I was listening to the SI College podcast and they did a state of the ACC episode and got around to talking about realignment.
Listed UNC at #1 potential target, and then we were the next mentioned. Then Duke/FSU/Miami/Clemson in the next tier.
I mean, I’m happy about it I guess - but for these conferences TV money from football is such a large proportion of revenue. Why wouldn’t they just be going down the list in that order?
There have been various realignment threads, but all are closed (@jazznutUVA )
I hate the idea of realignment but those who don’t share my hatred seem to think we are the most additive without causing other issues (like Florida not wanting FSU).
Why are we more additive than VPI? Well, congratulations, you’ve found the ideal place to get lots of very fair minded and neutral opinions on that topic.
Continue to believe that a UVA/UNC package deal is attractive to both the SEC and B1G, and at this stage I mostly worry UNC will screw it up with their MBB and FB coaching choices.
But otherwise the combination of brand, geography, Olympic sports success, academics, and hoops excellence with football competence, is more than enough to get us over the hump.
I had the same thought regard UNC. I don’t think they’ll do enough damage between now and 2030 to ruin the deal. But I’m keeping a close on them.
To me the big question about realignment is whether the B1G and SEC are willing to explore disenfranchising some members in order to maximize revenue - why does the SEC need Vandy, Miss St or USC, or the B1G need Northwestern - makes more sense to subtract sometimes or at least threaten it in order to get unequal rev splits - Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Texas will take every $ they can get their hands on.
I don’t know how much of a factor it is, but UVa does have the fifth-largest endowment for a public university. I imagine that has something to do with something.
I think the bigger draw for the Big and SEC is enrollment. Adding UNC and Virginia to the conference makes it easier for its members to get an enrollment foothold in two fairly populous states
I’m worried about timing. The biggest financial attraction of uva is seemingly diminishing as time goes on:
a package deal to get UNC - which who knows, politics could push nc state to be that school if the process drags out or is public
Access to tv markets and carriage fees- this is probably most compelling but becomes less relevant by the year as streaming overtakes linear cable. Together with access to the Carolina market makes our combo more of the “classic” expansion strategy.
We obviously have a lot of non-financial “intangibles” - overall athletic success, state flagship school status, aau membership, geographic sense, academics, financial resources pre-media deals, basketball history, etc. I truly don’t know how much that matters
Edit: as long as ESPN/Fox is driving the boat and they haven’t gone all in on streaming, we should feel good
I don’t think it would look like expulsion from the SEC/B1G but rather an adjustment of the payouts or all the top teams from both joining a third, new super league.
We’ve got more money and have shown we can perform at an elite level in every sport but football. Give us an SEC patch and I’d bet we can outperform VPI in football too on a long enough timeline.
I think there’s a degree of getting to pick the winners here for these conferences, and if you’re picking the winner anyways would you rather be in bed with a much richer, flagship school who has succeeded at just about every other sport or VPI which while larger has basically only succeeded at football under one legendary coach and struggled with basically everything else over the course of their history?
If you make UVa the SEC team of Virginia I’d bet we outnumber VPI in t-shirt fans within 25 years.
I would add two things to this list: 1.) we’ve demonstrated the ability to build successful athletics programs that can win national titles. This has mainly been in non-rev sports, but the basketball title + even baseball I think is meaningful. 2.) We clearly have a donor base that is willing to fund our major programs.
When you compare that against VT, its not even a contest. They literally have never demonstrated that as an institution they are capable of fielding top-end athletics and they don’t have the funder base to resource their programs competitively. We can just project a baseline level of competence (plus upside) that VT cannot
I listened to the realignment talk a couple of years ago on XM radio College Sports station when they talked about it ad nauseum. All of the different people that talked about it agreed that it came down to one thing: TV revenue. Generate more money for ESPN and you get more money in return. Neither the Big 10 nor the SEC have a presence in Virginia or North Carolina. UVA and UNC have the highest national TV ratings in their respective states. I was surprised to learn that UVA has a significantly higher national TV rating than Bass Tech. The various commentators then also said UNC and UVA would be the most desirable adds to either conference.
The Athletic had an article today on the ACC meetings. Nothing super exciting, but did enjoy seeing this tidbit in the section discussing the Duke bball game on Amazon
