MsTechAnalysis
Jolly Good Fellow
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2002
- Messages
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Having gone to Miami's Board to get a sense of what they think ... this post is indicative of what they are saying and is very eye opening:
Is this all about the “old ACC” retaining control?
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Until Tuesday’s vote, it looked as if the Carolina stranglehold on the ACC would finally be broken when the ACC expanded to 12 teams. Fans from Georgia Tech and three other schools were pushing expansion of ANY three teams, just because they were so sick of being pushed around by Duke and having football take a back seat to basketball.
So where are we now? The ACC has expanded to only 11 teams rather than 12. Instead of adding three teams outside of the mid-Atlantic region, they have added one, and cancelled it out by adding another Virginia team.
Let’s step back and look at the facts. Regardless of their differing public stances and their leaked supposed actual views, the North Carolina 4 and Virginia have clearly acted in concert to steer this expansion exactly the way they want it to go.
First Duke and UNC were the curmudgeons, with Virginia all eager for expansion and NCSU supposedly being the most pro-expansion of anyone except FSU. But then things started to get funny. Virginia started claiming its hands were tied and voting no to things. But this didn’t kill expansion dead because Duke and UNC conveniently took their turns at the plate and pushed along the idea of Miami, BC, and SU. Having placated FSU et al by agreeing to consider Miami, and placated Miami by agreeing to consider BC and SU, the cabal was now free to take the next step. For this, NCSU was necessary. They had to reveal their true colors and reject Boston College.
So what is the upshot? The ACC is a nine-team conference with four North Carolina schools and Virginia in control. Those schools have never fully identified with the Yankees at Maryland. And Clemson, charter member status notwithstanding, has much more in common with Georgia Tech and FSU than it does with the roundball schools.
The five understand that FSU is restless and not fully content with ACC football. FSU’s position is like ours was in the Big East in the mid-90s. They rode a great wave from 1987-2000, but they knew they had to come crashing back to earth at some point, even if only for a little while.
They saw what happened to the Big East when Miami was down. Its champions weren’t very good and the major bowls resented being stuck with them. Instead of stepping up to fill the void left by Miami, the rest of the Big East took a step back when we most needed them to carry the Big East torch. We got better production from them in the early 90s, when we didn’t need WVU and SU to have top ten seasons, than we did from 1995-98 when we could have used some top ten seasons by somebody. FSU has seen the same problem develop. Maryland was a paper tiger in 2001. Last year, no one in the ACC was even good enough to dethrone a 9-4 FSU. From FSU’s POV, that’s not ideal. If they’re going to be 9-4 occasionally, they would just as soon there be some exciting 11-1 ACC champ to keep the bowls’ interests in the league up. If you’re a BCS bowl committee, what do you think about the ACC? Probably that when FSU is up, you’re happy to have the ACC, but if they have an off year, you’d better watch out.
And FSU made no secret that insurance against hard times meant Miami. Plus, everyone understood the advantage of adding a major U.S. city to the league. So the cabal accepted the necessity of expanding, at least as far as adding Miami went. That did not mean they wanted to turn their conference over to the control of UM + BC + SU + FSU + GT + Clemson + possibly Maryland.
But of course they were too wily to come out in public and say anything like this. They didn’t want to outrage FSU, etc. by frankly admitting that they will simply never give up their majority status in the ACC. They didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with Miami by telling the truth, that it would be a cold day in hell before a team north of Maryland was ever admitted to the ACC.
So they played it like this. Sure, Duke and UNC come off looking like idiots for voting no to expansion, then yes to Miami, BC, and SU, then no to the latter two. NCSU and Virginia likewise look vacillating and inconsistent. Wake Forest was spared the necessity of exposing itself publicly, though I think that everyone associated with FSU, etc. knows where their true loyalties lie.
Virginia Tech will be as loyal to Virginia and the cabal as Virginia has been to them. They know they have far more in common with those five than they do with us, FSU, Maryland, etc.
So when all the smoke has cleared, the upshot is that FSU and Georgia Tech still have as little control over their own scheduling, finances, etc. as they did before.
Boston College and Syracuse were used and played for fools. Some of us thought Virginia Tech was being used, at one point. Keohane, Krzyzewski, Fox, Moeser, Casteen, etc. must have been dying laughing as they read what the rest of the league and the world thought was happening.
Miami was fooled, big time. Shalala believed that Fox was her pal, that people were being straightforward with her, that common sense would prevail, and that of course the ACC, with a television contract coming up for renewal, wouldn’t reject Boston and the NYC area.
FSU was taken advantage of, but they were never as pro-north as we were. What they and Maryland and GT and Clemson chiefly would have gotten out of BC and SU besides TV money and basketball was an end to the cabal’s tyranny. Of course, the cabal knew that too, and it was simply never going to happen.
