FSU is the squeaky wheel here. But every program in the ACC is looking for a parachute right now.
Some have already found one. Just havenāt pulled the cord yetā¦ 
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I look forward with grim fascination to FSU completely destroying themselves as a school in service of their football team as the impetus that springs college football from its current system.
Edit - UNC got like halfway there for hoops, but didnāt finish the job by losing their accreditation or anything.
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With the news of them exploring some private equity funding, I guess that could help with the mountain of fees that COULD come their way. However, I dont fully understand how that would work.
I would say until today I figured no ACC schools would do anything for at least a few years. I still think that is probably the case, but we are in the end game now with 100+ year old conference dying before our eyes. Who knows.
A school could negotiate their way down to 250-300 mil to leave the ACC and be free of the GOR, put it at 25-30 mill a year to the ACC, and then hope the SEC/B1G pay them close to the full share and then it is worth it in the long run even though you are behind the other schools in that league per pay out.
THe thing is the B1G may not have much of an appetite to expand right now anymore.
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Yeah thatās my point. If one school leaves, the house of cards starts to crumble. UVA would be mentioned somewhere within a couple hours.
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Yeah, I certainly donāt get what FSU would offer to an investor in something like this.
Itās probably a financing deal as you say.
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Breaking up every conference for football is stupid.
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The only thing that today changes (I think) is that, pretty soon, ACC schools will know or have a good idea what the difference** between a full B12/B1G membership share and a āformer Pac12ā member share is, rather than having to ballpark it. And that will help them making their own long term calculations around the best path. The fact that the number (Pac 12 member share) was being negotiated until the last minute probably means that itās well south of a full share, but also better than Apple Tv or whatever.
I still think the GOR / success initiatives combo is enough to keep the ACC in an unhappy marriage for another couple years, and hopefully something changes to keep the conference together past that. But I long ago lost my fear of being wrong on the internet, so I could be wrong on the internet. (heck, should I check to see if something has changed in the couple minutes Iāve been writing this? Nahā¦)
** I learned my lesson from my J-Willy show question debacle not to call this the ādeltaā
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Let us all just take a moment to feel sorry for Washington State and Oregon State. What a rough spot they are in. Really do feel bad for their fans. I just hope we donāt end up in a similar situation (seems like we would have much better prospects, but itās still worrisome seeing it happen to other P5 teams).
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I wonder if the MWC takes in the PAC leftovers or if the PAC absorbs the MWC so that they retain P5 status.
Doubt it really matters if the playoff stays top 6 conference champs plus 6 at large, but I can see that changing to top 5 + 7 at large.
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Since greed has historically led to great outcomes, I am wondering how this will ultimately come back to haunt the BIGx.
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Yuck.
Granted, the ACC hasnāt been the same since the Big East raid. FSU/Miami meeting for football championships was supposed to be the big money-makerā¦ hasnāt happened once (Miami one total championship appearance, got waxed by Clemson in 2017 as that yearās āCoastal chaosā offering).
Kind of leaning into the dysfunction nowā maybe the faster this all moves, the faster everyone realizes how stupid things have gotten, and things fundamentally change again (football as a separate entity, regional conferences for all other sports).
āMaybeā doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
Ending up in some mid-Atlantic pod of the BIG (Maryland, UNC, Pitt?..) wouldnāt be catastrophic, but weāre looking at some low potential bars to clear.
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Great paragraph from Eamon Brennanās newsletter today:
And so the way we start talking about this stuff becomes that of the savvy insider, the knower of hard truths. Hey, look, no one likes it, but this is just the way the sausage is made. Right and wrong? This is just what is , man. Conferences are hyperexpanding, going national, consolidating and self-consuming college athletics in a way that may or may not be totally antithetical to the reason they exist in the first place, but look: This is the world we live in, and so this is what is going to happen. Get in, loser. Weāre going realigning.
Pay link, but Iām enjoying it:
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lol
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Can you TLDR that for the rest of us?
Edit: sorta skimmed it and basically just saying what most fans are thinking. And added tidbit that some teams that mortgaged their way into big conferences are gonna have wide reaching implications.
Tl;Dr - things are changing. Change is scary and elicits Chicken Little reactions that everything will now be ruined.
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I mean, I donāt disagree with it.
Re-alignment has been all about consolidating to get the biggest slice of the CFB pie to each individual-self motivated actor (conference or school).
But, this isnāt pure capitalism. We arenāt sell consumer packaged goods where P&G and Unilever can dook it out against each other to try to take a larger slice of the CPG pie. CFB sells a product that relies on broad coordination to market a sport to a fragmented but very large fan base. As this WSU fan calls out, heās not going to all of a sudden switch allegiances and become a, say, Ohio State fan. By marginalizing large portions of the CFB fan base, they are shrinking the pie rather than just competing for a portion of it.
CFB as a whole will be a fragment of what it used to be, but the proceeds of it will be divided among fewer schools. They are devaluing the broader product to enrich a few stakeholders when they should be finding a way to create valueā¦
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Uva, nc to the sec
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Bold of you to assume I read most of what I end up sharing here.
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Iām also going to struggle to word this well, but I think part of the issue too is that this is all being done haphazardly and driven solely by self-interest. There is no centralized coordination or anybody helping shepherd things in a way that is actually optimal for the sport as a whole. There is no leadership - just teams looking out for themselves and individual conferences trying to hoard as much of the pie as they can.
College football may have needed some reorganization given the current economic realities, but I struggle to think the best structure is what we are hurtling towards. Two power conferences (which through sheer historical accident also include teams like Vanderbilt and Northwestern) and everything else a gigantic tier below. Why is this the optimal model? I donāt think it is.
That said, I canāt claim to have the answer as to what is optimal, but Iād bet if you gave me and a committee a week we could design a semi-sustainable group of three or four conferences that were still semi-regional. I think thereād be a pretty good chance itād be better for the sport and the athletes than what weāre stumbling into. But nobody has that power and nobody will soon.
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