(07-11-2017 12:06 PM)Nerdlinger Wrote:  

(07-11-2017 11:50 AM)Wolfman Wrote:  No matter how many exclamation marks you use, bigger is not better. With 14 teams schools are already complaining about not seeing each other enough. UNC scheduled Wake Forest OOC for football. UNC and NCSU scheduled an OOC baseball game (it got rained out).

A better name for this plan is P2/G2/D2.

P2 (B1G, SEC)
G2 (ACC, PAC)
D2 (the rest)

Non-"rival" ACC schools in different divisions only see each other every 6 years not merely because there are 14 teams. It's also due to poor alignment and scheduling by the conference. A better alignment of the divisions would put more rivals together. For example:

Atlantic: Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, NC State, North Carolina, Wake Forest
Coastal: Boston College, Louisville, Miami, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech

More respectful of geography while still remaining fairly balanced in terms of football strength. And now all the NC teams can play each other every year.

With regard to schedule, even with the ACC's current 8-game conference slate, each school should be able to play every school in the other division within 4 years. This would require dropping the protected crossover, but realigning the divisions as above makes protected crossovers less necessary. With a 9-game conference schedule, it would be 3 years. Of course, the primary reason they haven't gone to 9 is to accommodate Notre Dame, which really seems unfair to the full ACC members.

A more radical solution is to drop scheduling based strictly on division and preserve only a few annual matchups. With the current 8-game schedule, each school could have up to 3 protected annual matchups while still being able to play all the teams in the conference within 2 years. Increasing the schedule to 9 games allows for up to 4 protected annual matchups while still seeing all teams within 2 years. In these cases, the divisions might only remain in place as a playoff structure or simply be abolished altogether.

Division realignment has been discussed at length... and then some more... and then some more... on the ACC board. Your divisions were probably in one of the thousands of iterations but there are still problems. Louisville wants to play FSU every year. UNC wants to play UVA every year. FSU and Miami want to play every year. And the list goes on.

There are many examples of conferences getting too big and splitting. The SoCon had 23 teams when the SEC split off. They grew to 19 when the ACC split off. The WAC got to 16 when the MWC split. The BE go so big, with so many competing interests it split.

I see your point that a change in attitude is needed for bigger conferences. However, I don't think college sports is anywhere near there yet. I think your proposed ACC divisions makes it even easier for the ACC to split and/or be raided.