Syracuse and Pittsburgh are on their way to the ACC, meaning they’re jumping from one abysmal college football conference (Big East) to one very mediocre college football conference. They’re also leaving the hoops super-conference (which looks like it’s about to implode) to what will be far and away the strongest hoops conference in the nation.
I’m sorry about the headline. Let me clarify.
I mentioned Rutgers as Connecticut’s partner. Every school seems to need a partner to move with; in order to keep the total number of teams in the league even.
Rutgers brings nothing to the table in either football or basketball; they’re just a partner team. What I meant to say was wow, UConn joining Duke and North Carolina in the ACC! What a monster basketball conference this will be and UConn is aggressively trying to get there.
UConn looks to escape a Big East that could fall apart. Remember, this is about the size of television markets, and the money that brings in during football broadcasts…and pretty much nothing else. Although basketball and football seem to look like they’re getting relatively equal media coverage, they’re actually a world apart financially. Basketball makes most of it’s revenue in March, whereas football makes money throughout the entire season.
The Huskies would get to stay in a BCS conference and still be competitive in both sports. And by both sports, I mean the two sports that anyone actually cares about.
The ACC wins yet again because it gets additional presence in the New York City market. With Syracuse already in hand and Rutgers on the way, the ACC would be the conference most associated with the Tri-State area. Again I said Rutgers doesn’t bring anything to the table in sports, but they certainly do in market and revenue share!
New York City isn’t a big college sports town, but it’s also the #1 largest market, so the ACC (instead of the Big East) owning this town in basketball is a tremendous “get.” No one owns it in football, so they can make inroads here.
And let’s talk hardwood: UNC, Duke, Syracuse, UConn and Pitt. That would likely make it to so the ACC has at least two teams in the top five, three in the top ten of the polls pretty much incessantly. They would have the three most recent champions, and between UNC, Duke, NC State, Maryland, Syracuse and UConn: 16 NCAA tournament championships.
The ACC is positioning itself to be the fourth and final superconference (Pac-16, Big-16 and SEC). Boston College would get a new natural rival in UConn, making New England truly ACC country. Syracuse and Pitt have already expanded the league’s Mid-Atlantic state dominion.
Now the ACC will own the entire Bos-Was urban corridor in addition to their influence in the southeast.
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