Moreover, I think Sandow running with the Intercontinental Championship for 455 or more days with the character he has and ability to get under the fans' collective skin... especially if he were given some worthy midcard babyface opponents (Christian, Brodus Clay, a decently well-pushed Justin Gabriel, Tyson Kidd, Seth Rollins, Santino once he's done with the US Championship, Bo Dallas, Richie Steamboat, etceteras), could revitalize the Intercontinental Championship in a way that Cody Rhodes, for all of his own personal efforts, has ultimately failed to do because of WWE's lack of direction and focus on the Smackdown midcard, particularly in the babyface department. (And in comparison, Sandow already has a much more potent "standard-bearer" character in the making than Rhodes has had as Intercontinental Champion, partly because Rhodes's character was continuing to change in seismic ways during his reign.)
As for the post about facial hair and college professors, I've interacted with dozens of male professors at universities in the Bay Area (and as I noted, Sandow is billed from Palo Alto, CA--home of Stanford University), and at least nine out of ten of them had facial hair, and in all but a few cases they wore fairly considerable beards. As I already addressed, Sandow's beard is "a bit liberal in its length"; i.e., it's an exaggeration, just like the character in general.