I could see Clemson and Florida State going to the Big12 if the money is right. I could see Virginia Tech and North Carolina State going to the SEC. I could see Maryland and Virginia going to the Big10. I can't see North Carolina leaving the ACC where they are the the feature program and they have the best college basketball rivalry with Duke. UNC and Duke are the ACC. Then again, money talks - but I just don't see them leaving. Predicted future ACC - I would love this to be the outcome too btw. Boston College Syracuse Rutgers Pitt UConn North Carolina Duke Wake Forest Georgia Tech Miami Louisville Cincinnati
The TV revenue gap between the majors and the ACC is going to be at least $7MM per year. Whether it is FSU or Clemson or UNC or Virginia, the only thing stopping them from joining one of the majors is the lack of an invitation. The ACC will be lucky to be a league in a year. The worst part of Pitt's and Syracuse's betrayal is that their move set in motion a series of events that will result in the ACC's own destruction. If they had just held tight, the Big East would have been fine, and likely absorbed the ACC eventually.
Destruction of the ACC? Even if they didn't add Pitt and Cuse how would that have prevented them from being raided? Even if 6 potential schools leave (VT,UNC,NC State, FSU, Clemson,Virginia) this conference is still significantly better than the current Big East. I don't see this is a bad landing spot at all.
The ACC's problem is their terrible, 10 year TV deal with ESPN. It puts them at a permanent disadvantage to the other leagues. There is no reason for ESPN to renegotiate that deal. They are better off throwing a few extra dollars at the SEC or Big 12 and helping them to raid the top teams from the ACC than they would be upgrading the whole league's contract. If the ACC loses its top 6 teams, it is not an upgrade from the NNBE, and there would be no reason for any Big East team to join and lock into that TV deal, which ESPN could likely unilaterally reduce anyway for departing programs. Miami, Wake, Duke, BCU, Pitt, Syracuse, Georgia Tech, and whoever is not an upgrade over the NNBE. The ACC TV deal was always the problem, and why I thought that the ACC would be better off merging into the Big East than raiding it. Why Pitt and Syracuse were stupid enough to leave, and why the ACC was stupid enough to take them, we will never know. If the Big East took in the 12 ACC teams, they could have taken the combined league to the open market. Now we will never know what deal that league would have gotten. Instead, we will have two leagues that are shells after getting gutted.
they either get left behind or go with fsu somewhere. but the private vs public relationship down there prob isn't enough for them to go with fsu tot he b12. i'm glad i'm not the only one who thinks these things about the acc, it really seems like its going to get ripped apart. i still feel though that the NYC theory is the only thing that could save this conf.
For current on the field success, maybe. In every other aspect, definitely not. Miami alone makes that group of schools better than the NNBE.
Another possible twist for the ACC that hasn't gotten much pub yet: In the event that the nBe signs with another network for 2013, the ACC would then become the runt of the litter at ESPN. As such, they could be asked (read: coerced) to play more Wednesday/Friday/Sunday night games than they ever bargained for, and ESPNU just might become the official home of ACC football. Would be kinda fascinating (okay, hilarious) to see that dynamic play out. Forget MACtion, how's about a little Wednesday night ACCtion?...
This board has never been more delusional. We should have the ACC's "problems". If they're f* *ed, we're dead and buried.
Was thinking the same thing. The ACC's worst case scenario - includes UConn. This also happens to be UConn's best case scenario.
I hear you - the same people that admonish some of us for not buying into the new conference want us to swallow that the ACC has somehow set in motion its own destruction. Hell, they already destroyed us and if their TV contract is that bad, wait for the s* sandwich the Big East is about to be served.
the b12 wants blood right now. tex and crew are pissed that the sec got atm. now the whole sec has a ticket to texas recruiting. the only way for tex and crew to get back at the sec is for them to paoch fsu/clem and open up the floodgates to southeast recruiting. the b12 and sec are quietly having a arms race.
I didn't realize it was a contest, or that because I believe the Big East will still make a few dollars on the next TV deal that I am not allowed to point out what is obvious to just about everyone. It is not some tremendous insight to note that the ACC has some serious membership issues right now, and our visiting "insider", who hates me and has been cyber stalking me, just agreed with pretty much everything I have been saying here in the Big 12 thread. We should have a separate board for Whaler, yourself, a few others, where you can relentlessly trash the Big East, point out how it is worse to every other conference, including the Sun Belt, and throw a pity party for the demise of UConn's athletic program.
