(Updated 5/3/2016 with Miami section) In my past life as Bleacher Report's (only?) dedicated college athletics realignment writer, I wrote a couple of plans to save the ACC from the capricious nature of ESPN. The ACC is still kicking, and given what actually occurred, I like to think some of the ideas I have injected into the minds of folks in that region may have played a small role. (Admittedly...it might be a totally delusional thought.)
I am inclined to write another because I feel like the eight remaining pre-2000 ACC schools are getting screwed.
To my way of thinking, the ACC always had a bad hand in the era of conference networks because some of their tier 3 rights were sold to ESPN as part of their primary TV deal. Their commissioner has never been able to negotiate his way out of that problem.
Unlike other conferences, whose members largely owned their own tier 3 rights or could reacquire them relatively easily, this situation complicated the process for the ACC and left them too open to the influence of ESPN.
Every raid the ACC has initiated has appeared to have occurred with ESPN whispering in their ears, "Oh, this is going to work out great for you guys...." ...and it never does.
I hate that kind of crap.
The latest talk floating out there is that ESPN has reneged on their rumored commitment to the ACC and will not be helping them launch an ACC Network after all.
It appears after all that whispering, ESPN is quite content to see the ACC cut up into steaks.
If the ACC Grant of Rights deals fall apart, the presumption allegedly held by ESPN is that the Big Ten will take the AAU heart of the ACC --- UNC, Duke, Georgia Tech, and Virginia, The SEC will take two -- VA Tech and NC State, and the Big 12 will take what remains of value for a p5 conference.
And just like that, the conference of the VA, NC, SC region would be gone.
It seems so wrong to allow the mistakes of a commissioner to allow a network to rip the conference apart.
...
My best effort solution to save the ACC.
The plan needs to be envisioned in two steps.
1) To find their core assets and leverage them in an optimal fashion.
2) To plan for an eventual transition to a Mega conference as the Big Ten and SEC seem likely to do down the road.
If the conference core wants to stay together...and I think they do, I think you need to start by attacking what everyone thinks is the weakest link in ESPN's ownership of the ACC --- Florida State's commitment to the ACC Grant of Rights deal.
Florida State's Board of Directors were pushing to leave the ACC for the Big 12 against the wishes of the academics in Tallahassee. The academics were able to succeed in part because (allegedly) ESPN told FSU's regents ESPN would help deliver an ACC Network in short order.
That is the alleged version. This version does seem to explain how FSU went from strongly flirting with the Big 12 to being a content ACC member again overnight.
If this did occur and ESPN reneged on the deal, FSU would seem to have a strong case to break their GOR deal with the ACC.
If FSU was out would everyone else in the ACC have signed their GOR deals?
I think the whole thing might come down like a house of cards. I would have the lawyers look at this scenario. If the lawyers sign off, we go to step 2.
FSU rips apart the ACC before the Big Ten can
Let's say FSU announces they will be leaving the ACC in 2018 for another conference. What happens then? I think everyone else in the ACC challenges the ACC GOR deal.
Lets say upon leaving FSU says they want to start their own conference. And they invite UNC, NC State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Miami, Georgia Tech, Pitt and Temple to join them as all- sports members with Duke and Wake Forest invited as Olympic-only members.
NEW ACC Starting point
Football (10)
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
North Carolina St.
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Pitt
Temple
Olympic-only members (+2)
Duke
Wake Forest
Why would Duke and UNC accept this? Most of the current ACC privates struggle with cost of attendance rules that are the norm in the P5 ranks now because they draw fans to football games at G5 levels, putting them at a pronounced revenue disadvantage meeting the Cost of Attendence rules.
Duke and Wake Forest would both to stay in the conference as Olympic-only members but would skirt the COA rules in football and other sports if they chose.
These membership exceptions would keep Duke, UNC, NC State, and Virginia happy.
With that lesser burden, the North Carolina private duo could afford a lesser conference dispersal. In general, the standard dispersal for Olympic-only members in a football conference has been football-only members get 67% of a TV share and Olympic members get a 33% share.
