xyzzy <
xyzzy.dude@gmail.com> wrote:
JGibson <james.m.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
(Almost wrote third, but the Big 12 doesn't quite reach the west coast,
stopping in Arizona and Utah).
After much hullabaloo, looks like Stanford, Cal, and SMU have finally
pried their way into the ACC.
Next realignment question: Washington State and Oregon State to the
Mountain West or to the American?
Basically the ACC is bulking up so when FSU and Clemson and maybe a couple other schools bolt, they won’t be left with a four team rump like happened to the PAC-12.
SMU bought their way in by agreeing to forgo conference revenue
distributions for seven years.
Harsh assessment
https://archive.ph/2023.09.01-162136/https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article278859199.html?fbclid=IwAR1vyyUJwu0yYfhd-Cn9GneMLq9k_ePBlRqwdiTO2bhZEXfb4SRd6kEwLWM_aem_AYhPZUH7eJ_QU2DlXwKj0NIHkhgpUvb-
1mX2J5zBqetKkXsSY0NkRjAWRB6laZVS83A&mibextid=Zxz2cZ
Some quotes:
Rather than wait, from a position of relative strength, to see if the college-athletics bubble burst and made the ACC’s long-term television deal more attractive to Clemson and Florida State, the other members of the
league panicked and assured their eventual exit, and North Carolina’s as well.
By planning for disaster, in the most tortured and short-sighted way
possible, they ensured it.
[…]
The ACC actually found a way to get worse in football without Dabo Swinney going walkabout in the Outback or something. The three new schools have combined for 30 wins the past two seasons; SMU’s most famous accomplishment is one of the worst scandals in the history of college athletics, although
in today’s vernacular, they basically got the death penalty for having an
NIL collective.
Oh, and men’s basketball, what the ACC was built on … it’s almost too painful to consider. Five teams in the NCAA tournament is going to become
the norm – an aspiration! – when you fold these three basketball programs into the ACC’s collective strength of schedule. This is felony crime
against the NET.
And all for tip money. Hundreds of millions of dollars sounds impressive in
a press release but the additional revenue the ACC will take from ESPN and distribute to the existing schools instead of the new ones – SMU is buying admission to a club that would never have it otherwise, and Stanford and debt-ridden Cal aren’t far behind – doesn’t come even an eighth of the way
to closing the revenue gap with the SEC and the Big Ten. The ACC sold its birthright for a mess of pottage.
potential future departure of Clemson and Florida State and UNC? Florida
State started this playing a losing hand and somehow the rest of the ACC folded. (“Did you have it, kid?” “Sorry, John. I don’t remember.”) Thanks
to the grant of rights, the ACC had through about 2030 or so before anyone could realistically depart, and even if they could, the state of the TV
rights market now doesn’t incentivize the Big Ten or SEC to expand, at
least with valuable properties that would command additional money.
Pushing through this expansion over their objections will certainly ensure their departures, and perhaps even hasten them, one way or another. You’d like to think someone at the ACC checked to make sure adding these teams doesn’t somehow weaken the grant of rights, but the lawyering will only intensify.
There was no reason to act now, to prepare for something that might happen
in seven years, just because the Big 12 and Big Ten picked over the
Pac-12’s bones. That’s something that could be addressed if and when it happened, and almost certainly with a better menu of interested schools to choose from than these leftovers no one else wanted. It was a late-night
deal at Food Lion: Buy one irrelevant football program, get two
[…]
suddenly obsessed with preparing for an exodus of its most valued members
that by its own actions went from hypothetical to inevitable, has added
three schools that bring nothing to the table in football or men’s
basketball and are irrelevant in their own markets. Instead of booting
Boston College from the league — that would have been the smart move! — the ACC tripled down.
So afraid of being left behind, 12 members of the ACC did the one thing
that would assure they will be.
--
“I usually skip over your posts because of your disguistng, contrarian, liberal personality.” — Altie
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