It's not the Big 12, it's ESPN. ESPN saw this arms race building and also saw its rights fees skyrocketing. I can't be the first person who noticed that the right move for the ACC was to merge into the Big East and go to another network or split the media rights. ESPN saw the same fact pattern, played out the Game Theory, and realized they would be better off destroying the Big East and the ACC because that would enable them to pay fewer teams the top level rights fees. So ESPN went to the ACC and offered them $1-2MM extra per school to take Syracuse and Pitt, which effectively gutted the Big East. At the time, I said that was a stupid move for the ACC, they should have gotten ESPN to get them to $18-20MM/school/year or it was a mistake to raid the Big East. I got shouted down on this board, but it turns out I was 100% right. Not only did the ACC get peanuts for destroying the Big East, but they couldn't even get ESPN to sign a new deal with them. The Big 12, which had bigger membership changes in the interim, has already gotten a spanking new contract with jaw-dropping revenue increases, and a structure that is very expansion friendly. ESPN cut this deal in months with the Big 12 yet has not renegotiated the ACC deal yet. At $20-25MM/school/year, Louisville and Cincinnati are not the likely targets for Big 12 expansion, FSU, Clemson, Georgia Tech and VTech are. It is also worth noting that Mike Slive had said he could get to 16 teams very quickly, and the SEC is still re-working their deal. I suspect that once it is resolved, UNC and either VTech or UVa are gone. ESPN has not re-signed the ACC deal because they know the membership of that conference is about to go through a big change. The Big East and ACC got played by ESPN, and both are going to be road kill. I get no joy out of this outcome, because like most of you, see that there is going to be a gigantic revenue gap between those in the Top 4 leagues and those in the rest. UConn will never be able to keep good coaches or maintain success like it did the last 25 years. That sun is setting forever. It makes me angrier because idiots like Swofford who thought they were players were really the played, and created this situation.
The sky isn't falling people. It's unrealistic to expect that a broadcasting revenue stream for the Big East come 2013 is going to leapfrog any of the other existing power conference revenue streams around broadcasting. You never know what a bidding war can result in, and bidding war for the Big East is what ESPN did not want. It's also unrealistic to expect that the Big East won't significantly upgrade our current revenue streams through the conference via broadcasting, and maintain our presence on the top side of the revenue gap in college athletics. There are a couple of things that are key, questions to address. #1. How valueable is live television broadcasting? #2. How many hours of live sports television can be broadcast per day/per week/...etc. #3. How many of those live sports broadcasts can be put in primetime locally for either a home or visiting team? #4. How many broadcasts can go out nationally coast to coast in primetime? #5. How accessible will those broadcasts be to local TV's? last question brings you to the ability of the networks to deliver the product. Are they proactive in the digital / handheld device market - which is going to be part of all of this in the future? Are channels for viewing available on basic programming packages, or will people need to upgrade their TV package to access the programming? It all starts with #1. The value of live sports programming, which is going to target that demographic that is highly desireable for advertisers, is unprecedented. Does anyone really think that ESPN is not interested in retaining the Big East? They didn't want a bidding war for the Big East, b/c it was, and is, terribly undervalued, and a bidding war is going to drive it up to market value, and possibly beyond. They'd rather destroy it outright, which UConn & Cuse to the ACC would have done, or attempt to weaken the Big East and create internal tension to the point of it's membership self-dissolving, and going their own ways, which nearly happened, several times over the past 30 years. ESPN was willing to pay what it was going to pay, with the Syracuse and Pitt markets and WVU markets in 2011. Big East walked out and waited for the open market. The ACC and ESPN reacted. Basketball took a hit, with Syracuse leaving, but in return, we've added Boise State football, Houston and SMU markets, etc. etc.... which are salivating at earning the right to compete with the other Texas schools in the big leagues. San Diego St football, which has a football tradition that is nothing to poo poo, when you look at the innovation, coaching, players, that have come out of there. The big east is still tied to Notre Dame, and the Big EAst still owns ownership of the most valueable advertising real estate in the country - the northeast corridor. But the sky is falling. So they say. UConn needs to do four things: #1. Continue build our own product to the best level it can be. Grow our endowment to the levels it should be. Contribute to the uconn foundation if you're an alumni. They're upgrading all the facilities and the school needs to continually be state of the art academically and athletically. Check. #2. recruit like hell, keep admissions standards high, win games and get nationally ranked, and stay nationally ranked, academically and athletically. Check. #3. Maintain affiliation athletically with whatever athletic association owns our marketing demographic in the northeast US including New York and Boston, and remain tied to Notre Dame athletics however convoluted it may be, as long as they remain indepedant in football. Check. Oh yea - and win games. Win big games, and get nationally ranked in football. Who knows what the future of the big east may bring, but in the future, if the Jesuit backbone of colleges on the east coast isn't going to be able to sustain itself as a power athletic association.....I"d rather be attracting the likes of the Big 10 state university alliance of schools than the ACC or SEC. We build our school up the right way, academically and athletically - and that's exactly where will be, if the Jesuit tradition of athletics can't hold up in the future. Either way, UConn is going to be just fine, and we don't need to sign over our broadcasting souls to any single broadcasting company to do it.
Carl... you missed: How many eyeballs will actually tune in to watch the game? What are the demographics of the audience, and their disposable income that they're willing to spend on products advertised during those games? How rabid are they about the schools they are watching, and how does the league they play in and the success of the teams affect those advertising demos? Do advertisers want an audience that's a mile wide and an inch deep? Because that's what they're going to get with the SMUs and UCFs of the world.
And will our fan base pay as much for tickets (and contribute) to watch games vs. Central Florida and the other ilk as they would for regular matchups with U of Virginia, North Carolina, Syracuse? Same goes for corprate sponsorships.