Bump those Olympic-only shares to 50% for the NC private duo's valuable basketball brands and do something to protect their valued affiliations --- let's say every ACC football member signs a 100 year commitment to play home and home basketball with Duke and Wake Forest
during the conference play part of the season and UNC, NC State, and Virginia play them in football in the pre-conference part of the schedule for the next 100 years --- and I am sure both schools' administrators would be OK with the deal... even if the fans were angry.
With little coercion, the AAC or CUSA might be inclined to take the duo's football teams in --- the Sun Belt surely would, and frankly that is not a bad footprint/level of play for them at all. They could be football powers in any of those conferences from day 1. Any G5 conference would be fine.
That would allow Duke and Wake to please their academics by "playing it straight" with recruiting and recruiting brainy, less developed recruits that UNC and NC state might pass on. Duke and WF get off the "look the other way in recruiting" bus and UNC and NC State inherit a bigger pool of local P5-level recruits with good grades. Every ACC school in North Carolina wins.
The TV fallout
TV deals are with conferences. ESPN's current ACC TV deal that holds all the ACC's first, second, and most of their 3rd tier rights vanishes for the nine schools when they leave the conference.
With those 8 football members coming with FSU, they also would take the ACC's automatic basketball bid for the NCAA tourney. (The remaining schools could petition to rebuild and likely get a bid too. Or they could just join the AAC and try to renegotiate that TV deal. Lots of factors figure in.)
I would try to encourage the left behind schools to go to the AAC and quietly take what terms the ACC schools chose to leave them. I would make it very clear that to make the ACC work, the old ACC has to be disbanded and several member schools will be left behind until the conference network has been established and operating for at least 4-6 years.
Money grabs during this process will not be tolerated. Those are the terms if the excluded schools want to be considered for ACC membership down the road.
I would not be opposed to having the 10 schools joining FSU vote the conference out of existence if needed to avoid a power struggle for earned revenues like NCAA tourney credits.
I would, however, strongly advocate offering the left behind schools some tourney money in excess of what they earned individually to makeup for what they lost leaving the Big East as a "no hard feelings" gesture.
I want those left behind schools in the AAC with no entrance fees. I would lean on the AAC on this point.
I would also want Ohio, Buffalo, and UMASS in the AAC with them. I would offer AAC commissioner Mike Aresco some very lucrative scheduling alliances and other cash benefits if the conference took a Northeastern turn in that manner.
"You add them, we help you."
The AAC will be the new ACC's feeder league, protected and propped up by the ACC. They would negotiate in tandem with the ACC and benefit from scheduling alliances.
I basically want to end up with two tightly aligned conferences with clusters of schools. That will be important in the coming years.
Clustering...My secret to saving the ACC.
The very thing that kills the ACC today could save it.
The ACC's biggest problem is that they have 4 team in North Carolina and 2 in Virginia. It just doesn't work in the current TV environment. You can't have 6 FBS schools being fed by 18 M people. Everything the ACC has done in expansion has been to try to fix this imbalance.
It isn't fixable and it will be even more damaging in the "ala carte" TV era.
It distorts everything the ACC tries to do. You look at the ACC and they have 1 school per state for the most part.
Why?
In part, because that is the mentality of network building. You expand with one school per state looking to pile up carriage fees in large population states.
But there is more to it with the ACC. More than any other conference the ACC is reliant upon this methodology because of the NC/VA cluster.
The ACC has a regional distortion with this philosophy. All the P5 level schools nearby are in the SEC or Big Ten and the schools the ACC added don't begin to dominate fandom in their states, so they project to be hard to leverage into a lucrative network carriage fee payout.
Everything was built with the idea ESPN would help gloss that over, pushing down on the scales for the ACC to help them build a network. The ACC took chances in expansion because ESPN told them it would allow the conference to overcome it's internal makeup (clustering) problem.
You can see this cluster's negative affect the conference in other areas too.
Why are the North Carolina schools often quite bad in football in spite of having a lot of talent in the area? Because you have 4 very good academic schools recruiting the area, chasing the same semi-brainy athlete. (East Carolina, on the other hand, can just grab the state's knuckledraggers and do quite well.)
