11-29-2012, 04:52 PM
Realignment has been crazy, so I know that no scenario is too far-fetched. But I want to address any rumors that have UNC/NC State/Duke departing the ACC, from a North Carolinian’s perspective.
You can argue the flaws in the logic, but football and television markets are both perfectly reasonable things to drive conference restructuring. Unfortunately, in this case, you’re not dealing with reasonable people.
The relationship between UNC, NC State, Duke, and Wake Forest is a sick, twisted, incestuous love quadrangle that is so absurd, only the rubes in the NC General Assembly really understand it.
To these people, the world does not exist outside of “’Bacca Row’ baskeybaw”. Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Virginia Tech are nothing more than scheduling partners. Maryland? Good riddance, yankees! Virginia? Know your place! Boston College? A man can’t reasonably expect to get to heaven unless he’s a Baptist (or a Methodist that doesn’t drink). The Atlantic Coast Conference starts in Raleigh and ends in Winston-Salem. Florida State and Georgia Tech don’t know this, but for the past 50 years, every ACC expansion has been viewed by the “Big 4” as a failure since it did not include Davidson and Elon.
Football is just playing in the dirt with deep south rednecks whilst civilized southerners tailgate on chablis and bree and wait for midnight madness. Important television markets include the Mount Airy metro area, Salisbury, and the immediate suburbs of greater Siler City. The SEC is just another agency investigating John Edwards, and probably had something to do with the death of Jesse Helms. Why would any of them want to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl? Upper Chatham/Lower Alamance isn’t even a college, dummy. (Or is it? They need an expansion target once Clemson bolts).
And East Carolina? Well, they were founded in 1907, exactly 58 years AFTER Dean Smith and Everett Case got together to invent basketball, modern democracy, the internet, and unicorns – not exactly ACC material. That unwashed college isn’t even IN North Carolina. Everything east of I-95 is a wasteland with sovereignty roughly equivalent to that of the Northern Marianas Islands.
This is how these people think. So if you’re expecting ANY of them to head for the Big 10 or SEC, I’d invite you to spend five minutes in the Triangle between the months of October and April. It could happen, but it would be a stretch – to say the least.
You can argue the flaws in the logic, but football and television markets are both perfectly reasonable things to drive conference restructuring. Unfortunately, in this case, you’re not dealing with reasonable people.
The relationship between UNC, NC State, Duke, and Wake Forest is a sick, twisted, incestuous love quadrangle that is so absurd, only the rubes in the NC General Assembly really understand it.
To these people, the world does not exist outside of “’Bacca Row’ baskeybaw”. Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Miami, and Virginia Tech are nothing more than scheduling partners. Maryland? Good riddance, yankees! Virginia? Know your place! Boston College? A man can’t reasonably expect to get to heaven unless he’s a Baptist (or a Methodist that doesn’t drink). The Atlantic Coast Conference starts in Raleigh and ends in Winston-Salem. Florida State and Georgia Tech don’t know this, but for the past 50 years, every ACC expansion has been viewed by the “Big 4” as a failure since it did not include Davidson and Elon.
Football is just playing in the dirt with deep south rednecks whilst civilized southerners tailgate on chablis and bree and wait for midnight madness. Important television markets include the Mount Airy metro area, Salisbury, and the immediate suburbs of greater Siler City. The SEC is just another agency investigating John Edwards, and probably had something to do with the death of Jesse Helms. Why would any of them want to play UCLA in the Rose Bowl? Upper Chatham/Lower Alamance isn’t even a college, dummy. (Or is it? They need an expansion target once Clemson bolts).
And East Carolina? Well, they were founded in 1907, exactly 58 years AFTER Dean Smith and Everett Case got together to invent basketball, modern democracy, the internet, and unicorns – not exactly ACC material. That unwashed college isn’t even IN North Carolina. Everything east of I-95 is a wasteland with sovereignty roughly equivalent to that of the Northern Marianas Islands.
This is how these people think. So if you’re expecting ANY of them to head for the Big 10 or SEC, I’d invite you to spend five minutes in the Triangle between the months of October and April. It could happen, but it would be a stretch – to say the least.
(and pretty darn true too, at least in the Triangle)