re: Notre Dame Athletics Director: "We want to play SEC schools"

UT has the body farm and a top rate anthropology dept. We train everyone from Homeland to FBI in forensics and new identification methods. Dr. Bass and his establishment of and research from the body farm revolutionized forensic anthropology.
UT has a top business school as does South Carolina.
UT has a top engineering program and Auburn's is nothing to sneeze at.
UT Law is working its way up the tiers fast.
UT is one of only 5 sun-grant universities (there's one for each region). Cornell is also one which is hardly bad company to keep. Sun-grants work on renewable energy/bio-based energy alternatives.
UT has the world's fastest super-computer (hosted by ORNL).

I could go on and on and don't mean to leave other SEC schools out (I just know less about them).

I've taught kids from the top two Ivies and they're no smarter than UT students.

While US News/Princeton Review etc. is nice to brag about and put on your uni's website to recruit students, academics wouldn't and don't rate schools the same way. The Academe is concerned with very different measures and especially concerned with departments rather than schools as a whole.

ND is a fine institution and has an excellent law school but don't delude yourself into believing that the SEC has 1 academic school. Vandy is lower than others in many areas and higher than other schools in other fields.

Where rich schools excel is in alumni networks and rich kid connections -- nepotism whether it's a frater/soror, school loyalty, or someone you went to school with accounts for the greatest strength of private schools and other 'prestige' schools.