This is why UNC obnoxiously broke the rules under Butch Davis. That kind of scenario is likely to occur again at the Carolina publics for that reason.
There is no sense in it.
Not when you can turn the ACC's clusters to their advantage.
The two things clustering has done well for the ACC is give it undisputed ownership of North Carolina (pop. 10M) and Virginia (8M), as well as 35-60% of the state fan support in Florida (20M), Georgia (10M), and South Carolina (5M) and a strong sense of identity in those regions.
That is the core of the ACC. Everything else membership-wise is superfluous. As long as they don't lose those schools the ACC will own that notable share of that region.
That feature of the ACC is also why I advocate keeping Pitt, shaving off the rest of the ACC, and adding Temple.
Penn State may give the Big Ten over half of Pennsylvania viewers, but I am willing to guess that Pitt and Temple combined would give the new ACC about 45% of that stat's fans. It is a large state (13M), and pretty much right next door to open the door for rivalries and travelling fans.
It mirrors what the ACC core has (good in state support, strong basketball, ok football) and it is not a stretch to imagine both schools developing healthy football rivalries with the NC and Virginia schools. (Temple in particular would likely recruit New Jersey and Maryland quite well in this kind of ACC.)
That amount of penetration in your included states is a potent stick for starting a conference network. How is a cable company going to deny that the ACC would not merit carriage fees in any of those states?
Negotiating carriage fees is by all accounts a total bitch, but I suspect this ACC would make it a lot easier.
Lets talk about Tier 1 rights for a second
What would a network offer those schools for their tier 1 TV rights? I have to think the value would be in line with what ESPN is currently paying or maybe higher.
Frankly I think in this scenario, ESPN would still be the highest bidder for their tier I rights anyway. ESPN needs that ACC first and some of their second tier content to fill their schedule. It's cheap P5 content.
Bidding for and securing that content again works out for ESPN. Plus probably a lot of people at ESPN legitimately feel bad for not honoring the alleged ACC deal, but they are under pressure from Disney to cut costs, so the idea of putting in a fair to generous bid in this scenario is likely acceptable.
It is the environment. I don't believe it is personal on ESPN's part, so should ACC content suddenly vanish from ESPN's inventory, I'd have to think they would willing to sign another deal to recover it.
Now it can get confusing looking at what each conferences get paid. The average over the length of the contract for the ACC was $17M per team. Now that is a back loaded deal. Forbes showed them at the tail end of the P5 ranks in 2014-15 at what looks like about $14 M per school (with the Big Ten at about $24M). Regardless of the actual numbers, that will be the approximate relationship between the conferences today... with it looking to get worse in the future.
Lets say ESPN pays the ACC $16M per team today for this season...that means they are paying the 14 full members $224M. So maybe that number is $2M higher due to the presence of Notre Dame. Let's drop that $14M per.
ESPN loves the high profile tier 1 content --- Miami/FSU, UNC/NC State, FSU/Clemson, FSU/GT, Virginia/Va Tech games --- but the ACC tier 2 and 3 games suck.
No one wants to watch or buy ads on a Louisville/BC, Miami/Pitt, Duke/Louisville stinkers. Even though they don't pay the ACC much, they still end up not as profitable as with their other P5 stuff because those tier 2 & 3 games are essentially G5 quality content for ESPN.
Which makes this kind of a win-win scenario for ESPN to allow.
Lets say ESPN agrees to bump up pay for the AAC to say $7M per school (roughly plus $70M) --- as that conference will be better ---- and to pay a terrific premium for the new ACC's first tier rights ---throwing a number out we'll say $10M a year ($100M). ESPN is getting most of the same current ACC/AAC content at $170M ---- about a $54M savings. That should make Disney happy to provide a parachute for the current ACC members.
It is a good PR move for Disney to cut a deal to help this happen.
Now let's look at tier 2 and tier 3 rights
How hard would it be for these schools to start a regional network and negotiate in-state carriage fees in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Florida?