So what’s the end result? The cabal keeps its majority status. Lucrative Miami is added, pacifying FSU and keeping the football money flowing in. Far less lucrative VT is added, too, but that is all about the cabal retaining power and voting control. A price can’t be put on that. The Yankees are kept out of the conference. Duke and UNC won’t have to worry about Syracuse basketball.
For the cabal, this is win-win. They get everything they wanted and get richer in the process, all while mostly keeping their hands clean. Virginia can claim duress, Duke and UNC can (unconvincingly) whine poverty and the need to keep basketball donors happy, and NCSU can hope people remember their six-week pro expansion façade more than they do the last-minute knife in the back to Boston College. Wake never even had to draw its sword.
For Miami it’s win-lose, with the accent on lose. Yes, we’re still bettering our situation in an absolute sense, but that was a foregone conclusion given the last three years, and the fact that football has blown by and lapped basketball (a decade ago, the money was comparable). We were going to start seeing more money soon regardless of where we landed. So from our point of view, the question was how much better we could do, and how many sacrifices we would have to make to do so. The answers are, Only somewhat better, and Pretty much every sacrifice possible.
We are giving up autonomy, and that is big. The anti-independents are probably right that we are still not ready to go the indy route again, but it is still not 100% impossible that this could becomes feasible at some point in the future. With high-bandwidth communications expected to explode in the next 10-20 years, its possible that every team could have its own “channel” in 2015 – unless they are financially locked in for life to supporting Wake Forest.
We are giving up big financial paydays due to the communistic nature of the ACC revenue-sharing plan. This is not all a bad thing; in fact, it was one of the chief things that drew us to the ACC in the first place. The Big East’s top-heavy plan is great when we’re up, but we need the lows not to be so disastrously low. The problem is that Miami is now bringing simply too much to the table and coming away with too small a share. Without BC and SU, ALL additional TV money will be due solely to Miami and the much smaller influence of Virginia Tech. Yet we will see only 1/11 of that. We can safely assume that over the long run, we will bring in far more than 1/11 of the ACC bowl payouts.
Worst of all is an intangible. We are starting out letting ourselves be used, fooled, and taken advantage of. When you start a relationship that way, it is all but impossible to ever change things.
We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, with the accent on mess. Future generations of Miami leaders will curse the fools who mortgaged our future away. The ACC is thinking long-term, which is why they’re eager to lock Miami up for decades, perhaps forever. Miami is thinking about its next meal (TV contract), without giving any thought to the notion that the football world of 2025 may bear as little resemblance to today’s as today’s does to 1980.
Is this all about the “old ACC” retaining control?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Until Tuesday’s vote, it looked as if the Carolina stranglehold on the ACC would finally be broken when the ACC expanded to 12 teams. Fans from Georgia Tech and three other schools were pushing expansion of ANY three teams, just because they were so sick of being pushed around by Duke and having football take a back seat to basketball.
So where are we now? The ACC has expanded to only 11 teams rather than 12. Instead of adding three teams outside of the mid-Atlantic region, they have added one, and cancelled it out by adding another Virginia team.
Let’s step back and look at the facts. Regardless of their differing public stances and their leaked supposed actual views, the North Carolina 4 and Virginia have clearly acted in concert to steer this expansion exactly the way they want it to go.
First Duke and UNC were the curmudgeons, with Virginia all eager for expansion and NCSU supposedly being the most pro-expansion of anyone except FSU. But then things started to get funny. Virginia started claiming its hands were tied and voting no to things. But this didn’t kill expansion dead because Duke and UNC conveniently took their turns at the plate and pushed along the idea of Miami, BC, and SU. Having placated FSU et al by agreeing to consider Miami, and placated Miami by agreeing to consider BC and SU, the cabal was now free to take the next step. For this, NCSU was necessary. They had to reveal their true colors and reject Boston College.
So what is the upshot? The ACC is a nine-team conference with four North Carolina schools and Virginia in control. Those schools have never fully identified with the Yankees at Maryland. And Clemson, charter member status notwithstanding, has much more in common with Georgia Tech and FSU than it does with the roundball schools.
The five understand that FSU is restless and not fully content with ACC football. FSU’s position is like ours was in the Big East in the mid-90s. They rode a great wave from 1987-2000, but they knew they had to come crashing back to earth at some point, even if only for a little while.
They saw what happened to the Big East when Miami was down. Its champions weren’t very good and the major bowls resented being stuck with them. Instead of stepping up to fill the void left by Miami, the rest of the Big East took a step back when we most needed them to carry the Big East torch. We got better production from them in the early 90s, when we didn’t need WVU and SU to have top ten seasons, than we did from 1995-98 when we could have used some top ten seasons by somebody. FSU has seen the same problem develop. Maryland was a paper tiger in 2001. Last year, no one in the ACC was even good enough to dethrone a 9-4 FSU. From FSU’s POV, that’s not ideal. If they’re going to be 9-4 occasionally, they would just as soon there be some exciting 11-1 ACC champ to keep the bowls’ interests in the league up. If you’re a BCS bowl committee, what do you think about the ACC? Probably that when FSU is up, you’re happy to have the ACC, but if they have an off year, you’d better watch out.
