Odd ending: ACC now stuck with 11 teams
By Matt Hayes -
It started as a case of building strength through expansion. It became one of ensuring survival through imminent change. After weeks of hand-wringing and public wrangling, the ACC decided last week to add Miami and Virginia Tech -- and both schools accepted the invitation.
Congratulations, fellas. Now, where does it go from here?
The fundamental goal of the expansion process was to grow the league into a major football power. Adding Miami and Virginia Tech, two of the nation's most prominent teams in the last decade, does that. Landing Miami also allows the ACC to keep Florida State, the league's marquee program. The Seminoles would've looked elsewhere in the changing landscape had the conference not been able to pull it off.
Now, the ACC must determine how to schedule an 11-team conference. A 12-team league would've afforded the league two six-team divisions and a better chance at salvaging rivalries. But the school presidents got nervous about reaching the ambitious goal of a guaranteed $9.7 million annual revenue payout per team crunched by commissioner John Swofford for 12 or 13 teams. Plus, Duke and North Carolina were against expansion, and the league needed seven votes to get it done.
And Virginia, feeling pressure from the state legislature and Gov. Mark Warner, wouldn't vote for expansion unless Virginia Tech was included. The ACC had little choice: Without Virginia Tech, there was no expansion, and without expansion, Florida State would begin to consider conference affiliation elsewhere, likely with the Big East. It was eat or be eaten.
"We had to look at the real possibility that (the Big East) could do the same thing to us," says one ACC official.
The ACC wanted to grow enough to generate revenue from a conference championship game, which are prohibited by NCAA bylaws for leagues with fewer than 12 teams. But Swofford already had spoken to NCAA officials about waiving the rule days before Miami and Virginia Tech were selected, and he had received a favorable response.
There are two ways the 11-team format could play out. The ACC could split into five- and six-team divisions, the champions of which would play in the title game. Or the league could play without divisions, with the top two teams at the end of the season playing in the title game.
There are numerous factors to consider when it comes to splitting into divisions -- most notably, the need to preserve the annual Miami-Florida State football game and to keep men's basketball rivalries intact. The natural move would be to place the North Carolina schools (Duke, North Carolina, NC State and Wake Forest), Maryland and Florida State in one division, and Miami, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Georgia Tech and Clemson in the other.
In that scenario, the men's basketball schools would keep their home-and-home series -- Duke, UNC and Maryland were adamant about that -- and FSU and Miami would keep their annual football game with the help of a rotating schedule that would include one permanent opponent from the other division.
A conference without divisions would, much like the Big Ten, have a format of eight league football games and allow for more flexibility. The league could keep more rivalries, with as many as four permanent games and a rotating schedule.
But the same teams -- likely Miami, FSU and Virginia Tech -- would dominate the conference title game initially. That thought doesn't sit well with the old guard of the league, which desperately wants to see a North Carolina school playing on championship Saturday and mentioned in the same breath with the SEC and Big 12 championship contenders.
But all that should be the least of the league's concerns now. It kept Florida State and added two of the nation's premier programs. The rest is cake.
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In hindsight making laws, sausage and ACC expansion are things best left unseen. Despite the bitter aftertaste of the way Tech handled this, I look forward to seeing the football games. There's now a compelling reason to get basketball seasons tickets.
I guess when ND's current TV contract is over and under renegotiation that is when the most pressure can be brought to bear. I still see ND as an unwilling player in getting their football program in a conference. Everything but FB is in the Big East, that would be the most likely place. What would bring them to join? |