Given that the conference would be delivering the #1 &2 schools in Virginia, the #2 & #3 schools in Pennsylvania, the #1 & #2 schools in North Carolina, the #1 school (arguably) in South Carolina, the #2 School in Georgia, and the #2 and #3 schools in Florida, I think it might be surprisingly easy to get in-state providers to agree ---especially if everyone knew what lead to this.
Those states total 66M people. That's quite a lot in carriage fees. That is slightly less in the footprint than the PAC-12 and a noticeable bit less than the SEC and Big Ten, but the new ACC would have fewer mouths to feed.
What might the net payouts on such an endeavor look like?
The ACC network might strictly be a regional network carried in those 6 states---no other state might give a crap about the ACC Network --- but I have to think this proposed ACC would exceed breakeven @ $16M per school (ie. plus $66M annually in profit from the ACCN) pretty easily by leveraging the ACC tier 2 and tier 3 content vs. a network.
That is a lot of good content in the eyes of the residents of those states.
Obviously they would have startup costs, but I can't see how they would be much worse than the status quo, and the odds are they would be a lot better. They would only have to make up $6M a year --- much of which would be recovered by playing better football draws than Duke and Wake Forest.
You'd basically be selling the pre-2000 ACC with Maryland replaced by Miami and Temple (Philly) and Pitt offering the state of Pennsylvania.
This shrinking of the footprint would turn your tier 3 games from BC/Duke to Temple/North Carolina. That's a much better TV offering. The ad revenue would totally be there to support it.
With fewer mouths and a far superior leveraging mechanism, the New ACC would dramatically exceed their current per team payouts in short order.
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Updated: I am working on an attendance article and I saw a glaring oversight in this article that needed to be addressed.
The Miami problem
I am an out of the box thinker, so I am going to touch on something that has been killing the ACC --- the collapse of the Miami Hurricanes from a National power into what can be described as...I dunno..."a greater Boston College" --- and how to fix this problem with an out of the box solution.
When Miami's leadership was essentially played by local politicians and the UM leaders lost the Orange Bowl ---an extremely well suited home for the Hurricanes, the wheels came off the program. (...well as much as possible in that talent hotbed.)
The Orange Bowl, a mere 7 miles from campus, was an incredible home field advantage for Miami. The loss of it probably has been costing Miami 15-20% of it's games, transforming Miami from a nationally significant program into just another "meh" school in the ACC.
You don't have to overthink things. That is really the only significant change from the glory years. You win 8 games instead of 10-11 and you aren't going to recruit the rest of the state as well. It's pretty cut and dry.
That shit's got to be fixed if the ACC is going to make it.
Miami's leadership is not looking at the stadium issue with the right focus at all. The ACC needs to refocus their attention and frankly serve the "U" a solution on a platter...Because these people running the show have proven to be quite dense.
UM's leadership, specifically former President Donna Shalala, has toyed with the idea of sharing a stadium with a professional soccer team based on really crappy logic that UM only needs 44,000 seats.
This would be Shalala's love of soccer (She is a member of the US Soccer federation's board of directors) either intentionally or unintentionally shitting on the UM football program.
UM only needs 44,000 seats if they play games 20+ miles from campus and have no intentions of being a national power.
The ACC cannot afford this kind of stupidity at Miami. But I digress...
In general, athletic departments can maintain a stagnant budget from year to year, but they do not handle significant drops in revenue well as they have money pre-committed.
My thought is to leverage that reality. Lock in the ACC payouts for 3 years at their current levels. Once the conference is generating carriage fees, the money will escalate quickly. Now it probably won't be a huge escalation like the Big Ten and SEC have seen right off the bat, but I think it would be enough where you might see at least a $3M per team average gain over the next 3 years. (I want to be clear, that to me is a "safe" number---not any kind of accurate projection. I think if they follow this plan they will do significantly better.)
Now if we have payouts locked at current levels for those 3 years, that amounts to $9 M per school, times 10 schools, equaling $90 M.
