Southwest Texas State University is the sixth largest public university in Texas. Stop for a moment and try to figure out what the higher five are.

UT and A&M are pretty obvious as is Texas Tech. The University of Houston is also obvious to me, but I'm biased. So what is the fifth largest university in Texas? If I had to guess, I'd say either North Texas or UTEP.

It's actually Texas Tech and even then only barely. In fact, before I looked up to verify student populations, I jotted down a list of what I thought the biggest public universities in Texas were and then looked them up. The results are in the "Read More" below.

I'm not nearly as big a college football fan as Kevin is, but I'll be honest in admitting that my list of what I thought the biggest universities were was directly related to athletics.

A couple months ago my roommate and I were talking about Texas State and how they dropped the "Southwest" and have their eyes on the prize. They believe they're destined to become #3 (of course, so does UH, Tech, UNT, and just about every other university) and they wanted to drop the Southwest in large part for that reason. Now that they have the most coveted vacant college name in the nation (it's no mystery that Necessary Roughness chose Texas State or that Texas Tech practically had riots trying to get the name) and boast the third most college applications in Texas, they have a shot at it.

Except for one thing: They're lackluster Division II-A football program.

It may sound silly to go to a university just because of its football team (because it is), but football programs buy credibility like nothing else. Without it, you're the University of Texas at Arlington, a school with a population the size of Texas Tech's that no one has heard of (I only know of UTA because of some relatives that went there).

For UTD, that may be perfectly fine because they have a fixed demographic. Honestly, it would probably be okay for UH as well for the same reason. Also, Southwest Texas State could have just decided to stay in league with Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin. In reality, though, no university president ever gets appointed to his position by vowing to keep a university small and regional.

And so it is with the University of South Florida in a not-so-recent NYT article:

he University of South Florida sprawls over nearly 1,500 acres in a once sparsely populated section of Tampa, close to where the city bleeds into unincorporated Hillsborough County. The campus is pancake flat and in desperate need of more trees and shade. Grass comes up in stubborn clumps through sandy soil. I can't say that I was shocked when I learned of a previous use of this parcel of land: a practice bombing range.

In many other ways, though, the University of South Florida is attractive -- and useful. It has produced about 170,000 graduates in its four-decade history. It has a medical school and some well-regarded academic programs. Current enrollment stands at 39,000, and students tend to be grounded and hard-working rather than rich and entitled. (A professor told me that one challenge of his job is teaching morning classes to students who may have worked the late shift at Chili's.) What U.S.F. does not have is any kind of national profile. It has no standing. No buzz. The latest edition of the Princeton Review's ''Best 345 Colleges'' does not rank it low on the list -- it leaves it off entirely.

University officials want U.S.F. in the guidebooks. They want fewer commuters, more out-of-state students, more residence halls and more of a ''traditional'' campus feel, by which they mean a campus with a soul and some spirit. It is a big job, and the burden for getting it done has fallen, largely, to [USF coach] Jim Leavitt.

The article goes on to basically call it a fool's wager. I'll get to the specifics in a bit, but it paints a rather devestating picture of what trying to build a first-tier athletics program (of which football is always the cornerstone) can do to a university financially. It ain't pretty.

But the article's author ignores how important a football program can be for reasons that I outlined above. Size and prominance come with a football program. In the current collegiate environment, if USF wants to expand to get more national merit scholars and whatnot, then it's only going to have limited success without a football team (which USF lacked until 1997) in Division IA playing against the big boys.

As it happens, the University of Houston has a very aggressive program to attract national merit scholars. It also has one of the best Hotel & Restaurant Management programs in the world as well as various other specialties. Perhaps an argument can be made that it ought to be enough to bring people there, but outreach and specialization can only accomplish so much. A very large number of people want to go to a school with a real profile. They want to be able to go across the country and say "I went to State University" and people be immediately familiar with that. There's no better conduit like that than football.

To put a finer point on it, if people see the University of Houston as local or regional university, it's not even going to enter the minds of someone out of that region that they ought to check it out. I live here and it the University of Houston didn't even enter consideration until the 10th hour or so. The two universities it beat out, Texas Tech and Louisiana State University, were considered much sooner because of their profile (which again, is related to sports). If I hadn't already known what I wanted to major in and wanted to stay in the area as much as I did, I probably would have gone to Tech.

Why? Because I'd decided I wanted to go to a big university and Texas Tech seemed like the biggest that I could have gotten in to. I didn't know UH was larger at the time and if they hadn't had an a former SWC athletic program, I'd not have had a clue that they were any bigger than Stephen F. Austin State.

It probably sounds frivolous to choose a university on such a criterion, but when there are so many options available, the ones that are already in your consciousness get a head start and if you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do, stand a real chance of crossing the finishing line before you look anywhere else.

As the UT and A&M become more and more competitive (as UCLA and Berkeley are in California), those looking for a broad university with a lot of options, a great campus life, and school pride are going to look at athletics programs as a touchstone. The more of those people you get, the higher the admittance requirements and the more competitive the school becomes. Nearly every school in Texas wants to be the one those people choose.

Personally, I think it's increasingly going to be Texas Tech and it's going to be because of their athletics program.

Coming tomorrow, part two.


Disclaimer: These are 2001 numbers.

1. University of Texas
2. Texas A&M
3. Texas Tech
4. University of Houston*
5. North Texas
6. UTEP
7. UTSA
8. Texas State**
9. Sam Houston State
10. Stephen F. Austin State

*- I actually know that UH was #3 because I went there, but if I didn't, then I would have assumed it #4.

**- Again, I actually know that TSU is #6, but if I hadn't read it, I'd have figured about 8

1. University of Texas (50,616)
2. Texas A&M (44,618)
3. University of Houston (33,007)
4. North Texas (27,858)
5. Texas Tech (25,573)
6. Texas State (23,517)
7. UTA(rlington) (21,180)
8. UTSA (19,881)
9. UTEP (16,220)
10. UTPA (13,640)

The sizes of the schools that were on my top 10 list:
Sam Houston State (12,996)
Stephen F. Austin (11,569)