If you could do it again, and if money and admissions played no factor, what college other than Marshall would you have chosen to go to?
For the sake of repetitiveness, let's eliminate the Ivy schools, Stanford, and MIT.
- I would want to go someplace that has FBS football and all of the other major sports. Of those schools, I have been to 85 of them (either playing against them, coaching against them, working a camp, watching a game, looking at facilities/the campus). I've also been to 38 FCS campuses. So I've seen what many of them have to offer.
- I would want to go somewhere with a big enrollment, at least 20k students. One thing I really didn't like about Marshall was the lack of students. I felt like after year two, I pretty much was familiar with everybody who I would want to know other than a few hot new freshman each year. After school, there just isn't a very good social network for Marshall alums, partly due to its enrollment size.
- I'd want to go somewhere with a brand name . . . some pride that is easily identifiable instead of answering "where is that?" Usually, the bigger sports schools have that.
- I'd want to go to a school that isn't in a major metro that plays second-fiddle to everything else going on.
- I'd want decent weather and easy travel options (meaning a decent airport fairly close).
- I'd want either fairly strong academics or a school that is big enough that somewhere on campus will be a lot of intelligent students.
- Someplace with a good social atmosphere, which most big schools with good athletics naturally have. Suitcase schools would be a no.
From playing/coaching on so many campuses, I really appreciate lively schools. Meaning, if you walk in the middle of campus on a Tuesday evening, do you see a lot of people. At Marshall, it wasn't like that. You could walk from Towers through campus to the library at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday, and you may end up passing 10 people. I don't like that. One place that sticks out that was completely opposite of that was Miami of Ohio, which besides having a Hollywood setting campus, also seemed to have students everywhere each time I have been there. I think I really missed out on that being at Marshall.
Knowing those things and having seen their campuses, if I could do it again, these schools would be on my list. The ones in bold would probably make my final list:
Virginia (just over 20k, may be too small for my liking)
Cal (may be too close to major metros, but I liked their campus and the feel)
North Carolina (never been to their campus)
Florida State (may be too far from a major metro)
Colorado
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Indiana (never been to their campus)
Nebraska
Oregon (never been to their campus)
Penn State
Michigan (never been to their campus)
Georgia
Texas A&M
Florida
Kentucky
Alabama
Arkansas (never been to their campus)
