Panther247 Board

Unless Steve could have built Pitt a campus in Manhattan, there is little that could have been done.

Nordenberg is surely involved. He's very involved in conference matters. But Pitt was burned two years ago by the Big Ten and turned down the B12 just over a year ago. Not sure what those phone calls would accomplish right now, but I'd believe he constantly keeps up with his contacts. Remember, he has ties to Wisconsin, but the B10 clearly is not interested in Pitt.

Hoopies to ACC: 0%. No one is moving to the ACC at this point from the other conferences. Hoopies moving would be essentially swapping even (or slightly less) money and possibly decreased stability for geography. Plus they have tangled arrangements with the B12 paying off their BE exit fee along with a grant of rights.

If the ACC adds Louisville, and that's who my money is on right now, they're better off than they were with Maryland. Period. This death of the ACC stuff is nonsense. The ACC is playing by different rules than the Big 10. The Big 10 is worried about their network and getting it in as many homes as possible. The ACC doesn't have a network and, to the best of my knowledge, isn't developing one. The ACC needs to get the best teams that they can get for ESPN. Louisville is, and probably will continue to be as long as they have Charlie Strong, a top 25 football program and is currently the number 2 basketball team in the country. If Florida State and Clemson were mostly content before when Maryland was here, they'll be doing cartwheels about Louisville. Plus, Louisville creates another link to the SEC due to their rivalry with Kentucky along with Florida-Florida State, Georgia-Georgia Tech, and South Carolina-Clemson. Oh, and by the way, adding Louisville will allow the ACC to redo the TV deal that some insisted they got screwed on. Just settle down.

This death of the ACC stuff is perfectly logical.

THERE WILL NOT BE FIVE POWER CONFERENCES!! Get that through to your brain. The ACC's bowl situation WITH MARYLAND and a partner in ND was still garbage compared to the big boys.

If one major conference has to go then who will it be? Only one answer makes any sense at all.

BUT .. the remaining schools will form some decent league and continue playing football. The big boys don't want to get rid of Pitt and the other schools. They need the TV ratings and the markets. Pitt will just have to be the best of the worst to win a national title. We're about to be mid-majored .. unless we are extended an invitation by some miracle. Let's hope the Big 12 adds an eastern wing.

There is no way to know if there will be 5, 4, or 3 power conferences at this point. A lot is going to happen over the next decade. Neither the B12 or ACC are safe. The contract bowl issue is a red herring among fans. That's peanuts and the Orange is still with the ACC. ESPN and Fox are going to have a say too.

Louisville can't cut it academically to be invited to the ACC. Louisville only prayer is the B12 .
I doubt the ACC will be in a hurry to invite another school with Md departure the piece of the pie just got bigger for everyone else in the ACC.
If ESPN can make it profitable to add UCONN they would be next into the ACC. Remember ESPN is headquartered in Bristal Conn.

The ACC isn't the ACC anymore. Academics don't matter now. Uconn is still more attractive but BC has a presence up there already. Lville makes sense. UConn and Lville makes the most sense. Why leave anyone behind? In fact, just add all the usual suspects. If there isn't a pie then it doesn't matter how many are there to eat it.

In standing by & doing nothing, which resulted in the B1G poaching a school from the only conference which is all-in with them, ESPN has already had their say. They plan on having 1st tier rights to major college football & basketball & the heck with everything else.

Academics matter to the ACC , they took great pride when adding Pitt and Syracuse that the academic overall average exceeded the Big 10. Nebraska actually lowered the academic standards in the b10.
BC does not bring TV ratings, UCONN along with Syracuse have a shot to bring TV ratings in NY, more so than Rutgers. Alone Syracuse can't deliver the ratings but with UCONN they could.

Then again, they took FSU.

Institutional fit matters, to the point where it is still practical. I don't know if that is still the case when you are dropping charter members.

IF the ACC leadership is still concerned about academics then this conference is surely doomed. D1 CFB is all about the benjamins and academics do not matter. None of these conference raids were made for academics. Perhaps thats the window dressing they'd like you to believe but this has always been and always will be about money.

Oh and one other thing, the quality of the program matters more than geographical location. Look at the SEC. What big market teams are in the SEC and yet they will name their price on the next contract. THe quality of the product still matters.

THe ACC has vt to cover the market MD supposedly delivers. They need to replace the crappy MD program with one on the rise and that is clearly Ville. That will raise the profie of the ACC far more than any other school and ultimately deliver the TV market.

Oh and I read this elsewhere but this makes some sense. THe fat ten didnt make their move until ND made theirs. This recent Fat ten move could be more about trying to fracture the ACC and get ND to join the Fat ten long term. Makes as much sense as delivering the Dc market

To play devils advocate, I would say when you collect the flagships of entire states, it's equivalent to a large metro market, particularly when there are few competing professional franchises. The Big Ten has shown that quality doesn't matter at all (MD and RU) if you have the right territory, but quality is important (Nebraska) when you don't. We'll see soon enough the thinking of the ACC.

I have no clue where this notion that there has to be four super-conferences comes from. Absolutely none. Dennis Dodd has rewritten the same article probably ten times over the last 30 months how the end is near, and it hasn't happened yet. Going to 16 schools is a HUGE leap. This whole thing is media driven because the Andy Katz's, Joe Schaad's, etc of the world get hard over this stuff. There's never been any evidence to any conference expanding to 16 schools, other than the Pac-12's flirtation with it a few years ago, which ended up failing. If the Big Ten wanted to go to 16, why not just do it now and be done with it? Why wait? The answer is because there are a ton of logistics that need to be worked out to make such a move. Like it or not, this is A LOT bigger than television contracts. The SEC has said they're comfortable at 14 schools, the Big 12 has said they're comfortable at 10 schools, and the Pac-12 has said they're comfortable at 12 schools. Why can't we just accept that the Big 10 made one, isolated move to expand the footprint of their network and that's it? Why in the world does everything have to turn to armageddon? The ACC will add another school, likely either Louisville or UCONN, and all will be back to normal.

And I don't buy this crap about TV markets. It's such a cop out. Yest it's important for the Big Ten because of their network. I don't think it makes a damn bit of difference for anybody else. If it did, then the Big East was set for life. I mean hell, they had New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, DC, etc. How could they go wrong? I'll tell you how, because the product sucked. Your product always comes first. And if the ACC bring on UCONN out of this ridiculous notion that it will give us the New York market, or whatever the hell they're thinking, then they deserve everything they get. You bring on Louisville, you play good football, and everything will take care of itself. There will be a lot more people in New York that will watch Louisville vs Florida State than Rutgers vs Indiana. You can take that to the bank. And with technological advances like ESPN3 and the Watch ESPN App, it is becoming easier and easier and easier to watch whatever game that you want regardless of where you are.