The ACC would allow them to program build but they don’t bring anything to the ACC table that be fits us. Doesn’t help long term imo. For kicks and giggles even if they deliver the Dallas market that’s 3 million TV homes. Temple would technically deliver more.
It would appear to me that the DFW metro area, which loves all things football about as much as I love Hoffman’s white natural casing snappy grillers should be a more welcome addition to the ACC through SMU than we may otherwise be led to believe. Whereas the PHL market, where I also lived and worked for 5 years could care less about its local college affiliations a very large proportion of the time, Texas is a complete polar opposite in its promotion of any football product whatsoever at any age group and this culture will most probably never change.
It would also seem to this Syracuse native that the relationship of SMU and perhaps down the road Houston would both prove to be quite symbiotic over the course of a natural generation of growth for the ACC conference.
I believe that the financial backing and wherewithal for these institutions to be structurally sound apart from the minimum money guarantees of an ACC TV deal and the beyond incredible fertile football recruiting grounds would allow the seeds for growth potential to blossom exponentially as a western flank of the ACC and remain a continuous recruiting threat as the current #3 $$ generator of the NCAA conferences. With rising tides floating all boats, that could only and obviously help Syracuse and the ACC with recruiting Texas as well. I truly believe that if Houston or SMU were routinely challenging for the CFP versus A&M or UT languishing as a middle of the road SEC player, that it would become a more significant thorn to the SEC over time and bring even more fans to the ACC because everyone loves a winner.
Remember that the University of Houston convincingly snatched Dana Holgorsen from P5 WV just a few years ago and has not looked back since despite being in a much more modest AAC conference until just now.
Also in my opinion, I would not hesitate to consider Tulane and UCF as conference members as well as they come available. Someone else may have a better idea of the college enrollments at UCF than I do compared to other FL universities but as I recall, UCF may have the largest enrollment of college students in the state of Florida. If we are playing the long game here, this would provide another nice benefit to the ACC over time for several reasons like recruiting, bowl tie ins, and more visibility over the course of time which in my opinion could dwarf the accomplishments of Florida State hands down within again, the next generation.
As I just happened to look up just a few minutes ago, feel free to take a look at the 2022 Census Bureau populations link of the top few metro areas below. According to these projections, it would appear to me that DFW will pass the Chicago metropolitan statistical area in population in about 6 years and Houston should do the same within 10 years. When I was born, 10% of the US resided in New York State and these signs of the times only show that the tectonic plates of continuous US migration does not appear to be abating any time soon.
In the same way that the BIG may covet some of our southern teams, we should already be planning to do an an around into Texas now as a precursor to our future stability and conference vision whether other teams consider leaving or not. There will be definitely more than enough football fanatics, recruits and dollars to go around and we all might just be surprised at how powerful the newcomers might be representing the ACC conference over time against any other conference competition.
en.m.wikipedia.org
