Support NeoGAF

[Lubricus]

Interesting article from the NYT. Forward to the past?

Alabama’s football pre-eminence on television and in the postseason, along with an aggressive plan to extend the university reach beyond the state, has helped attract a more academically-minded student body in the past decade from all over the country and served as the catalyst for more than $1.7 billion in fund-raising, according to those who have engineered the explosive growth.

In the last decade, enrollment has increased by more than 55 percent, to a record 37,100 students this fall, and more than half of the students now are from out of state, another seismic shift. The acceptance rate in the last decade fell to 54 percent, from 72 percent. This year, 2,261 freshmen are enrolled in its Honors College, two and half times the number 10 years ago. Its 174 National Merit and National Achievement finalists rank Alabama among the top five public universities.

Many newcomers are like Molly Brautigan, 18, who says Saban and his football team brought her south from Montclair, N.J. She wanted to spend Saturday mornings like this one — trying on and discarding outfits — for a brunch date at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house. She wanted to tailgate in the afternoons in the quad, tent-hopping among the young men in blue blazers and pink button-down Oxfords while dressed to the nines with her Pi Beta Phi pledge sisters.
“I wanted to attend a big Southern school with big football, big Greek life and warm weather,” she said as sunshine poured down on the quad and cold beers found their way into hands.

She was accepted at South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia and L.S.U. but chose Alabama to pursue a finance degree because she thought the academics here were as strong as the social scene.

She is hardly alone. Wesley Goodlett and Connor Sparks are Texans who transferred here — Goodlett from the University of Texas, Sparks from Texas Tech. Emily Bradley, a sophomore from Michigan, received a scholarship to Alabama’s Honors College and chose it over joining her brother at Michigan State. “I love football, so it was a good fit,” Bradley said.
Mindy Brautigan, Molly’s mother, is a New Jersey native who graduated from Villanova, near Philadelphia. At first, she was mystified by her daughter’s determination to go south. “Molly wanted to reinvent herself, and as soon as she stepped on campus, she knew that was where she wanted to be,” she said.

Mindy Brautigan understood why after attending the Ole Miss game earlier in the season. While the Crimson Tide suffered a rare loss, Mindy sat in the student section with her daughter and was at once electrified and moved by how well her daughter had adapted to a new way of life.

“We met people from Alabama and Georgia, New Jersey, California and Texas,” Mindy Brautigan said. “She’s happy there, and that’s all anyone wants for their child.”

Or children. Molly’s sisters, Amelia and Hannah, who are twins, were accepted to Alabama and will be joining her here in the fall.

Alabama’s price tag is attractive as well: $10,170 for residents and $25,950 for out-of-state students, a bargain compared with the nearly $40,000 charged at elite public universities.

Alabama, where Gov. George Wallace made his famous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door in 1963 to unsuccessfully block integration, has struggled to ensure that the rocketing enrollment is diverse: 81.6 percent of enrolled students in 2015 are white, and 85.4 percent of newly enrolled freshmen are white. Those figures have actually increased since 2010.

(Alabama's population is 26% black)
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/sports/ncaafootball/alabama-crimson-tide-football-marketing.html?ref=sports