At least their 107 by the only site I checked. I just assumed when I saw our opponent was one I’d never heard of, they’d be way down in the pecking order. They’re above Alabama right now.
Anyway, these two wins will be good for us.
They’ve played 15 road games so far, which will tend to inflate the RPI numbers. Bama has played 5.
GCU is 6-0 in the WAC, by the way. The WAC ain’t what it used to be; the best known school in that league is New Mexico State. But it’s still a D-I conference.
My first encounter with GCU was when they played Henderson State in the NAIA national hoops tournament probably 45 years ago. At the time, GCU was a small Baptist college. In 2004 the school was sold to private interests and is now a for-profit school, which makes them unusual in that (a) they are still ostensibly a Christian school and (b) they continue with an athletic program, unlike many of the for-profit schools like U of Phoenix. In fact they are the only for-profit school in NCAA D-I.
“for profit”
Like the Ivies are “non-profit”.
I saw it written somewhere that Harvard, with its endowment, could provide free tuition for all its students essentially forever.
Interesting point about Ivy League schools and their endowments. When my oldest was in 10th or 11th grade (so that was 10 or 11 years ago) I went to a group recruiting thing in Little Rock that has most of the Ivy schools and Duke and Stanford. Almost all of them had programs that gave anyone admitted a full ride if the family income was less than $125,000 (that was the average number, some schools were higher, some lower). They also said that the average student loan debt for the graduates the year before was something like $3,000. So, at least at that time, they were giving a significant amount of help. When my younger son was going through the process, we visited Vandy. Their deal was that they “didn’t want anyone not to come due to finances.” They said they would “meet your need.” I really thought for awhile he was going to go to Vandy, he ended up choosing UofA. We never got as far as seeing what Vandy would have offered. So I don’t know what they would have thought our “need” was!!! (At UofA, if you are lucky enough to be one of the top students coming in there is lots of scholarship money, but after the top group, there isn’t much. I would love to see UofA do more for the average student.)
Grand Canyon was a bunch of singles hitters. I don’t know that they have much pitching depth, either. I think GCU had hit 10 homers coming in. That’s not so hot. Also, I was told that they hit .340 at home, .250 on the road. The Lopes did win two of three against OSU to start the season and I’m sure that’s a big part of why they have a not-so-bad RPI.
“For profit” means, among other things, that GCU pays income taxes. Harvard hasn’t paid one yet in almost 400 years, and won’t. If you’re talking endowments, little old UA is pushing $1 billion, and that ain’t chump change either. A drop in the bucket compared to what Harvard has, but then Harvard has been enrolling rich kids and cranking out richer kids essentially forever.