Talking Hypothesis Thursday - Your D-I Sport and Second Choice School

1. Basketball (I'm just a shooter hoping to become 'not just a shooter')

2. Florida State or Marquette

3. FSU because I grew up in FL and eff the Gators! 
Marquette because I almost went there for undergrad (picked a different Jesuit school) and they have a good basketball tradition. 

Golf

Stanford

Because why not, seemed to work out pretty well for Tiger Woods.

1.  Basketball.   I was a mid-range jump shot legend back in the day (I know, not relevant to how today's game is played).  Give me a great point guard and three burly forward-types who don't mind setting picks and I'm a happy man.

2.  Pepperdine.

3.  I vividly remember receiving a Pepperdine advert in high school during college application season.   The campus aerial photo was phenomenal - all nestled up between the Pacific Ocean and the coastal range.    I also wouldn't mind being a who-dat hoopster that only East Coast hoops junkies knew when they tuned in to random mid-major West Coast matchups on ESPN3 with tip offs after 11 pm Eastern Time.

1. Baseball

2. LSU

3. I spent my summers in Baton Rouge with family and it was always during the CWS, where they were a fixture. Jack Box stadium is an awesome venue and they have a huge following. For many in the state, it's LSU Football #1, LSU Baseball #2 and New Orleans Saints #3. 

My high school sports were football and swimming.

Since my body type at the time(6'3", 190lb.'s(sadly those days are long gone)) wasn't super duper football conducive as my foot speed wasn't great and I liked being a down and dirty lineman.

I think I would have been a swimmer and gone to Texas(Texas is a great school, at the time it had a fantastic swimming program, and if I had gone on a recruiting visit to Austin when I was in high school it would have been over that day). 

I mean I could lie and say I still would have done undergrad at the Academy, but if I was that level of swimmer...

1) Baseball

2) ASU

3)

1.  Soccer

2.  Europe

3.  Chicks

1. If I'm in my high school mind, it's hockey. In my 38 year old mind, it's golf.

2. For hockey, likely Wisconsin or Minnesota. For golf, Arizona State.

3. Hockey was my sport of choice growing up, and being a midwest kid I'd look to the reasonably successful midwest schools in fun cities. However, I'm much more of a golfer these days, and if I'm an 18 year old 5* golfer, that likely means I have a pretty good shot at a reasonably successful and long professional career without the physical toll of contact sports. Also in that scenario, I'm choosing Arizona State because, again, I'm theoretically 18 and what 18 year old wouldn't want to go there?

Believe it or not, I was probably in the top 0.1% of soccer players in high school.  I played in England as a kid and was pretty good by their standards.  However, beyond some travel/club teams and the olympic development program, there wasn't a lot of support for good soccer athletes around me, even in Chicago.  So I got some DII offers, but decided to go to Michigan (no varsity team at the time) and try other avenues to get exposure. I got in with some former professional Serbian national players in Chicago and played for their club team (note: I'm not Serbian).  It eventually fizzled out.

Honestly, I think I would have gone to Indiana at the time to play soccer.

1. Golf or tennis

2. Stanford or UNC

3. Both sports are very cool and that I wish I played and concentrated on in HS. I love UNC colors and state, and it’s not bad academics. Stanford due to location, education, and experience. 

I swam in High School (and still swim today). My criteria will be 1) Academics -- I'm a swimmer, I'm not going to make a living off of it. 2) Who can develop my distance freestyle the best (that is my stroke -- let's ignore that distance swimmers are unlikely to be a 5*).

My short list:

Cal -- National Champions. Excellent Academics. Doesn't have a Distance Free tradition

Texas -- Good school. Eddie Reese is a legend. But Eddie is going to retire soon, probably after Paris 2024

Florida -- Finke and Ledecky would be my training partners. I admittedly don't know much about their academics. 

Arizona State -- Bob Bowman has got it cranked up down here. Could definitely get some development here. Definitely the worst Academics of the group. 

I thought about adding NC State, but they wouldn't make the cut. In the end I choose Cal -- I like to win, I am also thinking about my future and I can make my own tradition there. 

Trip down memory lane. I had a couple of MAC offers but didn’t make the cut after a knee injury. I have a lot of respect for Jason Carr. He came to my school to address me in person that my scholarship wasn’t available. 
 

back to the question: I’m fucking going to Michigan and it’s not even close. Why? My lifelong fandom for Michigan, and I be a part of team that beat OSU !

