Post by Ken D on May 29, 2012 9:20:42 GMT -5
Faced with a choice between golf and fantasizing, I picked the latter as a way to relax over the Memorial Day weekend. With all the hullabaloo over football realignment, the thought occurred to me that the ACC kinda put all this in motion in 2005 when it raided the Big East. There has been a lot of criticism, mostly directed at John Swofford, about how that has affected the ACC.
But what might have happened if the ACC had not been proactive in expansion? What might the college football landscape look like today? Here is my fantasy.
It's 2005. Nebraska is growing increasingly annoyed with Texas' dominance of the Big XII, which has relegated it to the middle of the pack competitively, and playing second fiddle financially. Tom Osborne has a better idea. Quietly, he approaches his good friend Joe Paterno. You don't really fit in the Big Ten, he argues. And what's up with an 11 team league called the Big Ten anyway? Here's what I propose.
I'm sure, Tom says, that 5 northern schools of the Big XII (all but Colorado) could be persuaded to form a new conference. And I think if you and I take this to the Notre Dame AD and get him on board, we could make this a premier league. With the 3 of us committed to this, I believe Pitt, West Virginia and Virginia Tech would leave the Big East and join us in a heartbeat. And for the clincher, I'd love to add Duke and UNC from the ACC to make it a 12 team league that stretches from the Prairie to the Atlantic coast.
The networks would be wetting their pants hoping we'll sign on with them. Better yet, maybe we could form our own network. We could be the best conference in both football and basketball. Imagine Kansas, UNC and Duke all playing hoops in the same conference. The sky's the limit!
That's my fantasy. What other dominoes do you suppose would have fallen if that had happened? What would have become of the ACC?
But what might have happened if the ACC had not been proactive in expansion? What might the college football landscape look like today? Here is my fantasy.
It's 2005. Nebraska is growing increasingly annoyed with Texas' dominance of the Big XII, which has relegated it to the middle of the pack competitively, and playing second fiddle financially. Tom Osborne has a better idea. Quietly, he approaches his good friend Joe Paterno. You don't really fit in the Big Ten, he argues. And what's up with an 11 team league called the Big Ten anyway? Here's what I propose.
I'm sure, Tom says, that 5 northern schools of the Big XII (all but Colorado) could be persuaded to form a new conference. And I think if you and I take this to the Notre Dame AD and get him on board, we could make this a premier league. With the 3 of us committed to this, I believe Pitt, West Virginia and Virginia Tech would leave the Big East and join us in a heartbeat. And for the clincher, I'd love to add Duke and UNC from the ACC to make it a 12 team league that stretches from the Prairie to the Atlantic coast.
The networks would be wetting their pants hoping we'll sign on with them. Better yet, maybe we could form our own network. We could be the best conference in both football and basketball. Imagine Kansas, UNC and Duke all playing hoops in the same conference. The sky's the limit!
That's my fantasy. What other dominoes do you suppose would have fallen if that had happened? What would have become of the ACC?