While I love LBSU, I am always somewhat surprised that some think we have such a significant advantage. DTTB wrote, " We have clear advantages over others in our conference. Strong facilities, exceptional weather location, true beauty of our campus, high annual and long term admission demand, and proximity to ocean (close enough to conduct research on the "Elbee" species of shark, PLUS participate in late night Grunion runs!)."

While our facilities are excellent, we are not the only school to invest in facilities. I think the 'mid is iconic. But, if you liked playing for a different Coach like Russ Turner, the Bren Center on UCI is nearly as nice. For baseball, I hear Goodwin Field is comparable to Blair. I think one of the reasons the T&F programs are doing so well is they seem to have really superior facilities. So, I would agree that we have good facilities; but, I have not traveled enough to compare them to other schools. I do know that the UH arena dwarfs the 'Mid. I think we are likely in the top half of the BW in facilities; but, I am unclear on the idea that we are the best. Is this enough for a clear advantage? Help me out those who have traveled more.

As to weather, better than Santa Barbara? Better than Irvine? Better than san Diego? Better than Honolulu? The weather is nice in Southern California; but, since most of the BW schools are in places where the weather is nice, I don't see a clear advantage.

I love the LB campus; but, when my daughter attended UCI, I got a first hand look at how beautiful that campus is, and UCSB is literally waterfront. Do we have an advantage here over some schools? yes, our campus is much nicer than UCR, CSUF or CSUN. Are we the most fantastic campus in the league, I think others are as nice.

I am unsure how long term admission demand is helpful in competing for the BW Commish cup. Things that I do think make a difference include how much we spend on athletics relative to other BW schools. I was unable to find current numbers on this; but, the last time I saw the data, we were in the bottom half of the league. One thing that helps is we are an affordable option. While this doesn't make much difference in the fully scholarship sports like basketball, it helps tremendously in sports like baseball where there are something like 7 scholarships and many of our players are paying some or all of their own tuition.

Another advantage is we do have one of the strongest histories of schools in the BW. In VB, we have a long term history that is among the best in the nation, baseball has long been very good, a history of Coaches like Tarkanian, Lute Olsen, Tex Winter, and Seth Greenberg is better than anyone in the league.

Bottom line for me, I do think we have some advantages. These advantages, when we compare to the bottom of the Cup schools (UCR, Bake, CSUN) are really significant. But, when compared to UCSB or UCI are usually not significant enough to overcome the fact they usually budget more than us for athletics and make us expect to always win.

I am not a fan of our AD, but give credit where it is due, this is a nice accomplishment and he deserves credit for getting us back here.