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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 5337806, member: 1145"] Number of people living in any space has next to nothing to do with schools having larger and passionate CFB fan bases. Flagships and Land Grant schools explain why ;eagles like the SEC and BT have all the advantages, but the rest of the explanation lies in the fact that different regions of the US are quite different in how they follow sports. The northeast has always been far more focused on Pro Sports than any other region. There is no hint that that can ever change. That means that you will find what should be obvious to all: a heavily populated region. with just 1 university that a large football fan base. In an age of national broadcasts, you is simply cannot have even a couple schools in. that region, unless one of them is that 1 with huge fan base, and get TV numbers needed to compete with all the passionate fans of so many schools in rote Midwest and South. That is what JoePa was forced to face, which is when he gave up his silly Eastern League idea. He realized that even with no Big East (which was founded for basketball only), and even if somehow he could get Maryland to join, that proposed Eastern League never could sustain solid national TV numbers. So PSU always would be behind BT teams in TV revenue. He also then looked at the ACC and saw that MD had become fully northeastern in that sense and VA and NC were anything but classically SZouthertn - as both had become states in which CBB was watched in numbers equal top CFB and that neither had anything close to a strong Friday Night Lights HS football culture. So for JoePa, knowing that football is KING, the only move PSU should make would be to the BT. And he wooed the BT hard, even accepting the public insult when the BT offer was temporarly retracted publicly, while he wooed some more. Even 10 yers ago, most PSU fans talked rather openly about how the BT fans and even journalists had never really accepted PSU. They were right. The reason is that deeply ingrained in there midwestern CFB mind, almost as much as in the Southern CFB mind, northeastern CFB. equals poor quality not worth watching and no fans. Even 100K in Beaver Stadium week after week really could not alter their biases. All that, including the NC and VA problems, is what the ACC faces. WE do not have enough state flagships and/or Land Grants. We do have half nearly enough schools with stadiums at least 80K seats. We do not have enough schools located in states with great HS FB and a strong HS football culture. WE do have too many private schools. [/QUOTE]

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