I am proposing the ACC make a very public loan to the University of Miami of $90 Million at an extremely favorable rate for a commitment from UM to match that revenue from school funds and alumni donations over the next 12-18 months to create a $180M budget tasked to at least pay for some of the buyout of their dolphins contract and build a new 60,000 base seat, expandable stadium at
the proposed Tropical Park location.
Now this location a mere four miles from campus is considered at best an uphill battle. This is where a public offer of $90 Million could shift that equation.
This offer would require the City and County government offices of Miami to make a series of concessions for this location to work. The public nature of the offer would spell out what the ACC would want from the city of Miami in return for that $90M loan, putting appropriate pressure on local government.
Why 60,000 and not 44,000?
Look, I get the thinking of 44,000 as Miami's "magic number". Miami has drawn averages between 46,299 to 53,837 in their time at the Dolphin's new stadium. A private university would look at that and think, "well if we set the capacity to 44,000, we are effectively ensuring sellouts."
That is in general fairly sound thinking for pro endeavors. It is the basis of "soccer-specific stadiums". You ratchet down capacity and you created the perception of ticket scarcity. You can ensure sellouts. You can jacks up the prices as needed. And smaller stadiums are in theory, cheaper to build and maintain.
...And a soccer advocate would think, "...and if we build it small, it can be used for pro soccer!"
This is OK logic if you are Syracuse, TCU, or Baylor. There are some huge holes in this logic for Miami.
If you look at the haves and have not's dividing line in the P5 world, attendance averages south of 55,000 really puts a university in the "have not" category. Locking a stadium in at a sub-60,000 rate in this environment is not a smart idea if your attendance suggests you have a bigger audience.
The ACC needs Miami not only to be a "have", but also to be a power among the haves.
In 2003, when Miami was really rocking in the Orange Bowl, they averaged 58,135. This is because with the Dolphins 20 miles north of Miami, there is growth potential in this NFL market that most other private schools in NFL markets do not have.
(I would actually prefer a fixed 65,000, with the university putting together annual aggressive ticket marketing, but I don't think they would be up to the task.)
My thinking is that Miami would draw slightly better (say +3000) due to the proximity of campus and their fans at this proposed location than they draw at New Miami Stadium. I think if you build the right kind of stadium, a normal crowd of ~53,000 can be expected. But you are going to need a lot more seat for the likes of FSU, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and LSU. 60,000 would be a good number for now, but if I ran the show, the stadium would have sections designed to plunk in 5000 temporary seats at the drop of a hat specifically for matchups with the big in-state rivals.
I think the rivalry games could push up average attendance and have Miami matching that 2003 high point every year.
This is not going to be a stadium with all the bells and whistles at that capacity at that budget...and it doesn't have to be. It can be very utilitarian.
What it needs to do ---
#1) put the fans right up on the field.
#2) have good sightlines.
#3) be designed to be loud (add something that reflects the noise? Perhaps partial roofing for rain as they do in the Pacific Northwest ex. Providence Park? and then shape the underside specifically to reflect the noise back at the field.)
#4) I would say it needs to mimic the layout of the Orange Bowl endzone giving fans both a sense of "getting their home back" and to allow fans to be able to affect red zone plays and games with the noise ---what made the orange bowl such a tough place to play.
I don't know if you can accomplish all of these requirements while trying to serve two masters (Pro soccer). Pro soccer has a wider "pitch" (ie. field), so they will take every opportunity behind closed doors to try to modify the plans so fans seating can be pushed back several yards to allow a wider pitch. And I think the principles locally (Shalala---if she is still involved-- and local government) could very well bless that.
That is exactly
not what Miami needs. That would give the U basically the same issues they have at the Dolphins' stadium, just now UM would be footing a stadium maintenance bill for a pro soccer team.
If the ACC chooses to try any out of the box plan like this, they really need to spell out the proximity of the fans to the field in the loan offer. They would be loaning out $90 M to UM to resurrect a TV darling national title contender... Not to be nice.
You need to restore Miami's home field advantage and stature as a true national power for the ACC to be able to weather this storm.
