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So, you're saying that the reason that OU can't recruit more high ability students than Akron is because the city of Akron gives it such a huge advantage. Rrrrriiiggghht. Funny, I seem to remember you--just a page or two back--bragging about OU's beautiful campus and idyllic setting as a huge advantage and reason why it's "the hottest college in the state." Miami has no problem being in a rural area, nor do several other high quality publics in the region that aren't located in metropolitan areas such as Penn State, Illinois, Madison, Indiana and Purdue. Just face it, OU is simply playing in another league. As for branch campuses, every public university does the same thing as Ohio State. It's something that Akron needs to seriously consider. And BTW, you do know that it's OU that has the largest and most extensive branch campus network in the state. In fact ,OU has 13,000 undergrads at branch campuses relative to 23,000 in Athens. In other words, your branch campus students are fully 36% of your overall undergraduate enrollment. How does that compare to OSU and Miami? Miami has 4,000 relative to 14,800 at Oxford or 21%. Ohio State only has 6,300 relative to 44,000 at Columbus or only 12% of their total undergraduate enrollment. And you leave one other slight distinction out. Ohio State is parking kids with 23 and 24 ACT scores (and Miami 22-23) at their branch campuses who would be easy admits at OU. Out of curiosity, I dug up the common data sets for OSU's branch campuses. Mansfield 21-25 ACT middle range Newark 20-25 Marion 21-25 Lima 19-25 What were OU's numbers again? That's right 22-26. In other words, OU-Athens is taking in freshman classes that are only slightly better prepared than OSU's branch campuses. Would you like to remind me again how OU is the hottest college in the state and out from OSU's shadow. How it is such a better, more selective and more prestigious university than Akron or Can't or Toledo or Bowling Green? Again, you were in the left column of that napkin for very good reason. That's the biggest difference between OU and Akron. Akron knows that it belonged in the left column. Akron knows that it has big challenges and a lot of work ahead. Akron doesn't sit around smelling its own farts and pretending its something that it's not. This whole thing started because I made one comment (on an Akron board in a discussion about the future of Akron) stating that UC rather than OU is the university that Akron should be paying attention to and modeling itself after and that a big part of this is UC's focus on the future in contrast with OU's perennial infatuation with perceived past injustices. This brought on your deluge of personal insults ("didn't get accepted at OU" "didn't get tenure at OU" "Crawl back under your rock") all because I pointed out with facts, statistics and the criteria that academics judge most important when gauging the quality of a university that OU is a peer--by all of these standards except endowment--of UA and Can't more than it ever could be of Miami or OSU. And even your endowment pales on a per student basis compared to Miami and is nowhere remotely close to that of OSU. I'm sorry if that upset your fragile little OU psyche that so desperately needs to believe that the glorious day is just around the corner when OU throws off the oppressive shackles of 150 years of unfairness and claims its rightful place as Ohio's flagship university. Yes, it's only a matter of time before you burn down the Buckeye Plantation and proclaim "Flagship at last. Thank God Almighty, we are Flagship at last."