EastStang wrote:Apparently the ACC has now sued Clemson in NC. It may take 9 years for all of these cross firing lawsuits to resolve themselves. The ACC started by quoting the Clemson president's remarks when asked by he signed the GOR. It was about stability and a great deal. It also pointed out Clemson signed the thing 3 times. Another point, several articles have pointed out that the SEC doesn't want Clemson or FSU, they have resources in South Carolina and Florida and don't need more. However, they don't have any schools in NC or VA. Another rumor is that Clemson, FSU, UVA, UNC, NC State, VT, and Miami would form a breakaway conference leaving the BE leftovers, Wake, Duke, GT, SMU, Cal and Stanford behind. To me the leftovers would have more attraction nationally, to a network than a regional conference of 8 schools. However, the price tag for such a exit would be steep on the defectors. I wonder what WVU would do, if offered ACC membership.
Let me run down some things about the ACC.
First, I naturally have go to UNC and Dook. That is easily the most important and valuable rivalry in basketball. It cannot equal the most valuable in football.l., but it is worth a whole lot more than most SEC and almost all BT football games. UNC is not going to want to split from Dook, and not just because of sports )(all sports are a super hot rivalry). UNC Dook as universities San research centers are more tied together than any 2 universities in the country.
Second, the ACC makes more money for ESPN than does the SEC. How? The ESPN deal screws the ACC, which gets paid a fraction per the number of TV viewers for ACC games that it pays for viewers of SEC games. That means that the ACC indeed is much more valuable than the Pac was and that the Big XII ever could be without Texas. That means ion the ACC were free of the onerous ESPN contract, then it could sign a new deal elsewhere and get money much closer to the SEC and BT. That plus giving some revenue based on TV drawing power could make the ACC permanently stable and able to compete in all things.
Third, I think that would take an outside investor buying into ESPN and wanting the ACC (say, Bezos for Amazon). Such a person I assume would want first to trim the ASCC of its dad weight in terms of TV viewers for football (BC and Wake are obvious, perhaps Syracuse also), and then also make the ACC larger to capture new viewers - AZ schools, more schools in TX, maybe Cincinnati, etc.
But I have no doubt that Sec and BT both want ACC as dead as the Pac, and right now ESPN is all behind that death just like Fox.