Wednesday, June 25, 2003

See, ours goes to 11...

It looks like the ACC has voted to expand to an unwieldy 11 teams, adding just Miami and Virginia Tech. Boston College and Syracuse were apparently deemed "too Northern."

I'm glad the ACC is expanding, and I always wanted Virginia Tech and Miami in the mix, but this isn't the way to do it. Scheduling is going to be a nightmare. Couldn't we have pursued West Virginia to ensure balanced divisions and keep the whole regional thing intact? At the very least, we'd get Rich Rodriguez back in the league.

Everyone seems to be blaming Duke and UNC for screwing it up. That's about par for the course. They only care about themselves and their seats at the ACC basketball tournament, not the success of the league as a whole.

They suck.

I still think a 16-team league could work. I hope it's part of the ACC's long-range planning, and this wimpy two-team bump is a) a way to placate the teams that feel queasy about expansion, and b) the first move in a more visionary, long-term growth plan. Maybe they're thinking that if they take a couple of Big East teams now, then the other teams will be enticed (or forced by economic circumstances) to join later, perhaps after guarantees from the TV industry that a reasonably compact 16-team league encompassing the biggest schools and media markets on the East Coast would get a record-setting TV contract.

We'll see what happens.

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