I’m sorry, what are your standards regarding big time football programs? Is it based on how much a college spends on their team? Does it mean that they have football teams which are in division I? WSJ just had an article on this on 1/16/16.
Also when considering academics are you looking strictly at undergraduate degrees, or graduate programs? Are you also looking at how much the university spends on research? A lot of what you are stating can be easily backed up by data (US News and World Report vs. AP Top 25/The list I just sent). To simply list a bunch of schools without backing it up with criteria and data is just mindless banter.
