[jacket3ree]

Oh, he definitively proved the non-Stanford 40-year decision, although that is true by inspection, honestly. Impressive guy, obviously. He is originally from Buffalo, so Penn State made tons of sense even if there are higher ranked B1G math programs. He made a decision and both football and academics worked out well for him. Out of curiosity I looked up (freely available) NSF survey results for the top 50 programs for undergraduate math that ultimately leads to a PhD, which is exactly what he did. Penn State is not on that list. More than anything, he blew clinging to arbitrary university rankings out of the water. (I could and did find other types of rankings for math programs that are completely different and one of them does have Penn State in the 40s. THESE ARE ARBITRARY!) His degree was good enough to get him to MIT, so there's that too. Here is how FBS schools fared in this one particular UG math program ranking:

1. Rice
9. Stanford
15. Berkeley
19. Duke
20. Notre Dame
21. Northwestern
25. UCLA
28. North Carolina
30. Michigan
31. Georgia Tech
32. Boston College
34. Vanderbilt
36. NC State
37. Virginia
38. Wake Forest
39. Tulane
40. Wisconsin
41. Washington
42. Texas
44. Illinois
45. Florida
46. Minnesota
47. Maryland
48. Rutgers

His ultimate destination of MIT is 2nd on the same UG list and tied with Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley for 2nd on a grad school list behind Princeton, which itself is #5 on the same UG list, but plays FCS (they can go to the playoff now I believe) like some here seem to pine for because they love, what 500 people in a 50,000 seat stadium instead of 15,000?

If Stanford doesn't get its football shit together, don't expect football players to come without overriding reasons like a lot of cash, weather, really dig red tile, like a challenge, whatever. Our use of the "40-year decision" has always been embarrassing. I mean for cripes sake, Lou Holtz is the one who coined it.

[jacket3ree]

Oh, he definitively proved the non-Stanford 40-year decision, although that is true by inspection, honestly. Impressive guy, obviously. He is originally from Buffalo, so Penn State made tons of sense even if there are higher ranked B1G math programs. He made a decision and both football and academics worked out well for him. Out of curiosity I looked up (freely available) NSF survey results for the top 50 programs for undergraduate math that ultimately leads to a PhD, which is exactly what he did. Penn State is not on that list. More than anything, he blew clinging to arbitrary university rankings out of the water. (I could and did find other types of rankings for math programs that are completely different and one of them does have Penn State in the 40s. THESE ARE ARBITRARY!) His degree was good enough to get him to MIT, so there's that too. Here is how FBS schools fared in this one particular UG math program ranking:

1. Rice
9. Stanford
15. Berkeley
19. Duke
20. Notre Dame
21. Northwestern
25. UCLA
28. North Carolina
30. Michigan
31. Georgia Tech
32. Boston College
34. Vanderbilt
36. NC State
37. Virginia
38. Wake Forest
39. Tulane
40. Wisconsin
41. Washington
42. Texas
44. Illinois
45. Florida
46. Minnesota
47. Maryland
48. Rutgers

His ultimate destination of MIT is 2nd on the same UG list and tied with Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley for 2nd on a grad school list behind Princeton, which itself is #5 on the same UG list, but plays FCS (they can go to the playoff now I believe) like some here seem to pine for because they love, what 500 people in a 50,000 seat stadium instead of 15,000?

If Stanford doesn't get its football shit together, don't expect football players to come without overriding reasons like a lot of cash, weather, really dig red tile, like a challenge, whatever. Our use of the "40-year decision" has always been embarrassing. I mean for cripes sake, Lou Holtz is the one who coined it.