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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 5348609, member: 1145"] Your school? I always mention the two biggest dead weights in the ACC, which are BC and Wake. Which one is your school? What I do think most Syracuse fans do not want to see is how little value there is in the entire Northeast for Major CFB. It is not a recent problem, and there is no sign it ever will get better. That Big East way of seeing things, which means missing how deep and wide are the regional problems, is also found, in a different form, in much of the Old Guard ACC. I grew up in SEC country, not in NC. So I see what the ACC always has lacked and has refused to act wisely and forcefully to get (except when landing FSU). I can see that about the ACC because I know SEC football very well. And look at the results: now, SEC basketball rules the national roost. How did that happen? Because football is so MUCH[B] BIGGER [/B]than basketball, eventually in a free market for conferences, any league with huge football fan bases would be able to buy out even the most successful basketball-first leagues. And it is all about the passionate football fan bases. TV pays for viewers. Quite simply, a 6-6 Auburn team (#2 football program and fan base in its own small state) will always be a better TV draw than a 9-3 Syracuse team. Per capita, nobody in NY gives a half damn about Major CFB. And New England is even worse. And almost all those north easterners who do watch a lot of Major CFB root first for ND or PSU. TV knows that - hence the SEC TV deal compared to the ACC deal. The ACC is facing an existential crisis. This is about surviving. But that has 2 basic meanings. The Pac survives, but it never again will be close to being seen as Major (its 2 least valuable members of the 12 are the only old members left). The SWC has been dead for a long time. Either fate could await the ACC. Or the ACC could get wildly aggressive and save itself as MAJOR. But that will require very tough leadership that is determined to keep the ACC as MAJOR. That need to aggressively remain MAJOR holds true even if SEC and BT agree to never add another school. As things now stand, they will keep on getting new TV deals that get ever more above the ACC deals. Before long that disparity will mean everybody agrees that we have only 2 MAJOR conferences, and then all the rest. None of which really matters, most of which definitely matter zilch. Here are things that I know to be true: 1. Major CFB wealth and power are very much about state flagship and land grant schools: 17 of 18 BT members and 15 of 16 SEC members. In contrast, the ACC has 3 Flagships and 3 Land Grants among 17 members. Almost all those schools are quite large, all in the BT are very large. 2. The South and the Midwest are the two regions with the largest numbers of and most passionate CFB fans. Per capita, the northeast has so few passionate CFB fans that it really does not register. Literally, save for PSU, a network can afford to just ignore the Northeast. That no longer can be said of the MT zone, nor can it be said of the PT zone, though per capita that area watches less college sports than it did 30 and 40 years ago. 3. Passion for CBB means nothing in this. As football is worth about 10 times more than basketball, a league could have UNC, Dook, UK, Louisville, IU, Purdue, Syracuse, UConn, and KU and still die very quickly because its football would not be worth runny compared to the BT and SEC. 4. Having teams in states that have large numbers of passionate CFB fans and also produce a lot of HS football talent makes it much easier for that league to be good or great on the field and acquire and keep passionate fans. Conversely the more teams a league has in states and regions with poor HS football and per capita poor CFB TV viewing, the harder it will be for that league to be very good on the field year after year and to acquire and maintain large TV fan bases. ACC leaders must come to accept all that and know it is futile to deny or fight any of it, and then figure out how to better position the ACC to compete against the SEC and BT for TV viewers at least as much on football fields. [/QUOTE]

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