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Message: [QUOTE="omniorange, post: 2740108, member: 636"] True. But is there anything that prevents Swofford from putting forth a clearer proposal as to what the ACC would like to see the championship rule changed to rather than simply stating that it should be up to the individual conference to decide if they want a championship game and up to the conference how it determines the two teams to participate in the championship should the conference choose to forgo divisions? With this laissez faire approach, is it any wonder the Big Ten and the SEC somehow got the notion that what a conference might do with such an open-ended proposal is adopt something that was so totally unlike what the others do that they were uncomfortable passing it? My gut instinct tells me Delany saw this initiative as a possible way to get ND which plays 5 ACC games annually somehow qualified for the ACC Championship game. We all know ACC teams would never allow that to happen and simple word crafting such as, "in order for a team to participate in the league championship game, they must play the same number of conference games as everyone else in the league" might have resulted in a more favorable view of the change, but somehow Swofford seemed more determine to be vague about, even to the point of saying over and over and over again that the ACC probably wouldn't even change a thing. To me, I have to ask if Swofford truly cared about getting the change at all because he knew the majority, if not all, of the Coastal teams (the programs he wants to cater to) were fine with everything as is, since there have been several times that teams have wanted to see the structure revisited or at the very least divisions altered and each time it seems to leak out there is an 8-6 split with the majority in favor of no change. I wonder if in order to placate the minority who want some kind of change he co-sponsored the rule change but never truly put up much of a fight to get the rule passed, which in turn gave him cover with the minority. In the meantime, valuable TV asset games like Clemson vs Miami, Clemson vs VT, and FSU vs VT are not being played enough. Even in assuming that in a 3-5-5 non-division schedule set-up Miami would not have Clemson as one of their three annual games, and VT would would not have either FSU or Clemson as an annual opponent - even so over a twelve year period those three games would each be played six times instead of the current two times. Think about that - for a league STARVING for marquee TV games, the conference does nothing to enhance it's long-term stability by providing TV with conference games they know will increase the TV contract's value. In this instance, the league is fortunate to have the ND deal and the SEC out-of-conference games they schedule (and I am not referring to either the UGA-GT or Clemson-South Carolina games since they are rarely over 3 million viewer type games). From 2013 through the middle of this 2018 season, the ACC has had 30 games have 5 million plus viewers. Five of those games were the ACC Championship game. Four of those games were ND games at the ACC home venue. Ten of those games were OCC games played at the ACC home venue or a one-off game played at a neutral site. Of those 10, one of them was Ohio State @ VT and the other nine were games against the SEC. The remaining 11 were ACC regular season conference games: 2016 - UL vs Clem - 9.294 million viewers 2014 - FSU vs Miami - 8.740 million viewers 2013 - Miami vs FSU - 8.350 million viewers 2015 - FSU vs Clem - 7.563 million viewers 2014 - Clem vs FSU - 7.340 million viewers 2016 - FSU vs UL - 6.216 million viewers 2013 - FSU vs Clem - 5.680 million viewers [B][I]2018 - VT vs FSU - 5.576 million viewers[/I][/B] 2016 - FSU vs Miami - 5.540 million viewers 2016 - Clem vs FSU - 5.380 million viewers 2017 - Clem vs UL - 5.206 million viewers As we can see annual games like FSU vs Clemson and FSU vs Miami tend to draw large numbers on a regular basis. The annual VT vs Miami tends not to draw the larger numbers most likely due to neither operating at the level they once did and that makes them upset prone against the other good but not great Coastal teams. The last Clemson vs VT regular season game in 2017 drew 4.69 million viewers which is great (I used the arbitrary 5 million viewers to limit the number of games I had to type above ;) ) but the last Miami vs Clemson regular season game in 2016 only drew 2.6 million viewers. This points out another problem with having these games spread out so far apart. The chances of them both being good in those particular two years out of twelve that they play in the regular season are not great. Anyway, end of long rant. Cheers, Neil [/QUOTE]

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