Area Code 334 Location - Alabama

It's hard to believe that our national year-end chart was completed without the inclusion of either the home state of the Auburn Tigers or the home state of the Alabama Crimson Tide. Both the Crimson Tide and Tigers won their conference titles, bringing home their share of the SEC title and both are sporting incredibly impressive resumes, so naturally they are uppermost in the top ten rankings of all of college football. Who is in the top five, however, as far as placement in the national standings?

The Enterprise measures the athletic and academic success of the state of Alabama by way of the American Interior States' academics. The Enterprise is the latest to measure the annual academic performance of different areas of the nation. For this reason, it's a bit strange that not one of the SEC schools are featured on the Business Department's top 10 lists.

But, then again, the Enterprise gives more emphasis to the competitive nature of the Alabama Tide and Auburn Tigers than it does to other programs such as Duke or North Carolina. In fact, the only top-ranking program in the Alabama group is the University of Alabama itself. That could be due to the fact that the state of Alabama was a participant in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game. It's impossible to say for sure why none of the other SEC schools made the cut, but the decision was based on academic excellence, not actual athletic performances.

In case you're wondering, there are three different enterprises that rank the nation's states. They each have different lists. Each list has different weights and the rankings have different calculations, so they don't match up exactly.

The Enterprise ranks Alabama and Auburn in the top five because they are the top ten for math and science, a measure that was selected by the state's education department. The Academy of Management did not include them in their top ten for academics, but they did include them in their top ten for sports teams. This may explain why the college sport's ranks are a bit off.

The National Business Rankings, on the other hand, ranks the university system of Alabama and Auburn very close to one another. Each school received a few extra points because of the large number of football players who were recruited to play for the teams, but the numbers and weightings used to rank the schools match. It may be too bad that the Enterprise doesn't look at the rankings from the National Opinion Research Center as well, but in the Enterprise, they are listed separately.

Another school to show up on the Enterprise's top college football teams list is Chattanooga. No matter what ranking you read, the University of Chattanooga has long been among the best in the Southeast. It's also been the home to some of the best-known names in the field of academia, including a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Overall, the Alabama and Auburn national team rankings are great measures of the strength of a college and the strength of the overall university system in the area. It's unfortunate that the Enterprise doesn't give the numbers in the rankings any consideration. Still, the results of these lists are telling about how successful a college or university is when it comes to academics and athletics.