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A column is today's Washington Post throws eclipse-level shade at ACC football --

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/09/30/acc-football-struggles-/

The solution to their football irrelevance? Get them Texas exposure to boost recruiting . The SEC knew exposure to Texas recruits was important.

If I recall correctly, recently someone predicted on this board that SMU and Houston are headed to the ACC. Houston, no way. They have a comfy spot in the Big 12 and the academic snobs in the ACC wouldn't want them. SMU? Another story. Football team making progress, basketball has shown it can be competitive (and if it's not a post-season team this year there will be no excuse for keeping Doh, I mean Jank), and the $1.5 billion capital campaign will polish the academic image.

Conference has 14 teams, so a bump to 16 isn't a stretch. Question is, "Who does SMU pair up with?"

FL State and Miami won't want another FL school. Memphis has strong FB and BB programs, but may run into academic snobs and it's a mid-size TV market. Tulane checks the academic box and it's TV market is almost identical in size to Memphis, but the New Orleans area is better recruiting territory than the Memphis area and who doesn't want regular road trips to NOLA. Rice checks the academic box big time and will give ACC schools more TX exposure, but are they interested in making the commitment to their program a P5 conference would require?

Perhaps the best option is Army for football only. Its program is rolling now, but can be hit or miss. Best reason to grab them is the global fan base.

Discuss among yourselves.

Like this thought.

I like this thought as well. At least some people around here have to be familiar with Feinstein, but he loves to be a contrarian and to throw shade, especially when it's deserved.

Opening up Texas recruiting pipelines to the ACC should be a priority for the conference.

Maybe you are right but man it sure would be nice if we had a partner in Texas. If Rice had invested in their football program that surely would help.

If we are talking about consistent strength and such, Memphis and SMU makes sense but yeah Memphis doesn't have the economic profile but maybe they can put commitments in place to do it.

Despite the academic question, I would imagine ACC would like Memphis FB and especially MBB?

Good points re: Memphis.

I may have overthought this -- after all, ACC has Louisville, which is in the same academic ballpark as Memphis.

There's the rumor that big 12 is going to bulk up by grabbing Memphis, Boise State, CO State, and San Diego State. The ACC would be a much better match for Memphis -- they would save a fortune in travel costs to start, and some of the basketball match-ups would be must see TV.

max the wonder dog wrote:Good points re: Memphis.

I may have overthought this -- after all, ACC has Louisville, which is in the same academic ballpark as Memphis.

There's the rumor that big 12 is going to bulk up by grabbing Memphis, Boise State, CO State, and San Diego State. The ACC would be a much better match for Memphis -- they would save a fortune in travel costs to start, and some of the basketball match-ups would be must see TV.

The ACC did indeed give up all pretension to academic snootiness with Louisville.

I wish KU football had achieved some relevance the way UK football has. Taking the premier flagship basketball program out of the leftover “Big” XII and getting a foothold in Texas with SMU would have a lot of appeal to the ACC.

Army brings zero real eyeballs and is irrelevant.

A good travel partner for SMU should this pipe dream ever come to fruition would be TCU.

The Big 12 will eventually implode as other teams will likely leave the conference if another opportunity arose. Having the SMU-TCU tandem would give the ACC a good foothold in Texas and allow for easier scheduling for basketball travel. Teams could travel to Texas and play both teams on a three or four day trip.

Having said that, that is the last time that I will help TCU.

Caballo wrote:A good travel partner for SMU should this pipe dream ever come to fruition would be TCU.

The Big 12 will eventually implode as other teams will likely leave the conference if another opportunity arose. Having the SMU-TCU tandem would give the ACC a good foothold in Texas and allow for easier scheduling for basketball travel. Teams could travel to Texas and play both teams on a three or four day trip.

Having said that, that is the last time that I will help TCU.

Would TCU even consider the ACC? If they did, you would think WVU would make more sense. Maybe thats what aresco is waiting for is to see ACC poach then Big10 on northern schools leaving Big12 a shell to where we the AAC might be back in power again.

FWIW, I love to see SMU and TCU in the ACC but I think that's a pipe dream.

I would like to see TCU in Div. III

I’d love us in ACC. They respect private schools. As far as the second team, don’t be surprised if it’s WVU. Then Big XII gets further destabilized.

EastStang wrote:I’d love us in ACC. They respect private schools. As far as the second team, don’t be surprised if it’s WVU. Then Big XII gets further destabilized.

Just my opinion, but it wouldn't be TCU and it wouldn't be WVU as a partner team if it did happen. It would have to be somebody that brings a new market. ACC $ will definitely exceed new "Big" XII money, so it could be Houston actually, particularly with their bball history and current status.

We have to win enough that we fill in the east side of the stadium before anyone is going to give us a look. And we are still a couple of years of winning football away from that happening. If we can manage to win out through UCF, we might start filling things up for that game, and maybe that will get some attention. But really we need to beat Cincy and finish the year top 15, and year into next year as top 25 for us to start getting proper attention.

We barely got a mention in any of the post Week 5 articles in The Athletic. Three straight seasons of 5-0 is really impressive and we aren't getting any press for it. I don't think we will even be top 25 this week.

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I’m not sure that is right. Yes, it would be great if we had a packed house every week (or even a half packed house on our side) but I believe conference realignment is more dependent on potential, location/university fit and improvement in TV coverage/contract. We have a very nice story to tell if you look at all those - with potential to the ACC. I watched the Virginia-Miami game and the stadium was pretty darn empty. Our 30K stadium will be packed, even in the south end zone, if we play Clemson at Ford.