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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 276929, member: 1145"] More logical, yes. But far from ideal, especially for a conference like the ACC. The SEC's ideal East/West divisions are now ruined by having Missouri, a state west of the Mississippi River, be in the East division. If we could eliminate football divisions in the ACC, we could solve many issues. First, there would be no more worry from any angle about the 4 NC schools in the same division. That alone would ease all kinds of talks about scheduling changes. Right now, if you try to make any change, say to have GT play FSU annually or have VT play Maryland or Clemson annually, talk immediately goes to how that will affect all members of each school's division, and whether it might inadvertently help the NC schools. With divisions, all are directly affected by a change in division - all division members play each other annually. If we schedule without divisions, then there is much leeway - say, Syracuse getting Pitt, BC, and Miami as annual games does not mean that Pitt, BC, and Miami all must play each other annually. Let's say, for the purposes of this discussion, that the ACC expands to 16. That is not happening without Notre Dame. And more and more I think ND will want Navy as the ACC's 16th member for football, because ND intends to keep Navy as an annual game and making ND-Navy an ACC game will make it much easier for ND to join the ACC and schedule football to maintain its national TV prowess and recruiting. With 16 teams, you are going to play 9 league games. If each school has 6 annual rivals, the remaining 9 teams in the ACC would be divided into 3 groups of 3, which means that it will take 6 years for all schools to play everybody in the league Home-Away. ND's 6 annual rivals I think should be: Navy, BC, Syracuse, Pitt, Miami, and GT. Navy will play its Home games against ND anywhere (Philly, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Dublin), thus facilitating ND's barnstorming needs. BC is the other Catholic school in 1A football, and Boston is a huge ND subway alum TV market. Cuse is the only 1A program in NY, the state with the most ND subway alums (and the ACC and Syracuse would be best served if all Cuse Home games against ND were played in either Yankee Stadium or Giants Stadium, perhaps rotating between the 2). Pitt is ND's 4th or 5th most played rivalry, and western PA is extremely important to ND recruiting. Miami would get ND into FL at least once every other year. GT, which has an old rivalry with ND, would get ND into the very heart of the South, and in the region's 2nd most important state for recruiting, every other year. That scheduling would be good for ND, allowing it to use the ACC's geography to keep conference membership from harming its needs to play nationally. What ND does not need is 1 or 2 NC schools added to its annual rivals. And the 6 I see as ideal for ND annual rivals do not all need to play one another annually. For example, the 6 I would be inclined to think would work best for GT and the ACC are: ND, Miami, FSU, Clemson, UNC (maybe UVA), Dook. I doubt that GT would get those 6 because of needs elsewhere. The 5 that virtually everybody would agree have the best combination of helping ticket sales and garnering national TV audience are ND, FSU, Miami, VT, and Clemson, and no school could or should have 4 of that group as annual rivals. But the point is that the schools that as annual rivals would best enable ND to help ACC football are not going to be the best annual rivals for each other. That being the case, scrap divisions. The 2 teams with the best records play in the Championship Game. Ties are broken by BCS standing (which will remain for seeding of a 4 team playoff). [/QUOTE]

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