(Almost wrote third, but the Big 12 doesn't quite reach the west coast, stopping in Arizona and Utah).

After much hullabaloo, looks like Stanford, Cal, and SMU have finally pried their way into the ACC.

Next realignment question: Washington State and Oregon State to the Mountain West or to the American?

JGibson <james.m.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
> (Almost wrote third, but the Big 12 doesn't quite reach the west coast,
> stopping in Arizona and Utah).
>
> After much hullabaloo, looks like Stanford, Cal, and SMU have finally
> pried their way into the ACC.
>
> Next realignment question: Washington State and Oregon State to the
> Mountain West or to the American?
>

Basically the ACC is bulking up so when FSU and Clemson and maybe a couple
other schools bolt, they won’t be left with a four team rump like happened
to the PAC-12.

SMU bought their way in by agreeing to forgo conference revenue
distributions for seven years.

--
“I usually skip over your posts because of your disguistng, contrarian,
liberal personality.” — Altie

xyzzy <xyzzy.dude@gmail.com> wrote:
> JGibson <james.m.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> (Almost wrote third, but the Big 12 doesn't quite reach the west coast,
>> stopping in Arizona and Utah).
>>
>> After much hullabaloo, looks like Stanford, Cal, and SMU have finally
>> pried their way into the ACC.
>>
>> Next realignment question: Washington State and Oregon State to the
>> Mountain West or to the American?
>>
>
> Basically the ACC is bulking up so when FSU and Clemson and maybe a couple
> other schools bolt, they won’t be left with a four team rump like happened
> to the PAC-12.
>
> SMU bought their way in by agreeing to forgo conference revenue
> distributions for seven years.
>

Harsh assessment

https://archive.ph/2023.09.01-162136/https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article278859199.html?fbclid=IwAR1vyyUJwu0yYfhd-Cn9GneMLq9k_ePBlRqwdiTO2bhZEXfb4SRd6kEwLWM_aem_AYhPZUH7eJ_QU2DlXwKj0NIHkhgpUvb-1mX2J5zBqetKkXsSY0NkRjAWRB6laZVS83A&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Some quotes:

Rather than wait, from a position of relative strength, to see if the
college-athletics bubble burst and made the ACC’s long-term television deal
more attractive to Clemson and Florida State, the other members of the
league panicked and assured their eventual exit, and North Carolina’s as
well.
By planning for disaster, in the most tortured and short-sighted way
possible, they ensured it.

[…]

The ACC actually found a way to get worse in football without Dabo Swinney
going walkabout in the Outback or something. The three new schools have
combined for 30 wins the past two seasons; SMU’s most famous accomplishment
is one of the worst scandals in the history of college athletics, although
in today’s vernacular, they basically got the death penalty for having an
NIL collective.

Oh, and men’s basketball, what the ACC was built on … it’s almost too
painful to consider. Five teams in the NCAA tournament is going to become
the norm – an aspiration! – when you fold these three basketball programs
into the ACC’s collective strength of schedule. This is felony crime
against the NET.

And all for tip money. Hundreds of millions of dollars sounds impressive in
a press release but the additional revenue the ACC will take from ESPN and
distribute to the existing schools instead of the new ones – SMU is buying
admission to a club that would never have it otherwise, and Stanford and
debt-ridden Cal aren’t far behind – doesn’t come even an eighth of the way
to closing the revenue gap with the SEC and the Big Ten. The ACC sold its
birthright for a mess of pottage.

potential future departure of Clemson and Florida State and UNC? Florida
State started this playing a losing hand and somehow the rest of the ACC
folded. (“Did you have it, kid?” “Sorry, John. I don’t remember.”) Thanks
to the grant of rights, the ACC had through about 2030 or so before anyone
could realistically depart, and even if they could, the state of the TV
rights market now doesn’t incentivize the Big Ten or SEC to expand, at
least with valuable properties that would command additional money.
Pushing through this expansion over their objections will certainly ensure
their departures, and perhaps even hasten them, one way or another. You’d
like to think someone at the ACC checked to make sure adding these teams
doesn’t somehow weaken the grant of rights, but the lawyering will only
intensify.
There was no reason to act now, to prepare for something that might happen
in seven years, just because the Big 12 and Big Ten picked over the
Pac-12’s bones. That’s something that could be addressed if and when it
happened, and almost certainly with a better menu of interested schools to
choose from than these leftovers no one else wanted. It was a late-night
deal at Food Lion: Buy one irrelevant football program, get two

[…]

suddenly obsessed with preparing for an exodus of its most valued members
that by its own actions went from hypothetical to inevitable, has added
three schools that bring nothing to the table in football or men’s
basketball and are irrelevant in their own markets. Instead of booting
Boston College from the league — that would have been the smart move! — the
ACC tripled down.
So afraid of being left behind, 12 members of the ACC did the one thing
that would assure they will be.

--
“I usually skip over your posts because of your disguistng, contrarian,
liberal personality.” — Altie

Line of the day so far, from Cal's "NIL director":

"Orange Bowl, here we come!"

Never mind that it's going to take a struggle just to be bowl eligible; Cal doesn't join the ACC until next year, at which time the Orange Bowl loses its automatic ACC berth as it will be a quarter-final (when it's not a semi-final) in the CFP playoffs.

And the next realignment question should be, which schools are now going to leave the ACC?

On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 12:30:59 PM UTC-4, xyzzy wrote:

>
> suddenly obsessed with preparing for an exodus of its most valued members
> that by its own actions went from hypothetical to inevitable, has added
> three schools that bring nothing to the table in football or men’s
> basketball and are irrelevant in their own markets. Instead of booting
> Boston College from the league — that would have been the smart move! — the
> ACC tripled down.
> So afraid of being left behind, 12 members of the ACC did the one thing
> that would assure they will be.

If you view this based on what is rumored to have happened with the Pac-12, it makes sense from those members' standpoint. Apparently, the Pac-12 died after rejecting the merger with the Big 12, which was seemingly led by the Pac-12's marquee value school in USC. Then, USC left anyway. With Clemson and FSU already threatening to leave before even considering the additions of Cal and Stanford, the non-Clemson, FSU, and UNC schools probably figure those schools are out anyway. I'm not sure the "exodus of its most valued members" is as hypothetical as this paragraph seems to suggest.

JGibson <james.m.gibson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, September 1, 2023 at 12:30:59 PM UTC-4, xyzzy wrote:
>
>>
>> suddenly obsessed with preparing for an exodus of its most valued members
>> that by its own actions went from hypothetical to inevitable, has added
>> three schools that bring nothing to the table in football or men’s
>> basketball and are irrelevant in their own markets. Instead of booting
>> Boston College from the league — that would have been the smart move! — the
>> ACC tripled down.
>> So afraid of being left behind, 12 members of the ACC did the one thing
>> that would assure they will be.
>
> If you view this based on what is rumored to have happened with the
> Pac-12, it makes sense from those members' standpoint. Apparently, the
> Pac-12 died after rejecting the merger with the Big 12, which was
> seemingly led by the Pac-12's marquee value school in USC. Then, USC
> left anyway. With Clemson and FSU already threatening to leave before
> even considering the additions of Cal and Stanford, the non-Clemson, FSU,
> and UNC schools probably figure those schools are out anyway. I'm not
> sure the "exodus of its most valued members" is as hypothetical as this
> paragraph seems to suggest.

That’s an excellent point.

--
“I usually skip over your posts because of your disguistng, contrarian,
liberal personality.” — Altie