Expansion Idea

[General Wood]

Why not just combine the two conferences, and rotate in one of the schools from the big east each year, and we still play UGAG. Have a championship game for football, alternating from a neutral facility each year. I would like to know why it wouldn't work. Some of the duplicity in the conference offices could be eliminated. Please tell me why this would not work.

I think they call this a merger in the real world.

 

[Big Buck]

Well for starters, Gen. Wood The BE Conference has around 14 teams with most of them non-football schools. So merger is not an option as the BB schools has as much claim to the conference name as does the football schools plus they will still have to deal with the lawsuit that most legal scholars say is without merit. The merger idea was floated around a few years ago
and it was felt according to what I read at the time to be undoable or at least the end didn't justify the means to get from here to there. There may be some legal minds on our board that could tell us what the complications are as well as a recipe for dealing with them.
I agree with you General that the Carolina bunch has made us look like a group of clowns.

 

[ahsoisee]

GW, my first thought was about the fans of football and basketball, all over the country, trying to decide which team belongs to which conference.

I believe it would cause too much confusion, and the merging teams would lose much of their identity among the rest of the nation as to which conference they belong.

I think you want a certain group of teams to belong to a definite conference and be identified as such. I believe merging would weaken identification.

One of the reasons for opening additional TV markets for the ACC is for better identification of each team across more of the nation and a better chance of gaining additional votes in football and basketball polls.

Also, if a given team has a good record for the year, and there is no doubt of the conference they are from, it leads to more prestige for that conference. Prestige for a conference means more money from TV sources.