives" who can't seem to help but bring up old Blue.

Popularity is one thing, success is clearly enough.

Louisville and USM are not in the SEC for a couple of reasons. 1) They are not adequate institutional fits for the SEC, and certainly not for the Big 10, nor the ACC.
2) UK and Ole Miss, and MSU out draw them.

Louisville is the best football team in Kentucky and USM is sometimes the better football team in Mississippi. However, Louisville is going to the Big East and not the SEC or the Big 10, nor the ACC and USM is in the CUSA and not the SEC.

Conferences be d**ned!

Louisville is better than Kentucky on the football field. Same with USM and MSU or UM.

Louisville in the last decade, maybe post 1990, has been better than UK. Ole Miss and MSU have a longer football tradition than USM. MSU has been to the SEC Championship. Ole Miss almost went to the SEC Championship last year.

The support at these flagships far exceed their commuter in-state brethren.

Again, Boise State and UNLV fit what you are describing in pretty much all sense of the word. That has something to do with the geography of Idaho and Nevada, and the concentration of a large percentage of those state's population in Boise and Las Vegas respectively. There are no other examples of what you are getting at when looking at only public universities within a state.

Ole Miss, MSU and UK have more tradition, and support in those states. It is only recently that Louisville has been better than UK.

The only reason for that support is the tradition of winning!!

People don't just go "OMG SALLY! WE HAVE TO GO SUPPORT OUR STATE'S FLAGSHIP!!!!".

No no no, people go to games because they want to see their team ******win******.

Give it 10 years. Louisville and SM will be the flagships in their states.


BTW, USM is a doctoral extensive, so their academics are the same as Miss. and Miss. State.