The SEC has more than a few nationally top rank 'Olympic sports.' And with all that money, my guess is that the SEC would love to become a lacrosse power via expansion with UNC, Dook, and UVA.
Has anyone seen the survey
- Thread starter WoadBlue
- Start date
I respect your opinion but I still think football recruiting takes a big hit. And I still think it would be an awesome chance to change the football culture to where our fan base starts to travel better regularly. And I definitely don’t like the idea of NC State being taken by the SEC if Carolina joined the BIG, just look at A&M and Texas I would say since A&M left for the SEC their recruiting has surpassed Texas.
One SEC fan's take on what divisions would look like in a 24 team SEC:
Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Virginia, Virginia Tech
Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, South Carolina
Alabama, Louisiana State, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M
Looks like away travel would be manageable
The basketball focus of far too many ACC power brokers, all the way back to 1953, has meant that the ACC always has hesitated to make any move that was about football only. And that meant that as TV altered the nature of conferences, the ACC was forced to look northward.
It didn't have to be that way. GT was ready to try to rejoin the SEC by 1968, which was well before the bottom dropped out of GT football. If the ACC leadership had cared about how far behind SEC football the ACC was, it would have snapped up GT, which would have kept it from hitting rock bottom and allowed ACC teams north of SC to start recruiting GA heavily long before we tried in the mid-'80s. Adding GT then probably would have kept SoCar in. By '68 SoCar was the clear 2nd largest football fan base in the ACC, and SoCar had a large number of alums in the Atlanta area.
That 9 team ACC in 1969, the 100 year anniversary of the sport, would have been primed to start thinking football-first. It would have been able to see the need to snap up FSU no later than the mid '80s.
ACC leadership has always been at least 1 day late and 1 dollar short because it was fixated on basketball until the very last second of every potential crisis in membership and TV coverage.
And so eventually we got stuck with northeastern teams that have no fan bases for football, 2 of which are in states that produce almost no football talent.
Especially among basketball-first fans, but also among more than a few ACC football-first fans, is the notion that it all is about nothing more than winning at the top level, that if the league has teams able to compete for the national championship fairly often, the league is stable and facing no threat to get destroyed with much lower TV payments. If Clemson being such a huge winner right on the heels of FSU's third national title with ACC money dipping didn't reduce that idea to dust, then perhaps thinking about Notre Dame will help from the other side of the coin. The Irish have not won a Major bowl since the 1994 Cotton, against the Texas Aggies, champ of the then quickly dying SWC.
ND has not won a Major bowl in this century, and for longer than a quarter of a century, but ND football is still worth as much as all the basketball programs in the ACC combined. That is so because football is much bigger than basketball, many times bigger (not 25% or 50% bigger, not even twice as big - but about 4 times bigger), and because football value is preponderantly about proven, loyal fan base, with most of the rest bound up with a history of being part of important games and major football history.
If the ACC cannot make moves that demonstrate its commitment to raising the league's number of passionate, loyal football fans, the ACC will fall so far behind in revenue that both the SEC and BT will act to snap up the more valuable members.
ND has not won a Major bowl in this century, and for longer than a quarter of a century, but ND football is still worth as much as all the basketball programs in the ACC combined. That is so because football is much bigger than basketball, many times bigger (not 25% or 50% bigger, not even twice as big - but about 4 times bigger), and because football value is preponderantly about proven, loyal fan base, with most of the rest bound up with a history of being part of important games and major football history.
If the ACC cannot make moves that demonstrate its commitment to raising the league's number of passionate, loyal football fans, the ACC will fall so far behind in revenue that both the SEC and BT will act to snap up the more valuable members.
I think a goodly number of SEC realignment specialists must read every post you write;
"Who does the BT really want? ND, UVA, UNC - and if at least 2 of that trio can't be gotten, the Pac will be happy to end the Pac by taking SC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Washington.
Who does the SEC really want? UNC and UVA, with FSU third in line.
What do I think UNC and UVA should do? I think they should make it clear to the BT that they would want as many ACC teams as possible to join with them. They should make Dook the first requirement. They should sell the BT on taking VT, Clemson, GT, FSU, and Miami to be able to battle the SEC for recruits and TV viewers from across the southeast. The BT now has 14, so that would be 22. That would leave a slot for ND and 1 other ACC team.
I think UNC and UVA should make clear to the SEC that they would want 8 ACC teams in the 24 team SEC. The other 6 would be Dook, VT, Clemson, FSU, Miami, and the SEC's choice between NCSU and GT."
Two things:
1-ESPN's current contract with the ACC and how much influence they can exert on ACC teams as to which go where. (obviously preferring the SEC)
2-The B1G with a weak commissioner, and evidently several schools holding to their "nothing but AAU" stance (with Notre Dame being the lone exception).
With the PAC's 9 AAU schools and Notre Dame the B1G gets to 24.
The SEC (16) plus 8 ACC schools total 24.
As I think you know, more than a few SEC and BT posters have spent much time getting me banned from various boards over the past 15 years precisely because I saw what was and what likely was coming, discussed it from the stance of trying to save the ACC. All Maryland boards had banned me a couple of months before Maryland bolted. I got banned from Maryland boards when Maryland was secretly negotiating with the BT.
I got banned from Warchant back when that board became flooded with WVU, BT, and SEC people calling for FSU to leave the ACC. Each of them knew who I was seemingly upon arrival.
And it's not just non-UNC people. I first knew how deeply stupid most of the 'best posters' on The Tar Pit are when I explained that any ACC expansion to 12 that did not include VT would be a colossal failure and the response was to preach about how BC and Syracuse would make ACC football rich because the northeast has hordes of people. I think I got banned from Carolina Blue because I kept asserting that WVU was a much better addition than any school located in the northeast not named PSU. Being for WVU really led to a number of UNC fans going nuts.
But I think my favorite was when a long time Tar Pit insider actually started a thread to call for me to be banned because I had been warning that the ACC (when we were at 12) should explore adding Rutgers, because I felt that the BT would add Rutgers eventually if it felt that would hurt the ACC. I don't recall anybody ever grasping my arguments for why that could happen and how it would hurt the ACC; they all found me insane for warning them.
I don't want UNC to be in either BT or SEC. But I am about to give up warnings. ACC power brokers have never learned, any more than have ACC basketball-onlys and ACC basketball-firsters.
I still think that if we had gone to 12 with WVU rather than BC that our football would gave been better from the start, and would have grown more in terms of TV drawing power. And perhaps that move would have opened eyes so that when we felt pressed to go to 14, we would have added Pitt (to have the Backyard Brawl) and Cincy, the latter to get us into football obsessed, football talent rich OH.
