The ACC move

[ZooCougar]

If you liked the old new Big East, then great. But it's dead. The closest thing to it is in the ACC.

 

[BugsyCT]

If this ultimately plays out like we are hoping for, we're all going to have to finally curb our ACC hatred. It can't be about that anymore. Too much has changed since the first ACC raid.

It's simply about survival now. And this may be our one & only lifeboat.

 

[upstater]

If this ultimately plays out like we are hoping for, we're all going to have to finally curb our ACC hatred. It can't be about that anymore. Too much has changed since the first ACC raid.

It's simply about survival now. And this may be our first & only lifeboat.

I will never curb that hatred, even if we're in the ACC. Especially in basketball. I will have a great deal of difficulty rooting for any team in that league. And in basketball, there's no downside to despising every single other team. The Big East had an us against the world mentality because it was always an underdog. This simply will not be the case in the ACC.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

If this ultimately plays out like we are hoping for, we're all going to have to finally curb our ACC hatred. It can't be about that anymore. Too much has changed since the first ACC raid.

It's simply about survival now. And this may be our one & only lifeboat.

It is about survival, but the reason our ship is sinking is because of the same schools in the lifeboat we are trying to get on. They drove us into one iceberg, they will not hesitate to do it again.

 

[upstater]

It is about survival, but the reason our ship is sinking is because of the same schools in the lifeboat we are trying to get on. They drove us into one iceberg, they will not hesitate to do it again.

I firmly believe it was BC that screwed UConn. That may or may not be the case now.

 

[RS9999X]

OOC against GU , LU, SJU. NOVA, PC, SHU--that's a damn sight better than Baylor or LSU or Tennessee and traveling to SMU

Sent from my Lumia 920 via Windows 8. Now bite me Apple Droids.

 

[SubbaBub]

BE 2002:

BC
Cuse
Pitt
Miami
Rutty
WVU
VT
Temple
UConn (transitioning)

ACC North 2015 (tentative)
BC
Cuse
Pitt
Miami
VT
UVA
UConn

As someone else said, "the conference we thought we were joining."

I'd prefer the B1G but this would be more than welcome. I don't see any teams there we can't beat.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

 

[ZooCougar]

BE 2002:

BC
Cuse
Pitt
Miami
Rutty
WVU
VT
Temple
UConn (transitioning)

ACC North 2015 (tentative)
BC
Cuse
Pitt
Miami
VT
UVA
UConn

As someone else said, "the conference we thought we were joining."

I'd prefer the B1G but this would be more than welcome. I don't see any teams there we can't beat.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

and we all can go back to not giving a crap about Memphis and San Diego State.

 

[junglehusky]

"Uconn won't find a rival like Rutgers in the new league..."

1) BC is a better rival for us IMO ... More history and more hatred

This will be an instant rivalry. It might die down some if one or both teams are mediocre/sucky but hopefully UConn will improve and dominate for a few years at least

2) uconn can still play Rutgers for an annual trophy... What is stopping this?

I suspect Rutgers would rather play Norfolk State!

 

[noeynox]

Actually, you are wrong. It was very personal for the schools that left. Because each ACC raid of the Big East was predicated on the fact that by taking 2 or 3 teams, the ACC could put the Big East out of business, essentially destroying the league and the athletic programs within it. Every time the ACC would grab a BCU or Syracuse, they would go running back to ESPN and ask, with their tail wagging, "will you give us credit for the Northeast now?" The point of those raids was to make UConn a mid-major. Do you really think that Syracuse and Pitt are valuable athletic programs in their own right?

If the 9 football (with TCU) and 8 hoops schools had stuck together, the league would have already signed a contract worth at least what the ACC is making. That Big East was better on the field, on the court and in the ratings than the ACC.