1.)  Golf

2.)  Hawaii

3.)  Family can visit, have a good time, and I would see them and they would see me, while having a lot of fun.

I played basketball in HS, so I probably would be enticed by shiny things and good NIL programs (if they had them in 2006).

For Football, FSU

FSU was my 2nd favorite team, and they were really good back then. 

For Basketball Georgetown, grew up in the DC area and they were really good then too.

For Soccer, Duke. A guy I played soccer with in high school, who was a year older than me, that I looked up, to went there on a soccer scholarship. I probably would've followed and it was relatively close to home.   

If I could become someone today whom I wasn’t anything like when I was a freshman in college in the sixties:

1. Hockey
2. Boston University
3. Lots of reasons:

• It’s been the main sport at the school for over 50 years (no football since the late 1990s).
• Pretty good facilities (I saw Michigan play BU at Agganis Arena in October 2014.)
• They’ve got five NCAA championships and have had some Hobey Baker award winners and high NHL draft choices.
• Their current head coach, Jay Pandolfo, had a long NHL career and played for a Stanley-Cup winner.
• One of their Hobey Baker Award winners, Chris Drury, is current President and General Manager of the Rangers, the team I’ve rooted for since the 1950s.

BONUS: Decent academics (tied for 41st in latest US News rankings); Fenway Park; the Boston Marathon; historical sites; good concert venues; the Beanpot; the Head of the Charles Regatta; good restaurants and nationally renowned hospitals; walkable city; major airline and train connections AND . . . Smaht Pahk!

1. Baseball

2. Vanderbilt

3. It's the school I actually went to and graduated from. Besides that, phenomenal coaching and program that puts a lot of folks in the majors. 

I played lacrosse for U-M in the early '70s. We were a club team then,  but had lots of east coast grad students (Cornell, Yale,  Rutger, Army, etc.) and won back to back Midwest club lacrosse championships.  So,  obviously, that's the sport I would choose.

If I couldn't play for Michigan I would probably choose Johns Hopkins.

Tennis, as it is the only sport I had a modicum of success in.  At that point in my life, I would have sold most of my soul to play in college.  Probably Kalamazoo College, it is a delightfully quirky place filled with really smart people.  Also, they are a tennis powerhouse.

My first love growing up was baseball so I would go to ASU for reasons.

I really wish I would have taken golf more seriously. Over the years I've gotten pretty good at on my own.

For golf it would have to be somewhere in the Carolinas.

So many great courses down there.

I'd pick either volleyball or tennis, and probably a California school (Stanford, Cal, UCLA) or any Ivy that would have me.

Most likely I'd do tennis at UCLA, like my old man.

1. Bass fishing

2. Murray State - surrounded by some of the best bass-fishing waters out there. (not a dream school, just a nice location. Adrian actually has a nice bass fishing program but you can't fish 6 months out of the year.)

3. I spent a LOT of time fishing the Huron River when I lived in A2. It would have been nice to do that on scholarship. And, since I'm still fishing all these years later, it would have been nice to have the opportunity to turn it into a career.

Good thread, XM! 
 

I ran XC and Track for a private college in northern Ohio. Oregon would be my dream school for XC and Track. Pre was my childhood hero and the lore behind Oregon with those sports are awesome. 
 

Football is now my main passion sports wise. I’d choose PSU or Hawaii. PSU because of the stadium and campus. Hawaii, well, because it’s Hawaii. UK would also be up there as I love college basketball too

• Football:  WR and Track: hurdles and 4x100 relay
• Princeton
• Cool winged helmets and most national football championships of any D1 school

1. Baseball -- It was the sport I played, and I really miss playing, but my eyes are shot so whatever. I could hit a baseball harder and farther than anyone I knew growing up. I just wish I knew then what I know now about nutrition.

2. FSU

3. If UM hadn't accepted me I'd be an FSU grad school alum. Bobby Bowden made the school sexy and cool for sports, and they have a great baseball program historically.

1. Fencing so I could give people dueling scars.

2. The University of Auckland (New Zealand).

3. Looks beautiful there and I could take a boat over to Australia on weekends and burn down koala habitats.