ACC v. SEC Money Numbers

The easier road argument certainly makes sense, but the proof is in the pudding. The last 4 champs are from the SEC, and if the easiest road to the BCS was really the end all be all, why aren’t teams clamoring to get into the Big East? Don’t think you’ll hear Mississippi State’s AD commiserating with USF’s AD saying “Yeah, the SEC is nice, I guess, but it’s too hard! I wish we had what you have…” Competition breeds quality. It’s tougher, but we’ll get better, and we’ll have the money to get better.
I feel like the only way to ACC can stay relevant in all of this is to expand it’s basketball prestige by adding schools like Syracuse and UConn. They’ll try to become a basketball “super-conference”. They can’t compete with the SEC for football, so they have to take advantage of their strengths. IMO, this makes us even more of a misfit in the ACC. We’re a football school, and if we’re offered a spot we’d be crazy not to jump on it.

This does make things seem very bleak indeed. Is there any way to improve the ACC via expansion (I’m not sure what big teams we could draw)? Should we approach the Big 10 (an unlikely scenario)? Put our name out there for the SEC, if it expands (if so, I’d rather wait until we’ve recovered a bit)?

Of course, if I become a billionaire, I’ll make sure FSU is well-taken care of. Someone wanna help me get there? ;-)

I think if the opportunity presents itself, we HAVE to move to the SEC. The only negative is a tougher road to the NC, but if you do the math, it’s not that much more difficult than what we have now.

If FSU, Miami, and Clemson jump ship, let’s assume that the new 14 team SEC looks like this:

East:
Clemson
Florida
Florida State
UGA
Kentucky
Miami
South Carolina

West:
Alabama
Auburn
LSU
Miss State
Ole Miss
Tennessee
Vanderbilt

Note: I’ve seen some different breakdowns, but this seems like the most balanced breakdown IMO, and it still makes some geographical sense.

We already play the best team in the East (UF) every year, in addition to Clemson and Miami. So we’ll add UGA, Kentucky, and South Carolina. To me that’s on par with GT, Virginia, and Wake Forest, so that’s pretty much a wash.

Then we’ll add 2 teams rotating from the West. If we pull LSU/Bama, yes that would suck. But we could also pull Vandy/Miss State. Then since we’re in the mighty SEC, we can stop playing OU, BYU, etc, and replace them with more SEC quality OOC opponents (Charleston Southern).

It really doesn’t seem like the schedule should be that much of a detterent for us. If an offer comes in, we have to take it.

…the ACC is willing to take a bold step and make a preemptive strike to grab a handful of the premier Big East schools before the Big Ten beats us to it. Having Boston College stuck way up there by itself isn’t doing much for us, but if we added Syracuse and Pittsburgh and Connecticut and Rutgers we’d just about lock down the east coast. We could also try to pull in a couple of basketball schools (Georgetown, Villanova) while we’re at it.

The expanded ACC would still suffer from having a bunch of schools with no common history, but there’s not much we can do about that. In the meantime, we’d have our product in some enormous markets, and two or three of our football programs can get themselves into the national championship picture, we could draw a lot of watchers.

So I think we either join the SEC or move quickly to expand the ACC. Doing neither of these will leave our conference in a very weak position compared to our primary competitors.

does FSU make more money in a conference than they would as an independent? I assume that was part of the reason they joined a conference in the first place, but I’m just wondering if that is still the case- considering that if FSU does get back on top and can consistently reach a BCS bowl they will have to split the revenue 12 ways.

Either join the SEC or get Notre Dame in the ACC as a full member. I don’t see how any other option makes us viable. It will be very difficult to hold our coaches, including our head coach, when the SEC comes calling.

Some people are missing the point. Being a national title contender in the ACC may put you in the financial ballpark of the SEC, maybe. But sorry, that’s not the issue. The problem is nobody is going to stay on top that long again. The SEC teams are raking in the dough even when they’re down. That’s how Alabama bounces back in a flash from DuBose and Shula. They can.

If Fisher ends up sucking (nobody believes this) and we end up with losing records the next two years, will we have the cash to fire him and replace him with the best available coach in the country, and pay their assistants as well?

If Fisher’s offense had NOT materialized, could we have afforded NOT to make him the HC?

If you’re banking on being a national-champion level performer every year in the ACC just to get within sight of Vanderbilt and Mississippi State, you have to GET EVERYTHING RIGHT EVERY TIME. That’s not a recipe for success.

It also means you’re the most financially vulnerable at the moment you need the cash to make changes/improvements.

That’s why Clemson kept Tommy so long and ended up with Dabo Sweeny. That’s why Groh ended up in VA so long. It’s damn hard when you have to get it right every time.

