If I were a BC baseball player, I’d be thrilled to play in Berkeley or Palo Alto. Two of the most beautiful campuses in the country, with great facilities, the weather sure beats New England’s in April, and Stanford is consistently one of the country’s top programs.
I think we UConn fans (class of ‘74 here) underestimate the value college presidents of prestigious schools put on academic reputation in conference alignment. The ACC is not the Big 12 and does not want to be. Stanford and Cal add significant academic prestige to Duke, UNC, UVA, Wake, Georgia Tech, ND (all but football) and (yes) BC and Syracuse.
SMU is the academic outlier, but as I’ve said in a previous post……they are all about Dallas eyeballs.