I have to agree with upstater. If you look at Ville they are not a football powerhouse. UConn held their own against them the last decade. Beat them this year. upstater has show on the conference realignment forum that the athletic $$$ numbers for ville are enron maneuvered. Others have shown attendance also manufactured.
Because football is the engine getting most of the media revenue, FSU and Clemson consider their value to the conference much greater to the AC than tobacco road. This is no different than what many people consider regarding the relative value that UConn has to SH or any of the bb be schools not named Georgetown. But up until this point tobacco road has been the decision maker for the conference.
In the previous move by the ACC it could be stated with some certainty that FSU wanted WV. Tobacco road won that round and convinced the conference to take Pitt and Cuse instead. They wanted to maintain academic standards. What changed this round was that Maryland left. Why did a founding member of the ACC leave? Maybe it was politics. Maybe it was economics. Most likely a bit of both.
The ACC has a much poorer media contract than the other four power conferences. Although the BE would only wish to have that contract, the fear within the ACC is that Maryland is just the beginning of the ACC exodus. So all this comes down to money and conference stability. IMO FSU wants to stay within the ACC, but recognizes that the ACC can go down the path of the BE unless the contract with ESPN is renegotiated.
The ACC invited ND hoping the invite would eventually result in ND joining the conference in football down the road. The BE tried the same gambit and that didn't work for them. So taking Ville over UConn was purely a demonstration by FSU that they control the conference and will control policy. There is a lot of stuff that went down with the ACC contract that, although speculative in nature, was a sweetheart deal for a regional broadcaster, of which Swofford's son is an officer. I'm not sure what the connection with that company is with North Carolina but I wouldn't doubt people in political power within that state have connections to that company. So the deal went down and the biggest loser by far in all this was FSU. ESPN and the regional broadcaster (ask HuskyFanDan for the name of the company and the article about this company) will have to renegotiate the deal or FSU and probably Clemson will go to the B12.
In other words taking Ville over UConn was the first move to let ESPN know that the conference is under FSU's power and the contract, which was orchestrated by tobacco road, will no longer be acceptable. Now the ball is in ESPN's court. If they don't renegotiate, FSU is gone. UConn got hurt because of a bigger issue between FSU and tobacco road and because of the relatively poor ESPN contract. All this bluster by Jurich is opportunistic like AO's dad spouting off.
.....pretty sure JC stood by Pat and never had "dessert" on a resteraunt table after a game!