I actually hate how quickly the SEC schools pull the trigger and fire their coaches so quickly. But they do it because they can afford to do whatever they have to do to be at the level they want to be. The coach firing is just the most visible aspect of that.

Unless there is some revolutionary revenue stream I’m not visualizing like ACC basketball going to pay-per-view or something, I don’t see the options.

Notre Dame is the only thing that can save the ACC now.

While I can see $millions$ of reasons why we would want into the SEC, I’m not sure we’d bring enough to the table to be chosen. I’m afraid they just go to 14 and stay in TX, or choose Clemson and Miami or something.

Although, I’d have to think that UF despite their hate would rather pull us into the conference, rather than bring another tough opponent into the conference and still need to play us outside.

Which brings up another question. Assuming that expanded conferences mean more conference games, how long before UF says they just can’t afford to play us any more, and same with UGA and GT, etc. That just buries the ACC further.

Before you claim that could never happen, there was a time when you would have said the same about Pitt and Penn St.

Come on, money isn’t worth selling our soul to join the SEC. Money doesn’t guarantee championships either. Tell me how the SEC money is working out for Vandy, UK, SC, MS St and other bottom feeders in SEC football?

What about all of the money that Boise St has? How about Utah and TCU?

Money doesn’t win championships. It keeps you from sucking, but it doesn’t win championships. Winning championships is about having high quality coaches and good kids.

If money is all that mattered how come UK, Vandy, MS St, and all the other crappy SEC football teams are competing for a championship every year?

Everyone assumes that this is a forgone conclusion if the Big 10 expands that the SEC expands to match it. But, it does not necessarily make business sense. The Big 10 is expanding because of the Big 10 network which is now there cash cow. The teams they are adding are in states with 10 million people with the exception of Nebraska which is a national brand. Each team needs to bring 40 million a year in value to the table just to break even for the other schools in the conference. The Pac 10 is looking to expand because they are looking to start up there own network. The Big 12 and ACC still have the ability to start there own networks.

The SEC on the other hand has there hands tied. ESPN overpaid them in order to prevent them from starting there own network. Adding teams might get a token renegotiation but why would ESPN dump that much more into them they already got the brand and unless Texas which I find extremely doubtful they are not adding any new markets with there rumored teams. FSU and Miami are not going to be able to make up the short fall of splitting a pie two more ways never mind UF has vetoed both of them a number of times in the past. Maybe the SEC does this because well they have to be the biggest and bestest but does it actually make monetary sense?

I live in Kentucky and have been to UK games. Even when they suck they fill the stadium. They have big money, but have only recently started playing in bowl games and that is only because they schedule 3 soft schools every year.

South Carolina is another example. They have a rabid fan base, but yet again they pretty much suck in football.

Both these schools have a bunch of money and they both are miserable.

for a Playoff system. It will make all this conference talk less relevant.

maybe I’m missing something, but doesn’t part 4 say that the ACC has a larger payout per school then the SEC? I know it’s for 2006, and I know a zillion people are going to say that 2006 is so vastly different than 2010 that we cannot possibly compare the two time periods, afterall, Facebook was only for college kids in 2006 and hadn’t yet been opened up to the public at large.

For further evidence just how little value the ACC has in football as it is:

FedEx first moved above the fold for Notre Dame’s 21-6 win over Colorado in the 1990 game, the first of five games with direct national championship implications over the next six years, but the BCS-era tie-in with the ACC has been Nielsen death since the demise of Florida State and Miami as annual contenders: The last four Orange Bowls were the four lowest-rated games in the BCS’ four-year cycle on Fox, and didn’t featured a single team that entered (or went on to finish) in the top five of any mainstream poll. Throw in a crippling economic recession and the increased network demands – on top of the brand-expansion into the regular season, ESPN is upping the annual commitment from BCS title sponsors to $20 million over the next four years – and the juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

Note that FedEx isn’t leaving just the Orange Bowl on the table, but also its spot as the sponsor for the Miami leg of the BCS Championship Game every four years. Apparently even a 15.8 rating for Florida’s win over Oklahoma in 2009 couldn’t make up for the Cincinnati-Virginia Tech flop a few days earlier, the lowest-rated game in BCS history (not to mention the cheapest ticket).

Just for those people that like to talk about SEC brainwashing, or that the ACC is almost as good, or they’re not strong top to bottom or whatever. You don’t have agree on the solution, but you have to admit the ACC has a football problem.

And again, saying the solution is one or two teams being in national championship contention every single year is not a sensible solution or a healthy foundation for a conference.