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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 5016425, member: 1145"] There used to be a poster here who seemed British in certain phrasings. For some reason, it seems to me now that part of his handle was Neil, and that he always ended a post with Cheers. Anyway, whoever he is, before I ever posted here, he despised me because I was very well known on many ACC boards back to the start of such things at the dawn of the century for saying that the ACC (then 9 members) either would die slowly or else would expand to 12 to have football CCG. In addition, back to then I said that any ACC expansion was doomed to fail to save the league if it added any private school in the north not named Notre Dame. Football wealth and power are not based on winning. They are based on schools having proven, passionate large fan bases. And the odds are that larger state flagship and/or land grant schools have that in spades, if those schools have a meaningful football history or have a top rival that is such a schools and has such a history. ND is the only smaller private college that has that kind of football fan base. Miami seemed to have it for a few years, but once Miami dropped down to teams that routinely were worse than 9 wins, the fan base no longer existed. SC is a very large private school (48 K students) but even it loses much of its TV fan base anytime its record is worse than about 8-4. But the ACC refused to learn any of those lessons because it was focused on that damned basketball tournament, and then with its basketball focus the ACC also decided that the BE doubly proved that if a league had great basketball for both regular season and tournament play, it could be very successful and fully healthy in football with a bunch of private schools and smaller more elite state schools. They were[B] DEAD Wrong[/B]! The ACC's only chance, assuming ND would remain ND and have no concern except doing what it wanted for itself until it had lost all options and then whoring to the highest bidder) was for the ACC to go to 12 when it added FSU as #9. It then needed immediately to add Miami (then still at its peak for TV numbers), SoCar (which then wanted back in the ACC, which would have kept the SEC out of the Carolinas, and always been a close #3 in the ACC in football average attendance), and VT. That 12 team ACC across the 1990s would have shored up the league way beyond what it was when it finally went to 12 a decade too late. And its basketball focus would have remained within a nice, tight geography of contiguous states. That 12 team league then could have expanded northwest later, starting The Backyard Brawl (Pitt and WVU) and then Louisville and Cincy (the Bearcats are the Cards most played rivals in both revenue sports). Could those 12, 14, or 16 member ACCs have gotten as much money as the BT or SEC? No. But it would have had such a nice, powerful football presence in and near so many football loving TV audiences and near so much football talent that it would have been largely impregnable. All of New England is absolute for D1 CFB, and New York state is as about as bad, as is most of eastern PA. If the BT is really smart, it will jettison Rutgers and use that slot to bring in a school worth having at least by being in a much better geography for CFB. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?