Or, the ACC could have gone to the Big East and said "we have this crappy long-term TV deal, why don't we merge into your league so we can get out of that deal and all make a lot of money?" But they didn't do that, probably because Swofford may not have survived that process. They convinced Pitt and Syracuse to stab everyone else in the back, which caused the Big East to ultimately unravel but didn't really help the ACC's with their below-market, long-term TV deal. The current solution is the worst of all worlds. The Big East is gone, never having gotten its big TV deal that it was due. The left-behinds are relegated to permanent mid-major status, and the ACC STILL has a crappy TV deal, making it incredibly vulnerable.

Just because their are worse outcomes does not mean UConn going to this configuration of the ACC is a good one. It is just UConn trying to make the best of a bad situation, which will continue to be bad into the future.

Damn dude, can we get into the acc, before you try to convince us of how much it sucks. Like you said there are no better alternatives, and the acc still offers a lot more money from TV than the big east was going to.

 

[The Funster]

If I said it once, I've said it a thousand times: if the ACC calls, I'd go running. I'd have to hold my nose but I'd go running.

 

[Dooley]

I will look forward to annual trips to BC to watch football and basketball clobber those scared lil' birdies.

 

[businesslawyer]

[quote="nelsonmuntz, post: 396761, member: 833"I am not that excited about the ACC.


This feels like marrying a woman that is not that attractive, a little out of shape, parties too hard, will likely cheat on me, and is bitchy. But her dad has money so at least we won't be poor.

[/quote]

Good God. The time to trash your hypothetical woman is after she has agreed to marry you. Not while she still might turn you down.

 

[CL82]

Actually, you are wrong. It was very personal for the schools that left. Because each ACC raid of the Big East was predicated on the fact that by taking 2 or 3 teams, the ACC could put the Big East out of business, essentially destroying the league and the athletic programs within it. Every time the ACC would grab a BCU or Syracuse, they would go running back to ESPN and ask, with their tail wagging, "will you give us credit for the Northeast now?" The point of those raids was to make UConn a mid-major. Do you really think that Syracuse and Pitt are valuable athletic programs in their own right?
.

I don't think the point was to make UConn a mid-major. I think the point was to eliminate their closest competitor, the Big East. But for Defilipo and BC, the ACC would have gladly taken UConn over Pitt. No, Cuse and Pitt aren't valuable in their own right, they were just a (successful) move to weaken the conference. That's just business.

I agree with you, however, that if we had stayed together as a conference, we'd be in a much better position as a conference...but we didn't.

Like many on the board, I am conflicted about an ACC invite. If you are on a sinking ship and the person you detest most in world turns up in a lifeboat, you get on and are thankful. That's where I am. Swofford (and as much as I dislike the guy, I give him credit for postioning his league to swallow ours) did what was best for his conference. No one should expect anything different from him.

The irony in all this is once the Big East is eliminated, the ACC becomes the Big East both in membership and in that the big boys will then turn their focus toward eliminating them from the grown up table.

So yeah an ACC invitation is welcome. If you are on a sinking ship even a leaky lifeboat is a step up.

Edit: I posted this before I had read through this thread. It is funny how many people have used the lifeboat analogy. I seems like the bulk of us are on the same page on this.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I find it simply unfathomable that people wouldn't jump for joy to be reunited with the rest of the real Big East football conference, BC, Syracuse, Pitt, Miami, VT, while adding amazing basketball opposition in Duke (rekindling a rivalry there) UNC, GT etc. Plus adding marquee football opposition in FSU and Clemson that easily outdistance any NBE team (including Boise). Playing Clemson in Death Valley beats playing in a smallish stadium in Boise any day. We would essentially have an league that truly is an eastern league. All games on our time zone! I would feel much more affinity for the ACC than I do for the current Big East.

I'll miss the old rivals in GTown, PC, St. Johns and Seton Hall...but we can still play them. I will not miss DePaul, Lousiville, Cincy or USF (I enjoyed Marquette). I will be eternally thankful to never be in a league with Memphis, Houston and Boise. I'm indifferent to SDSU, UCF and SMU. BC is a much better natural rival than Rutgers.

