And here's the list of relevant PAC/Big12/G5 teams in 2021 R&D spending (in $k)
- Washington 1489
- UCLA 1455
- Stanford 1274
- USC 956
- Cal 847
PAC 785
- Texas 779
- Arizona 770
PAC (w/o USC, UCLA) 700
- Arizona St 677
- Utah 625
Future PAC? (-USC/UCLA, +SDSU/SMU) 596
- Cincinnati 552
- Colorado 548
- South Florida 405
- Kansas 386
- Oklahoma 380
- Iowa St 360
- Washington St 358
- New Mexico 333
- Utah St 325
- Oregon St 277
Previous XII (pre-BYU etc additions) 277
- Hawaii 272
Current XII (w/ BYU etc, still with OU, UT) 271
- Central Florida 219
Future XII (w/ 4 new, losing OUT) 219
- Kansas St 204
- Houston 203
- West Virginia 200
- Oklahoma St 199
- Texas Tech 198
- UTSA 145
- Oregon 139
- SDSU 108
- UNLV 101
- Memphis 67
- Baylor 49
- Boise 46
- BYU 44
- SMU 42
- TCU 15
- Fresno St 9
Is Utah elite in that regard? Absolutely not. Are they substantially higher than any team that could replace them? Yes
Not saying that this SHOULD be important... but it is to certain administrators
Two big takeaways here
- Oregon is pretty weak on the academic/research side - this is reportedly one reason (though not the only) that the B1G prefers Washington over them
- This is one of the major difficulties with SMU; they're even lower than BYU when it comes to research. SDSU is low, but still a lot higher than SMU.
It won't get traction, but I'm also willing to bet there will be some academics within the PAC that will balk at the idea of SMU and will legitimately suggest adding schools (not teams, because that isn't how they view it) like Hawaii or New Mexico or Utah St instead of someone like SMU - because that's the world they exist in