"The bad part" was what I heard every time my buddy (from western Coventry) mentioned he was planning on going to RIC. As to the prestige/flagship/etc of RIC and URI... yeah, one's a college and one's a university. Frankly, someone shouldn't let sports dictate their choice unless they're going on a sports scholarship.

All's I'm saying is I think RIC is a perfectly acceptable school that gets a bad wrap partly because (my opinion, based on my experiences) some folks in the state are scared of cities and brown people.