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The Irish factor
And there is always Notre Dame....Notre Dame would still like to avoid being the square peg hammered into the Big Ten's round hole. Notre Dame rightly understands that their ability to own US Catholic viewership (well over 20 Million in the US) is based on their national football schedule.
Notre Dame as a full member of the Big Ten is Northwestern. It isn't something they want if they can avoid it.
I don't see why the new ACC would not want to continue their current football semi-affiliation and full Olympic membership with Notre Dame.
Notre Dame could play 4 only football games against the NEW ACC membership each year --- let's say Pitt, Miami, Florida State, and Clemson (or Georgia Tech or Temple or a random member in years where Clemson is "off") as their ACC "football buy in".
(Making the number only 4 helps Notre Dame retain the schedule that makes them valuable and frankly offsets Notre Dame's loss of a comfortable basketball and Olympic footprint.)
Those are good TV games for Notre Dame and the ACC and prop up the value of both. No reason to water it down.
This new ACC is a tough Olympic home for Notre Dame today. I think the ACC would be smart to make it a little more Notre Dame friendly by adding longtime rival Georgetown. That gives the ACC a little DC reinforcement (short travel and a media shot in the arm) and props up the weaker northern schools with another good rival.
The ACC can partially offset this by leveraging their alliance with the AAC to fill Notre Dame's out of conference Olympic schedule with Northeastern opponents.
(Some might ask if the Big 12 would just add Notre Dame. IMO Notre Dame appears to covet the academic affiliation with the ACC schools and that conference's willingness to work with the Irish.)
And what about BYU?
Finally...if Notre Dame would allow it...I would seek to offer a limited version of the same football pathway deal to Brigham Young University. BYU's deal would not offer an Olympic home and would not offer as enticing matchups. The goal would be to "lasso in" BYU's football attendance numbers to public assessments of the ACC's strength and to add quality saleable content. Their affiliation could also be used as a chisel on the Big 12.
BYU would play the second tier of ACC schools in football. They would have annual football games with Virginia, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia Tech, Temple, and Georgia Tech propping up those schools' strength of schedule and creating good tier 2 content for resale to ESPN. (BYU would additionally be required to play the 8 highest rated new ACC schools in basketball once each every year.)
Travel to Utah and playing football at that altitude is tough for anyone. BYU is consistently good enough to pull upsets at home, which is why the games would be valuable TV content (and why no team likely to go undefeated in the ACC should need to go through the BYU away game gauntlet).
BYU has nothing better going on. Independence is bleeding them out. They cannot get any traction on a Pac-12 or Big 12 invite and securing the Cougars (with a deal with a painful exit time) ensures the ACC will always have leverage on the Big 12.
The ACC will promise BYU a fealty deal. If BYU commits to the ACC, the ACC will promise that any central expansion will yield BYU an all sports home. BYU needs allies more than anything. They might take that deal if the Big 12 continues to remain characteristically overly cautious and doesn't immediately add BYU and Louisville upon an old ACC dissolution.
NEW ACC
Football (10+ feature TV games with Notre Dame & BYU)
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
North Carolina St.
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Pitt
Temple
Olympic sports (14 in 2 divisions)
South Coast division
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
Duke
Virginia
Central Coast Division
North Carolina St.
Wake Forest
Virginia Tech
Georgetown
Temple
Pitt
Notre Dame
=====================================================================
Down the road potential as a MEGA CONFERENCE
A popular rumor today is that the ACC and Big 12 might dissolve and merge.
My suspicion is that there are too many moving parts --- too many kingdoms to protect --- for that to work today.
This plan clears the way for a much cleaner path to a merger of the cores of each conference, should the ACC go that way and lucrative options in other directions if they do not pursue Big 12 schools.
The new ACC isn't going to be any worse than the Big 12 or Pac-12 short term and their long term future could be up there with the Big Ten and SEC.
The New ACC consuming the Big 12
The New ACC could always eat the Big 12 in 2025. Call it the
Atlantic/
Central
Conference. The setup for such a situation is pretty clear.
