RE: If ACC expands by 4, who would you take?
Big Ten decides on 14 instead of 16 due to rivalries. If they had gone to 16 lots of traditional rivalries would be lost. 14 works for them, keeps most all rivalries alive and adds 2 Eastern Markets with population base to feed BTNetwork. Also makes Penn St happy.
*Maryland to BTen (along with Rutgers) for market/BTN
*SEC to 14. Takes Texas A&M 1st. Then will take eastern team to keep divisional balance the same,
*One of (N.C. St, Clemson, Florida St.) My best guess would be Clemson for rival with SC. They'd like NCSU for the market, but they aren't leaving their NC peers.
That leaves the ACC at 10 teams. Your options are:
A) stay at 10 (with BC on an island) and play a 9 game round-robin schedule, drop the champ game (loss of $$ and exposure). This also would reduce TV contract, but be split less ways. Also if all other major conferences go to 14, ACC would be "left behind" kind of like the BigEast is now.
B) Drop BC back to the BE and have the above scenario with 9 teams instead of 10. (aka, even less money, less exposure, less product, etc.)
C) Pick up 2 teams and go to 12. Keep champ game. But still be 2 teams behind the BigTen and SEC who now sit at 14. At this point you'd have to pick and choose which BE teams to take (Pitt/Cuse would be my guess) and then worry about how to do the divisions again.
D) Pick up 4 strongest teams from the Big East. WVU, Pitt, Syracuse, UConn. Rework divisions into ATLANTIC: old BE football conference division and COASTAL: traditional ACC division. You get a several things here. 1) A stable 14 team conference, competitive with BT and SEC. 2) Increased TV contract/revenue/amount of game product to put on TV 3) The stongest Basketball league in the country 4) addition of solid football teams to the league helping national prominence. 5) Academic additions 6) Actual divisions you can name without looking them up 7) your old ACC round-robin schedule back, all while having the benefits of a "super-conference" structure. 8) major build-in rivalries for both divisions ... hint: rivalries sell tickets, raise revenues, and oh yea, makes TV pick up your games ... all equaling increased TV contract revenue.
Keep your current divisional round-robin and protected rival cross-over like the current ACC format, SEC format and soon to be implemented BigTen format will do as well.
See pic below for divisions. The same number in the opposite divisions will be your protected rival played annually.
In a 9 game schedule (which is apparently all the rage right now):
You'll play 6 division games (3 home, 3 away) annually
1 protected cross-over game (annually)
2 opposite division games (1 home, 1 away) Rotate through all 6 schools before return trips are made ... so you'll have home and away with each school in a 6 year period. [note: if you try this format with 16 teams, you would have 7 divisional games, 1 protected rival game, and then that leaves 1 slot for each opposite division team to fill. With 7 teams left to play, and playing one of them every season it will take you 14 years to play all the opposite division teams home and away. Not good. And for those who say drop the protected rivalry games ... what about UVA/VT. etc. The SEC won't drop thier protected rivalries. Nor will the BigTen. This is why I see 14 team divisions instead of 16.
But man, oh, man ... wouldn't a conference with divisions that have so many rivalries be great? BC, UConn, Cuse, Pitt, WVU, VT, Miami in one division and UVA, UNC, Duke, NC State, Wake, GT, Fla St in the other. Talk about the best basketball conference ever. Football ... not to shabby either. Easily one of the top BCS conferences. I think on par with what the BigTen and PAC-14 would be. The SEC will probably always rule CFB, but this ACC would be something special.
Both Divisions get a Florida team also guaranteeing playing in the state at least once every other year, which is big for recruiting kids from that state. IMO, I think this is where we are heading. But I would love to see this ACC.
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Oh, and BBall ... think round-robin again. 20 conference games. You get your division round-robin (12). Your protected rivalry home and away (2) (check out some of those games ... UConn/UNC, Syracuse/Wake, Pitt/NC State, etc.... and then rest of opposite div.(6)- 3 home/3 away, rotating annually. Man this would be a major, major bball league. Did someone say round-robin ACC basketball? Yes, that's what I said. ACC Coastal Division ... happy again.
(This post was last modified: 09-15-2010 03:36 PM by ThunderDent.)
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