 

[businesslawyer]

First, I can't say I'm optimistic.

I've been optimistic in the past, not so much about UConn getting an invite somewhere, but in events falling in such a way where the Big East would not be gutted. Without fail, that optimism was purely misplaced - as such, I am out of the optimism business. If my luck holds, Maryland turns down the Big Ten and peace reigns throughout the land...and we die alone in the Really New New Big East.

However, in your scenario, UConn goes to the ACC....

I won't miss the New Big East. Louisville, Cincy and South Florida were just schools we happened to end up in the lifeboat with after the first raid. I'd like them to land on their feet and I suspect one or two of them might. South Florida won't. But past that, they are just names to me.

I would definitely miss the 'old' Big East in basketball. Georgetown, Nova, PC and St. John's - we'll basically never have those sort of rivalries again. Even Syracuse and Pitt would be strange - stakes would seem different.

I can't see ever actually caring about the ACC, though. Syracuse fans are so eager to assimilate that they are practically acting like founding members of a conference they're not even in yet - I actively dislike almost every ACC school and that would not change. There's no circumstance where I would root for UNC to win an out of conference game like I might with Syracuse or Pitt or Providence or whoever from the (current) Big East.

As for Rutgers, eh. There's no real heat to that rivalry - Boston College would be more of a hatefest from the word go.

The BC versus Rutgers in terms of rivalry depends on what part of the state you are from. If you are from Greater Hartford, it's BC. If you life in Fairfield County, you share a media market with Rutgers and Boston seems far away.

 

[HuskyHawk]

[quote="nelsonmuntz, post: 396761, member: 833"I am not that excited about the ACC.


This feels like marrying a woman that is not that attractive, a little out of shape, parties too hard, will likely cheat on me, and is bitchy. But her dad has money so at least we won't be poor.

Good God. The time to trash your hypothetical woman is after she has agreed to marry you. Not while she still might turn you down.[/quote]

Especially since he wants to marry the equivalent of a Zombie version of Janet Reno...and the ACC is an FSU cheerleader by comparison.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Good God. The time to trash your hypothetical woman is after she has agreed to marry you. Not while she still might turn you down.

Especially since he wants to marry the equivalent of a Zombie version of Janet Reno...and the ACC is an FSU cheerleader by comparison.[/quote]

RIF

 

[The Funster]

I find it simply unfathomable that people wouldn't jump for joy to be reunited with the rest of the real Big East football conference, BC, Syracuse, Pitt, Miami, VT, while adding amazing basketball opposition in Duke (rekindling a rivalry there) UNC, GT etc. Plus adding marquee football opposition in FSU and Clemson that easily outdistance any NBE team (including Boise). Playing Clemson in Death Valley beats playing in a smallish stadium in Boise any day. We would essentially have an league that truly is an eastern league. All games on our time zone! I would feel much more affinity for the ACC than I do for the current Big East.

I'll miss the old rivals in GTown, PC, St. Johns and Seton Hall...but we can still play them. I will not miss DePaul, Lousiville, Cincy or USF (I enjoyed Marquette). I will be eternally thankful to never be in a league with Memphis, Houston and Boise. I'm indifferent to SDSU, UCF and SMU. BC is a much better natural rival than Rutgers.

Those are all positives. However, I have little faith in the ACC leadership. They've been pantsed quite a bit. Swofford is not as smart as he and others think he is.

 

[upstater]

[quote="nelsonmuntz, post: 396761, member: 833"I am not that excited about the ACC.


This feels like marrying a woman that is not that attractive, a little out of shape, parties too hard, will likely cheat on me, and is bitchy. But her dad has money so at least we won't be poor.

Good God. The time to trash your hypothetical woman is after she has agreed to marry you. Not while she still might turn you down.[/quote]

This discussion is better suited for the Syracuse Recruiting thread?

 

[CL82]

Those are all positives. However, I have little faith in the ACC leadership. They've been pantsed quite a bit. Swofford is not as smart as he and others think he is.

