(06-16-2013 10:07 PM)omniorange Wrote:  Needs change. And at a rapid pace in the current sports/media rights environment. In the ACC alone, without taking into consideration the other conferences...

The ACC didn't feel the need to take SU and Pitt when they negotiated their TV contract back in 2010, but two years later they did when it became obvious they got screwed and needed to add teams to renegotiate it.

The ACC's need for All-In or All-Out went out the window as well to better increase the TV contract (home ND games to showcase) and to give FSU and the rest of the league another big name opponent who draws attendance and eyeballs on their schedule twice every six years.

The ACC's need for a conference member to have a certain academic standing became less important recently in favor of better football and better overall athletics.

All true and you make some very valid points. I never believed my alma mater (UofL) would be accepted into the ACC and frequently argued on these forums that the ACC would never be a realistic option. Glad to say I was completely wrong on that front.

(06-16-2013 10:07 PM)omniorange Wrote:  Who's to say that needs won't change again in a few years

They certainly could, but I do think there are some major hurdles in moving to 16 members in football. A move to 16 teams means the conference would have to decide between eight member divisions or 4 team pods. If the conference chose to go with eight member divisions, it would require either a move to a nine game conference schedule (7 divisional games, 2 cross divisional games) or an 8 game schedule with no permanent cross division games (7 divisional game, 1 rotating cross divisional game). The problem with those options is that FSU, Clemson, GT don't want 9 conference games and with 8 conference games you would only play each cross divisional opponent once every eight years. I see those as being major hurdles for moving to 16 members.

The other option is to move to 4 team pods. While pods are a more attractive option (allow teams to play everyone in conference more frequently), I do think they have a lot of issues as well. Pods are guaranteed to at least break up some rivalries/long standing series, there can be scheduling and severe imbalance issues (e.g. lumping Miami, FSU, GTech, and Clemson into a single pod), and I think they hurt the cohesiveness of the league. When the WAC moved to 16 members, Air Force and UNLV were unhappy and threatened to leave unless there were divisions and BYU and Utah threatened to leave if quad play resumed.

The other problem with moving to 16 members is that most of the brand names in college football are locked up with some fairly strong legal contracts (GORs). WVU is held in place by the Big 12's grant of rights agreement and may not be worth taking until close to the end of their agreement. That wasn't the case during the previous rounds of realignment. Even if the GOR can be circumvented legally, I doubt the ACC wants to be the one to have GOR agreements invalidated.

If there is more money to be made by going to 16 then I think we may see some 16-team league(s) in the future. But I don't know if we'll be seeing any in the near future.

(06-16-2013 10:07 PM)omniorange Wrote:  either to improve football image in a national way (WVU), or to potentially increase subscribers to a successfully launched ACCN (Cincy? who in the very near future could be residing in a Top 15 DMA with the proposed merger of Cincinnati and Dayton; Georgetown? to help get the channel on in DC for basketball and other sports with VT and UVa there for football)?

I understand your reasoning and you might be right. The one issue I see is the market argument. The WAC 16, Big East, and American conferences all thought that adding major universities in large TV markets would equal larger broadcast revenues. However, adding schools in big TV markets never really influenced the value of their TV contracts in any major way. Why? Because a lot of TV market schools lack state-wide appeal (i.e. they aren't a state flagship or don't have fans dispersed throughout the state) and/or because they have a lot of competition within their own market (college or pro).

Aside from their brand name, Ohio State is valuable from a Big Ten network perspective because large numbers of people in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, etc were willing to dump providers that didn't offer the Big Ten network for providers that did. That forced providers to offer the network and do so on a statewide basis (i.e. it put the BTN on in several large and small markets instead of just one).

The problem with Cincinnati is I'm not sure if UC really has enough pull in their own market to force providers to offer the ACCN at a high carriage rate. There is a lot of sports competition in the Cincinnati market (UK, OSU, Notre Dame, Xavier, Reds, Bengals) and I'm not sure if UC's fanbase is large enough or demanding enough to force providers to overpay for the rights to the ACCN. If that is the case, would it still be worth it to expand if you could only get 15 cents per subscriber per month instead of 80 cents per subscriber per month in the Cincinnati market?

The other issue is whether getting the ACCN on TV in one network or two networks is worth expanding. Are people outside of Cincinnati going to demand the ACCN? UofL isn't going to be as valuable to the ACC from a network perspective As Maryland would have been because our fanbase is concentrated primarily in Louisville. While the ACCN will get high carriage rates in Louisville, we don't have a large or dispersed enough fan base to guarantee high rates throughout the state.

(06-16-2013 10:07 PM)omniorange Wrote:  It's all speculation at this point. But one thing I don't think will happen - things staying as they are for long.


Neil

That's true that pretty much everything at this point is speculation.