standing among those in academia. In fact, Wash U proves the opposite. Our med school has been ranked as high as #2 by the US News in recent years, behind only Harvard. As I said in the OP, the University is very well respected in the medical community and in academics. But overall name recognition is a powerful thing when it comes to getting a job outside of academia, and that is where some Wash U grads have expressed frustration. Co-workers will say things like "wow, I had no idea that was such a good school. I'd never heard of it." When a manager at some place is sifting through CVs and sees someone from a school he/she recognizes it can be helpful. Also, I know people that will look up doctors/lawyers, etc. online to see where they went to school and be more confident if it's a place they perceive as being good. Wash U's medical school is FAR better than a place like Dartmouth (where their trainees work at a 200 bed hospital in the middle of the woods in New England). That is known amongst the medical community, but if a random person googles two docs and sees that one trained at Wash U in St. Louis - a place they have never heard of - and the other at an Ivy League school, many will go with the one they've heard of. Name recognition is one of the most valuable assets you can have when it comes to your degree.

So my point is more about name recognition than anything. Also, as I've mentioned before, I think this is especially important for a religious university like BYU in that it grants normalcy to a place that would otherwise be seen as a weird religious school. Seeing us on ESPN makes the university seem legit and normal.

Finally, I'm not saying that football is the only way a University can gain name recognition - but it can be a powerful one and in BYU's case has probably been the most significant one.