I get that you don’t want SEC and that’s fine. But it’s equally as likely that we end up there as we do the B1G. And the sad fact is that neither is likely. We are most likely locked in steerage on the Titanic that is the ACC with no chance to get to a lifeboat before the ship goes under.
This is what I don't understand. I get accused of "living in yesteryear" when it is you guys who are. College football has bifurcated, and its future is a semi-pro level and a semi-amateur level. It had been slowly moving this way for decades, but the recent rapid increase in TV dollars, access to the portal, and now NIL has brought this about quickly. IMPO, big changes are ahead. Disruptions of this kind often spawn new structures.
GA Tech has not been part of the "ruling class" in college football since the mid-1950's, the dawn of the modern era. Over that time, amateur football at the college level became semi-amateur laced with financial incentives, some legal, some not, with the NCAA "trying" to hold things together. In the midst of all that, the financial and recruiting lines were drawn and GA Tech was on the other side from most successful programs, the result being the GTAA almost forced into bankruptcy by 1980.
Fast forward 40 years and college football is now riven by money and the push toward a semi-pro model. Today's CFB has almost totally free agent players and virtually unchecked payments through NIL. To think that any team not already flush with money will successfully accede to the top level is fatuous. You don't have time since the top players (the few who even choose your program) are free to leave for a higher-level program before yours can get there. We're already seeing this happen. Meanwhile, we're seeing a sharp divide occurring between the haves and have-nots within the former top league (P5, FBS). The have-nots going forward will simply exist to serve the haves.
Personally, I think the time is coming where we will see new conferences forming with programs that won't walk down that path to certain servitude. Therefore, I don't think that the only two options ahead for GA Tech are the SECheat and the B1G. I think there may well be a new southern conference that will boast several very good programs, including GA Tech. I also believe that GA Tech can be (if it wants to be) among those who reimagine semi-amateur college football. The last such realignment was 100 years ago when the old Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association fragmented creating the Southern Conference, which ultimately split resulting in the formation of two major conferences (ACC and SEC) and eventually the SoCon. I think all this disruption may again spawn a new recombination of schools.
So, there is precedent. In 1921, out of the old SIAA there came the new Southern Conference of Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Mississippi State, and Tennessee, and later adding Duke, Florida, LSU, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tulane, and Vandy. The remaining SIAA schools eventually disbanded in 1942 due to WWII with some of them reforming later into a renewed Southern Conference after the Southern Conference of 1921 split into the SEC (1932) and then the ACC (1953).