You know you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just need to be faster than the guy next to you. Swofford may not be Einstein but positioned his league better than his counterparts in the Big East. Thus we are the league that is destined to become bear scat.

 

[The Funster]

You know you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just need to be faster than the guy next to you. Swofford may not be Einstein but positioned his league better than his counterparts in the Big East. Thus we are the league that is destined to become bear scat.

Yep, and now that the NNNBE is likely out of the way, Swofford's ACC is now the slowest guy. Swofford out-maneuvering Tranghese and Marinatto is no big deal.

 

[upstater]

Yep, and now that the NNNBE is likely out of the way, Swofford's ACC is now the slowest guy. Swofford out-maneuvering Tranghese and Marinatto is no big deal.

Doesn't this all speak to the fact, though, that Swofford read the writing on the wall many years ago?

Let's go back in time: if the ACC is a mere 9 team league now, where does that get them? Miami and VT were big gets for them regardless. It would have happened inevitably.

 

[SubbaBub]

The only downside to this rumored move is that we will never know.what the true value of the NNBE TV deal would have been. I'm curious but, OK with that.

I suspect there are others glad that numbers won't see the light of day.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2

 

[businesslawyer]

Yep, and now that the NNNBE is likely out of the way, Swofford's ACC is now the slowest guy. Swofford out-maneuvering Tranghese and Marinatto is no big deal.

I'm just not sure that is true. The ACC is the slowest guy if you are assuming Texas doesn't leave the Big XII. I don't think Texas leaving, though, for the Big Ten, SEC or Pac Ten one day is totally out of the question. And, despite quality of play (which we've seen means very little), without TX the ACC is likely to survive over the Big XII.

 

[Chuck]

Was

Yep, and now that the NNNBE is likely out of the way, Swofford's ACC is now the slowest guy. Swofford out-maneuvering Tranghese and Marinatto is no big deal.

Was Swofford's mistake trying to out maneuver the Big East when he could've finished the B12? If he had attacked the B12 either separately, or at the same time he was going after the Big East, it may've nudged the B12 powers to the PAC and the ACC would be the weakest of the Big 4 rather than Big 5.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Actually, you are wrong. It was very personal for the schools that left. Because each ACC raid of the Big East was predicated on the fact that by taking 2 or 3 teams, the ACC could put the Big East out of business, essentially destroying the league and the athletic programs within it. Every time the ACC would grab a BCU or Syracuse, they would go running back to ESPN and ask, with their tail wagging, "will you give us credit for the Northeast now?" The point of those raids was to make UConn a mid-major. Do you really think that Syracuse and Pitt are valuable athletic programs in their own right?

If the 9 football (with TCU) and 8 hoops schools had stuck together, the league would have already signed a contract worth at least what the ACC is making. That Big East was better on the field, on the court and in the ratings than the ACC.

Or, the ACC could have gone to the Big East and said "we have this crappy long-term TV deal, why don't we merge into your league so we can get out of that deal and all make a lot of money?" But they didn't do that, probably because Swofford may not have survived that process. They convinced Pitt and Syracuse to stab everyone else in the back, which caused the Big East to ultimately unravel but didn't really help the ACC's with their below-market, long-term TV deal. The current solution is the worst of all worlds. The Big East is gone, never having gotten its big TV deal that it was due. The left-behinds are relegated to permanent mid-major status, and the ACC STILL has a crappy TV deal, making it incredibly vulnerable.

Just because their are worse outcomes does not mean UConn going to this configuration of the ACC is a good one. It is just UConn trying to make the best of a bad situation, which will continue to be bad into the future.

Where is conspiracy kitty?

Why don't we apply some reality instead? The ACC was a successful, but small league. It needed to upgrade football in particular, and added Miami, VT and BC, all of whom were considered very strong programs at the time. They also added FSU. As the landscape changed they saw the emerging 16 team paradigm, and made the move to expand and add Syracuse and Pitt. I think they believe they can get Notre Dame to join for all sports when the NBC contract expires.

