Yup coaches gonna coach and jump around no matter what you do. While I totally get @zvillehoo point, I donāt think coaching changes should be the measuring stick.
Could an SEC or a Big10 have more disposable income to drop into basketball programs? Sure. But itās not a 1 to 1 ratio. But that logic Vandy should have the best basketball team in the world with all the money they are stealing from the SEC, itās obviously not going back into the football team.
Something Iād love to see is a promotion/relegation system within a conference. Say you have a 20 team conference, you have 10 in the upper tier and 10 in the lower tier. Each school plays all the other schools in their tier. Bottom 4 in the top tier drop to the lower tier next season to be replaced by the top 4 in the lower tier. No or minimal difference in per school payouts so youāre not penalizing the lower tier schools. Only the upper tier schools are eligible to make the playoff or win the conference.
That way if youāre a bottom feeder, you still get a chance to win games instead of looking at 0-9 or 1-8 every season. The top tier schools get a boost in strength of schedule too.
I think itās also worth noting that said ACC program is not tied to the conference in football from a TV rights perspective
Feels like the ACCās strategy is one of three things. 1. Do nothing because thereās nothing worthwhile we can do. 2. Do nothing because we canāt decide / agree on what to do. 3. Do nothing because we think thatās the best option: batten down the hatches, ride out the storm, and see if conditions are more favorable on the other side. (E.g., if football breaks off into something more like a paid minor league, that would reset the equation for everything else.)
I donāt mind #3 as a strategy given our weak position and the pace of change, but as others have noted, even within that there are small things we could be doing.
I think itās instructive to look at a map of NFL cities. When you live in the Southeast and your options (for an insanely long time) were the Dolphins, a bad Tampa team, a bad Falcons team, and a bad Saints team, itās really no wonder that college football grew such deep roots. Low performing and not necessarily that close geographically.
The NFL has in-filled the map, but by then the cultural already had steam.
Anecdotal for sure, but most of my northern friends are pro sports fans while most of my souther friends are college-oriented first.
As a reminder, the SEC has had a total of (1) Final Four team in the last 6 years. I call BS on this SEC basketball hype.
We fought a war not to have to do such stuff.
Well we know that postseason success is a great way to measure the performance of college basketball programs
Thatās how you know your program is going to the mountain west
Eamonn Brennan on Coloradoās departure from the Pac-12 and what that means for the conference as a whole (not good). Paid article but hereās the final paragraphs:
The basketball wasnāt always the best; sometimes the gyms (most recently, in Eugene) were a little emptier than youād like. And life moves on; something else will presumably step into this void. The conference will add new teams, or break up, or whatever. Not all change is progress, but we tend to adapt to it all the same. All is dust.
Still: This era of Pac-12 basketball, this very specific and somewhat odd era, has been a mainstay in college hoopsā fans lives for the past 12 years. It has been a part of my life ā a not-insignificant piece of my professional routine. Now it is going away. Iām not as sad about it as Bill Walton, to be sure. But I am still sad. Conference realignment is the strangest trip of all.
All this stuff makes my head hurt. But thereās a reference and summation of the FSU leaving talk that was brought up here in the VIP thread.
Also gets into potential ACC expansion at the end, bringing up WVU and SMU. SMU, seriously?
SMUā¦ maybe not as weird as when Terry Holland was trying to get ECU into the ACC.
It gets the conference into Texas and they do have a fan base. Itās a risky move though. The athletic program is not where it needs to be. Maybe if they were in the ACC money would start coming in. Itās a gambleā¦ not sure there are any safe moves out there.
How many schools need to vote āyesā to approve expansion?
These schools that want to leave will not vote āyesā on expansion imo.
Hard to tell. They may see expansion as a way to renegotiate the GOR. I donāt really know what effects expansion would have on that. Ultimately, the ACC might risk it. There are only so many spots to be filled in the Big 10 and SEC, and no team is defecting to Big 12 as a first choice. Defections might be limited based on lack of invitations to the big 2 conferences.
I love this āthe BIG and SECās eyes have reopened after Coloradoā - like they had stopped planning of hadnāt expected the Colorado jump.
I keep saying this, but they need to spin off football into its own association. 60 teams, 3 20-team divisions, with promotion and relegation, and the top division gets to compete for national championship.
Would allow other sports to drift back toward regional conferences and realign their cost structures.
This is true but as soon as the first moves are made and the ship starts to take on water then teams like Louisville, etc will eagerly try to line up a spot in the Big 12 ā¦imo.
Iād have to look through the list again, but itād think the only plausible ACC expansion targets worth even thinking about would beā¦ I guess WVU and UConn? Even then, taking in the disaster that is UConn football seems like not the greatest choice.
Iāve said this before, but what would actually really benefit the ACC would probably be kicking Wake and BC out. But thereās not process for that that Iāve heard of.
I doubt there is a process for it. The original members would never get behind dropping Wake. It is too bad we couldnāt swap the big East: UConn for BC (haha).