Some of the more interesting questions in this realignment saga

[RuffRuff]

This stuff just fascinates me - between the politics, the perceptions, geographies, tv contracts, this stuff can keep you reading forever. If you net net this thing out and play it from an end game scenario backwards, there are going to be schools that are really going to be forced to make some interesting decisions. We can all but leave the Pac 12 alone as most of the drama is going to occur in the big 3 football conferences from Midwest to East. If we stick to the clear as day likelihoods, we can all but assume the SEC and Big Ten are going 16. It's been discussed ad nauseum that end game is 16 teams. The SEC and Big Ten hold all the power in this reshuffle and can really call their shots and pretty much pick and choose who they want at this point. If the ACC continues to be the target as it's armor is all but crushed, then we can assume that at least 4 more teams get plucked. The likelihood is more as once even further weakened, any decent football program(non academic focused) will be scrambling for the Big 12. So we are looking at what is likely 6 teams at a minimum coming out of the ACC, which leaves that conference in destitude.

The school that I really see as being caught in a tough spot is UNC. If true that Big Ten is interested, how can they not take seriously? With their market, academics, they're a great fit for the Big 10, outside of geographical culture. They certainly don't want to be in the SEC or the Big 12, total non fits academically. But they're a southern school at heart. If they stay stubborn as the patriarch of the ACC and do not budge, then they are really looking at a shell conference and one that is basically going to have as many northern teams than southern and looking like the old Big East. I'm fascinating on where their end game is.

Does the Big 12 go beyond 12 teams? They'll have a tough time filling out 16 with what is left out there. If they do decide to go that route, then the ACC likely has to find the types of programs that the Big East is playing around with now. Does UNC even want to be involved in that?

How long does the Big Ten wait out ND? Do they go 15 now with a UVa and leave schools like UNC and ND thinking, seeing that end game as being a place that most top programs do not want to be? Or do they grow impatient with ND and just give up, locking in what could be a strong alternative with a UNC/UVa duo? There is not another conference out there that is going to give ND the type of deal that the ACC has and are they content having to play 5 games against what is left there?

Any way you slice it, the next steps in this drama become unbelievably interesting in seeing schools that you'd never think moving really being forced to think about it.

 

[ZooCougar]

In addition to everything you just mentioned, your red sunglasses are also fascinating.

 

[beasteast]

i think its Michael Anthony

 

[freescooter]

If I was a neutral observer I would find all this so fascinating...but it is driving me nuts! I think, though, that it is completely possible that we might be at the end of the road for the current round of conference switching. The ACC will add someone, most likely UConn, to replace Maryland and that will be about it. I have a hard time seeing the Big 10 or anyone else for that matter going to 16. I know everyone talks about it, but I'm not sure t really works that well. It causes trouble with scheduling in basketball, it makes "conference" almost meaningless in football. Play 7 division games and 1 "rival" plus 1 other cross divisional game and there will be some conference teams you might never play at home except once every 14 years...They might as well be non-conference for all the relevance they'll have to you. If you're in a 16 team Big 10, that's fine if you never play Illinois, I guess, but someone ain't ever seeing Ohio State or Michigan, maybe both. The B-12 is the one with the best opportunity for expansion, it seems to me. And Louisville would make sense as one target. maybe Cincinnati but there is no rush. Where do they go? and even if they go to say the ACC, they will still be available to the Dozen. I think they might wait a couple of years to make the move, so Texas can get its act together again for one thing but I see 12 -14 as their target. The ACC is the weakest and hence the most vulnerable, but in some respects it is more solid than the Big East for example. It has a number of like-minded institutions that value academics and that also value basketball and their rivalries. It has some political stuff that makes moves at best difficult for certain members and at worst impossible. Anyone really think Virginia is going to let VaTech go anywhere without a pretty messy battle after the Hokies embarrassed them into bringing little brother along to the ACC? Can NC State & North Carolina really be separated that easily? Maybe, but I'm, not sure only 1 could go and leave the other in a dangerously weakened league. Florida State has some market power and might be attractive to an expanding Big 12. But they have in some sense been the answer to which doesn't belong ever since they joined. I'm not sure they alone would be missed. And really the B-12 is there sole option. The SEC isn't going there. If the B-12 decides to stand pat or go to 12 but retain a mid-western focus rather than go to the Southeast, what options do they have? And I'm not convinced that their sidekick and wannabe Clemson is all that valuable. But again, SEC would want them why? So it is the B-12 or nothing for them too.

