With all this ongoing expansion madness, or at least ongoing expansion discussion madness, questions about the value of certain schools are inescapable. Over at the mothership, Jason Kirk took a stab at defining the relative value of each school in FBS based on categories ranging from revenue, academic reputation, and market value.
NC State checks in at No. 53, which I must admit sounds about right to me. That puts State in the neighborhood of Vanderbilt, Baylor, Northwestern, TCU, Kansas, and Ole Miss. Football is of course a heavy factor in the ratings (Duke only ranks 42nd, largely because of their failings on the gridiron), and while State fares well in the attendance category, the school's lack of overall success hurts quite a bit. Our sub-par non-revenue sports aren't helping matters, and neither is the fact that our revenues are middling-to-below-average.Some of these things are already changing for the better with an actual competent human being running the department, though I do worry about football's long-term prognosis.
Anyway, this is an interesting way of estimating a school's total package in the "hey, you want to check out our package?" era of college sports.