The article’s intention was entirely to limit public enthusiasm towards the Mora hire and take a few swipes (framed to appear as compliments) at us in the process. I personally like that they feel the need to do this and will explain why.
The firm I worked for in the late 1990’s had among their clients Ben & Jerry’s and at our annual conference/dinner in January 1999, asked Ben and Jerry to appear as guest speakers. Jerry started with a humorous story on how they met {the two laziest kids in gym class found each other) and went on to how, once they began selling their product in grocery stores, a major distributor attempted to force those stores to stop carrying their product. Jerry said he was worried that this would put them out of business, but Ben was smart enough to realize that if they were so frightened of Ben & Jerry’s product, it was time to expand.
They (northern ACC schools, ESPN, perhaps the ACC itself) is worried about what we can become and what it will do to them if we get there. The article did reopen a number of old wounds (I still feel Hathaway did more damage than P or Diaco, cringe at the misfortune of BC being on the limited committee that decided in September 2011 to add two BE schools and wish the B-12 would be given the opportunity to reconsider remaining at ten members when UT, OU et al decided to decline the P-12 invitation) but we need to put that behind us.
If Mora succeeds, brings us to where we were the past few years of RE 1.0, some of those schools will be shaking in their boots as from that point, with the people we have in place, we will be able to take the next step forward. If we do that, the schools that the ACC selected instead of us will be in our rear view mirror.