The ACC has a good thing from a conference president's point of view. They have the academic chops that thrill school presidents. The Big 12 is very much a mixed bag along those lines, but the Big 12 is not without academic value.
A lean and trim new ACC simply telling UT and OU, "Hey, do not re-up with the Big 12 on the conference Grant of Rights deal and we will take you and fold you in on very favorable/equal partnership terms." might get a deal done.
They could specify "You would need to affiliate with BYU as a full member and Notre Dame as an Olympic member. And we would prefer you to chose good academic schools...Other than that, this is an opportunity for you to chose --- from scratch ---who you want in your division. You have x number of slots."
Both UT and OU favor adding BYU (and would love any affiliation with Notre Dame), but the other Big 12 schools are against adding the Mormon prima donna of the Midwest.
You are talking about giving UT and OU both seats on the expansion committee.
I would not be surprised to see several interesting things come out of that kind of offer, like OU making recruiting territory choices, for example (Dallas/Fort Worth protection ---TCU; Louisianna/Missisippi corridor addition--- Tulane); UT making academic and in-state political choices (AAU's Kansas, Iowa State, plus in-state large, quality academic private Baylor). I think Texas Tech and Oklahoma State could be on the bubble with Tech squeaking in to keep them out of the SEC and allow UT to keep firm control of state power and OSU not making the cut because they do nothing for UT and would represent a slightly smaller payout for UT.
If there is no extension of the GOR deal, West Virginia would likely be invited to the SEC. OSU might be too.
I could see....
NEW ACC
Football (20+ feature TV games with Notre Dame)
Atlantic Division
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
North Carolina St.
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Pitt
Temple
Central Division
BYU
Texas
Texas Tech
TCU
Baylor
Tulane
OU
Kansas
Iowa State
Louisville
Olympic sports (24 in 4 divisions)
South Coast division
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina St.
Wake Forest
Central Coast Division
North Carolina
Duke
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Georgetown
Temple
South Central Division
Texas
Texas Tech
TCU
Baylor
Tulane
BYU
North Central Division
Louisville
Kansas
Iowa State
OU
Notre Dame
Pitt
OR should UT prove intractable...
A true Atlantic Coast Conference is a viable alternative
An established network also opens the door for a slow crawl northward as an alternative option.
The new ACC can annex states one at a time in school clusters ---NY (Buffalo & Syracuse ---possibly with UConn), Ohio (Cinci and Ohio), Massachusetts (UMass & Boston College, possibly with UConn) ---- as those schools' fan bases would be built up by the rivalries inherent in that kind of Big East-like AAC.
This is "down-the-road" thinking...
While individually none of those northern schools can pull statewide interest, in clusters, with an ACC network in tow, those conversations would be easier.
The deals with Notre Dame and BYU would essentially balance football scheduling in an 8/9 setup. If structured right, it could help Miami get a bump by allowing them to recruit the rich territories of the south with their in division games plus leverage their NYC fans with an annual game in the NYC market out of division.
The deals with ESPN can be structured to make such raids an accepted possibility that doesn't drop the per school payouts to any of the schools in the two partnered conferences. It is out of the box thinking, but there is enough value there for ESPN to go along with it at least to some degree.
NEW ACC
Football (17+ feature TV games with Notre Dame & BYU)
South Coast Division
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
North Carolina St.
Virginia
Virginia Tech
North Coast Division
Cincinnati
Ohio
Buffalo
Pitt
Temple
Syracuse
UConn
UMass
Boston College
Olympic sports (21 in 3 divisions)
South Coast division
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
North Carolina
Duke
Virginia
Central Coast Division
North Carolina St.
Wake Forest
Virginia Tech
Georgetown
Pitt
Temple
Notre Dame
North Coast Division
Cincinnati
Ohio
Buffalo
Syracuse
UConn
UMass
Boston College
...But that is all based on the ACC taking action today.
There is a lot than can be done to leverage ACC clustering if the ACC schools want to stay together. The question now is will they be able to resist the money the Big Ten offers in order to work a plan for survival as a group?
