Come on Billybud. FSU has been in the ACC for 25 years, and you don't know why the ACC is doing what it is doing and think this is a Swofford boondoggle. I come back after being away for almost a year to see what UConn fans think of all of this drama in the Big XII that could lead to a UConn invite, and instead I find this thread debating the motives and direction of the ACC.
The ACC is not a Southern Conference, and it doesn't ever intend to be a Southern Conference. It's an East Coast Conference. There are 7 private universities (Notre Dame, Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, Duke, and Miami) along with three public universities that operate like private universities (Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia Tech). All ten require high school students that want to go to college to pay very high tuition. Where do you get those? North of the Mason Dixon line and east of Ohio. It is no Swofford boondoggle that all ten of these universities want to regularly play athletic events on the road north of the mason dixon line and east of Ohio. And the remaining ACC schools (VT, NCSU,Clemson, FSU, and Louisville) are catching on from the others.
The ACC is a collection of universities. It is not a semi-pro football league. The questioning of Syracuse and Boston College is also surprising. Notre Dame's Father Jenkins direct quote, "We at Notre Dame have more alumni, more fans, and more support in New York and Massachusetts than in ALL of the midwest." Where do you think Syracuse and Boston College reside? As for the analysis of which states that the ACC owns. The combination of Notre Dame, Syracuse, and Boston College owns New York and Massachusetts. There are no other FBS schools of consequence in either state. You could argue Notre Dame isn't in the ACC, but the ACC has more of them than any other league.
There are only 2 college football teams that drive major interest in the northeast, Notre Dame and Penn State. They both bring large non-alumni fan bases. Notre Dame owns New York and New England. Penn State owns Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. There is a little crossover with Catholics in the Penn State territory and non Catholics in the ND territory. The rest of the schools in the Northeast are primarily supported by their alumni only.
UConn has done a nice job of becoming the team in Connecticut. That's why I always saw UConn as a good fit for the ACC. Most here don't want to be in the ACC, so I'm surprised there are still threads talking about the ACC. As I read through some of these threads today, there are hardly any ACC fans left on the Boneyard like there were before.
As for FSU playing Georgia Tech, Georgia Tech specifically wants to annually play Duke, Clemson, and North Carolina in that order before ever considering anyone else other than their annual rivalry with Georgia. They have an 83 game history with Duke, an 80 game history with Clemson, and a 50 game history with North Carolina. They only have a 24 game history with FSU. You could ask to swap divisions with Miami to get GT, but you'd lose Clemson. The ACC will not be doing North-South divisions because of the desire for everyone to play north and the northern schools to play south.