Now while I was writing this, everything I listed might have been shown to be wrong. In that case, just forget I ever wrote it.

 

[tzznandrew]

I have a hard time seeing the Big 10 or anyone else for that matter going to 16. I know everyone talks about it, but I'm not sure t really works that well. It causes trouble with scheduling in basketball, it makes "conference" almost meaningless in football. Play 7 division games and 1 "rival" plus 1 other cross divisional game and there will be some conference teams you might never play at home except once every 14 years...They might as well be non-conference for all the relevance they'll have to you. If you're in a 16 team Big 10, that's fine if you never play Illinois, I guess, but someone ain't ever seeing Ohio State or Michigan, maybe both.

A couple of people have suggested that the conferences will get so big they will break apart. I think that the bigger entity of "conference" will cease really to have the same meaning. Instead, it will be an association, and the two "divisions" will be more like the BE, B8, and ACC of the 1980s early 90s.

8-9 teams per division, true round robin for basketball. A game or two against the opposing division. Conference tournament or title game will really be the only time the two division interact more fully. It puts more juice into the end of year tournaments, it helps keep (Duke/UNC, OSU/UM), rebuild, or create rivalries, all while the conference rakes in the cash due to the large amount of content.

(If I keep saying it enough, maybe it will come true.)

 

[CL82]

Anyone really think Virginia is going to let VaTech go anywhere without a pretty messy battle after the Hokies embarrassed them into bringing little brother along to the ACC?

This guy.

 

[TuxedoYoda]

The likelihood is more as once even further weakened, any decent football program(non academic focused) will be scrambling for the Big 12.

The school that I really see as being caught in a tough spot is UNC. If true that Big Ten is interested, how can they not take seriously? With their market, academics, they're a great fit for the Big 10, outside of geographical culture. They certainly don't want to be in the SEC or the Big 12, total non fits academically.

There is this weird perception that you can't be a top tier academic institution and exist in the Big 12......as if Texas Tech students are going to come into your town, burn down your libraries and use your research/grant money to buy salvia & Mexican wine.

The London Times, the gold standard for global university rankings, has Texas as the #29 university in the entire world: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-12/world-ranking

.....and before someone brings it up, I am well aware of the CIC in the B10. I'm not saying that the Big 12 is academically superior to the B10, just that moving to the Big 12 is not the academic death knell of a university.

 

[Orac]

A couple of people have suggested that the conferences will get so big they will break apart. I think that the bigger entity of "conference" will cease really to have the same meaning. Instead, it will be an association, and the two "divisions" will be more like the BE, B8, and ACC of the 1980s early 90s.

8-9 teams per division, true round robin for basketball. A game or two against the opposing division. Conference tournament or title game will really be the only time the two division interact more fully. It puts more juice into the end of year tournaments, it helps keep (Duke/UNC, OSU/UM), rebuild, or create rivalries, all while the conference rakes in the cash due to the large amount of content.

(If I keep saying it enough, maybe it will come true.)

16 team conferences could still work...

Remember that "pod" concept put out there by the theoretical PAC-16. If you created 4 divisions/pods of 4 teams each. You play each of the other 3 teams in your division every year, and then of the other 12 teams, you lay 6 each year. 9 games per year, you play everyone at least every other year, and at least once at home and away in a 4 year college "career".

Just make the conference championship game be a matchup of your top 2 division winners.