And FSU made no secret that insurance against hard times meant Miami. Plus, everyone understood the advantage of adding a major U.S. city to the league. So the cabal accepted the necessity of expanding, at least as far as adding Miami went. That did not mean they wanted to turn their conference over to the control of UM + BC + SU + FSU + GT + Clemson + possibly Maryland.
But of course they were too wily to come out in public and say anything like this. They didn’t want to outrage FSU, etc. by frankly admitting that they will simply never give up their majority status in the ACC. They didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with Miami by telling the truth, that it would be a cold day in hell before a team north of Maryland was ever admitted to the ACC.
So they played it like this. Sure, Duke and UNC come off looking like idiots for voting no to expansion, then yes to Miami, BC, and SU, then no to the latter two. NCSU and Virginia likewise look vacillating and inconsistent. Wake Forest was spared the necessity of exposing itself publicly, though I think that everyone associated with FSU, etc. knows where their true loyalties lie.
Virginia Tech will be as loyal to Virginia and the cabal as Virginia has been to them. They know they have far more in common with those five than they do with us, FSU, Maryland, etc.
So when all the smoke has cleared, the upshot is that FSU and Georgia Tech still have as little control over their own scheduling, finances, etc. as they did before.
Boston College and Syracuse were used and played for fools. Some of us thought Virginia Tech was being used, at one point. Keohane, Krzyzewski, Fox, Moeser, Casteen, etc. must have been dying laughing as they read what the rest of the league and the world thought was happening.
Miami was fooled, big time. Shalala believed that Fox was her pal, that people were being straightforward with her, that common sense would prevail, and that of course the ACC, with a television contract coming up for renewal, wouldn’t reject Boston and the NYC area.
FSU was taken advantage of, but they were never as pro-north as we were. What they and Maryland and GT and Clemson chiefly would have gotten out of BC and SU besides TV money and basketball was an end to the cabal’s tyranny. Of course, the cabal knew that too, and it was simply never going to happen.
So what’s the end result? The cabal keeps its majority status. Lucrative Miami is added, pacifying FSU and keeping the football money flowing in. Far less lucrative VT is added, too, but that is all about the cabal retaining power and voting control. A price can’t be put on that. The Yankees are kept out of the conference. Duke and UNC won’t have to worry about Syracuse basketball.
For the cabal, this is win-win. They get everything they wanted and get richer in the process, all while mostly keeping their hands clean. Virginia can claim duress, Duke and UNC can (unconvincingly) whine poverty and the need to keep basketball donors happy, and NCSU can hope people remember their six-week pro expansion façade more than they do the last-minute knife in the back to Boston College. Wake never even had to draw its sword.
For Miami it’s win-lose, with the accent on lose. Yes, we’re still bettering our situation in an absolute sense, but that was a foregone conclusion given the last three years, and the fact that football has blown by and lapped basketball (a decade ago, the money was comparable). We were going to start seeing more money soon regardless of where we landed. So from our point of view, the question was how much better we could do, and how many sacrifices we would have to make to do so. The answers are, Only somewhat better, and Pretty much every sacrifice possible.
We are giving up autonomy, and that is big. The anti-independents are probably right that we are still not ready to go the indy route again, but it is still not 100% impossible that this could becomes feasible at some point in the future. With high-bandwidth communications expected to explode in the next 10-20 years, its possible that every team could have its own “channel” in 2015 – unless they are financially locked in for life to supporting Wake Forest.
We are giving up big financial paydays due to the communistic nature of the ACC revenue-sharing plan. This is not all a bad thing; in fact, it was one of the chief things that drew us to the ACC in the first place. The Big East’s top-heavy plan is great when we’re up, but we need the lows not to be so disastrously low. The problem is that Miami is now bringing simply too much to the table and coming away with too small a share. Without BC and SU, ALL additional TV money will be due solely to Miami and the much smaller influence of Virginia Tech. Yet we will see only 1/11 of that. We can safely assume that over the long run, we will bring in far more than 1/11 of the ACC bowl payouts.
Worst of all is an intangible. We are starting out letting ourselves be used, fooled, and taken advantage of. When you start a relationship that way, it is all but impossible to ever change things.
We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, with the accent on mess. Future generations of Miami leaders will curse the fools who mortgaged our future away. The ACC is thinking long-term, which is why they’re eager to lock Miami up for decades, perhaps forever. Miami is thinking about its next meal (TV contract), without giving any thought to the notion that the football world of 2025 may bear as little resemblance to today’s as today’s does to 1980.