The Big East was doomed the moment it crossed the Mississippi river to find members. It became the original CUSA. Think what you will, but the power resides with flagship state universities and a few well to do private schools. Urban commuter schools like Houston and Memphis, and even state run, city based schools like UCF, USF, Louisville and Cincy are perpetually relegated to the second tier (Pitt has been lucky due to much stronger academics and history than most such schools).

This is not an attack on the Big East, it's the powerful schools consolidating power, and denying it to those they find unworthy. This is why UConn and Rutgers are viewed more highly than UL and Cincy, and always will be. If there is a conspiracy here, it's about making sure those lower tier universities don't rise above their station, not animosity to any particular league.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Doesn't this all speak to the fact, though, that Swofford read the writing on the wall many years ago?

Let's go back in time: if the ACC is a mere 9 team league now, where does that get them? Miami and VT were big gets for them regardless. It would have happened inevitably.

Yes, all it really amounts to is a merger of the ACC and Big East, with the unfortunate loss of Rutgers. Viewed in that light, I think we'd be hard pressed to deny that if the initial move was positioned instead as a merger of the BE football playing schools with the ACC, plus retention of ND as an "affiliate" for scheduling, it would have been viewed as anything but a great move for both leagues.

 

[uconNYC]

I actually think ACC has potential to be a strong football league. Schools like UNC, NCState, VTech, Miami are just struggling right now. If they just played to their average potential - the league is as good as the PAC-12.

I too have a soft spot for the Big East, but one reason I would be thrilled to join that conference is so that I no longer will feel obligated to root for teams based on what it means for the future of the conference. With the Big East it felt like every loss by a Big East team meant the conferences grave was getting bigger - be it TV Rights, Bowl alignments or public perception.

 

[ctchamps]

For those of us who aren't football centric, the demise of the BE is sad. I loved the progression of the UConn's mens bb program within the BE and on the national scale. Georgetown, Syracuse, St. Johns and Nova were the dominant names but JC eventually made UConn the premier team in the BE which turned out to be the premier conference in the nation. The conference that the BE overtook as the premier conference was the ACC which is why going to the ACC is hard for some of us. I accept the potential realities facing UConn's future but it is bittersweet.

My hope was that football would have the same trajectory as basketball. And actually the program was off to a promising start that was far quicker than most of us realistically expected. The reality was that the universities in the BE who joined it for football were always too many steps behind the big players. And those big players were going to do what was necessary to protect their turf. It wasn't a conspiracy. It was logical and pragmatic that once a BE football coach became successful, that coach became a consideration for those "bigger programs" which were struggling.

The landscape was always one of flux, but the rate of flux was accelerated considerably when conferences realized how much money the networks were making off them and the conferences made the determination to take some of the share. Hence the activity to poach universities increased at a frenetic pace. The activity had some overall logic to it, but the primary mover was how to position conferences for the best media deals. Some of the thought was to bring better competition into the conferences. Some was about markets. Some was just to change numbers to get a renegotiation of terms. There was as much guesswork as there was logic to the activity.

There is a lot of sour grapes about the basketball only schools resistance to change as being an impediment to the football schools success. Those schools did exactly what they were supposed to do, advocate for their position. The football schools had the option of breaking away at any time. They couldn't come up with a consensus so they broke away piecemeal.

The ACC is not out of the woods. Delaney has declared war on ND and thus the ACC because it has taken in ND. My feeling is Delaney takes one more ACC team (I'm sure he would prefer Virginia to keep the contiguous footprint) and if he can poach one more ACC team to really weaken them he takes UConn as well. This will strengthen his reach into the NY market and give the Big ten a solid footprint in the I-95 corridor. It would be a brilliant strategy to eliminate two conferences, neutralize ND as much as possible and accelerate the process of removing third party media from the monies that rightfully belong to the universities.