Really good, comprehensive look at current ACC scenario

[FreakTalksAboutSU]

Goes through a long list of what this really means for the ACC. He's an ACC guy, but not really spun...seems to capture many of the pros and cons through a somewhat neutral viewpoint...

A few, and the link to all 45 below:

1. I was shocked by this news. I thought the major conference realignment moves were over.
2. I didn’t expect additional realignment among the Power 5 conferences until the end of the new upcoming four-team playoff contract (12 years beginning in 2014).
3. I am shocked the Big Ten expands again so soon.
4. I am shocked invitations go to Maryland and Rutgers. Maryland and Rutgers are exceptional academic institutions, provide access to valuable television real-estate and do nothing to further the Big Ten brand. Taken together, they detract from the Big Ten brand.
5. Maryland and Rutgers make the Big Ten weaker athletically, blur the conference’s once clear identity, and devalue existing league rivalries.
6. By adding Maryland and Rutgers does the Big Ten now “own” Baltimore, D.C. and New Jersey? Does it own them the way the Big 12 owns Dallas via the University of Texas or the way the SEC owns Atlanta through the University of Georgia? No way. Even with all the tens of thousands of graduates of other Big Ten schools in those areas, will they be able to exert enough pressure for cable companies there to carry BTN on basic cable where the big money resides?
7. Thinking Rutgers gives the Big Ten leverage to pressure New York City cable companies to carry the Big Ten Network on basic cable is laughable.
8. Does the Big Ten Network exist to serve the Big Ten Conference or does the Big Ten Conference exist to serve the Big Ten Network?
9. Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney said as recently as the Summer of 2012 that he and his league weren’t interested in further expansion. Then the ACC netted Notre Dame as a partial member and Delaney saw his great white whale, the only missing piece of his legacy, swim away to the horizon forever to escape his capture. Did Delany invite Maryland and Rutgers to retire with a realignment win instead of a loss? Is he moving his league into the Mid-Atlantic and East to spite the ACC for swiping the Irish from him? Delaney’s brilliant although this move seems rash and short-sighted.
10. If the ACC had to lose Maryland to gain Notre Dame as a partial member now, and hopefully a full member down the road, that’s a trade-off you risk every day.

Read the rest here:
http://dev.chuckoliver.net/2012/11/what-maryland-leaving-the-acc-does-and-doesnt-mean/