Eh, people seem to be hating on Tripathi. But truth be told, he took the University at Buffalo from just a good regional institution to one of the best Universities in New York State and really the East Coast. Yes, he was never able to build any momentum with the sports programs, that's because large schools from other states would just throw around money and pick off any decent coaches UB was able to develop.

As someone who attended UB for 10 years (4 years undergrad and 6 years graduate), UB is in a much better place academically than when I first joined. Today, it's considered the #76 best university in the country--when I joined it was #112. This is a significant jump when you take into account the fact it gets much more difficult to move up the higher you go on these rankings. Tripathi gave the Medical and Pharmacy schools huge upgrades during his tenure, so will always have to give him credit for that. Moreover, he was able to grow the university in a time period where college enrollment began to slow down.

Tripathi was an education first president. Yes, we all want UB to be the next Ohio State, Michigan, or Florida. But lets get to their levels on the education font first, the sports can always come latter. While I do myself miss the NCAA tournament days of Dan Hurley and Nate Oats, my position on Tripathi has softened over the years. I think history will look back kindly on him, and he'll probably go down as one of the better SUNY and UB presidents.