(03-03-2015 12:26 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: [ -> ]Lurk around the ACC board on this site more often, where this has all been discussed in for greater detail, and without every 4th post being 'ZOMGNEVERGONNAHAPPENWTFLAME'. I've already explained the circumstances that make it possible at least 3 times in this thread, and I aint explainin' again.
Problem is, the "circumstances" you describe seem both banal and extremely unlikely. And, the Maryland analogy doesn't fit so well either. Let me explain:
1) Obviously, if the ACC can offer not just Tennessee and Penn State, but ANYONE, "huge bags of money", say $20 million more a year than they can make in the B1G or SEC, then those schools will leave. Nobody is going to turn down an extra $20 million a year for tradition's sake or anything else. So saying "well, if the ACC can offer huge bags of money that nobody else can, then it can attract those schools away from the B1G and SEC" isn't saying anything.
Heck, the MAC could lure North Carolina State away from the ACC if it could offer that money too. As you say, big bags of money trump everything these days.
2) But, the ACC ever being able to do this seems, well, nearly impossible. For one thing, the ACC makes less money structurally from the CFP than the B1G and SEC. The Sugar Bowl pays out more than the Orange Bowl, and the B1G and SEC both also have a slice of that Orange Bowl as well. So even before we talk media deals, the ACC is about $2 million per school, per year in the hole to those conferences.
Then, you factor in that the SEC and B1G are the existing heavyweights of money, and their money is growing, not stagnant. The SECN is off to a booming start, making much more initial money than anticipated. And the B1G is in even better shape. Its BTN is making big money now, and it has half its media value up for sale next year.
So even if an ACCN (whenever it appears) is a HUGE success, it is very unlikely that it will be any bigger success than the SECN or BTN, which would give the ACC no money advantage at all, much less the huge one it would need to lure those schools.
In contrast, the B1G, with its booming network, structurally equal position to the SEC in bowl ties, and with half its media on the market next year, would seem to be FAR more likely to be able to "break out" money-wise from the other P5.
If I were an SEC fan or admin, I'd be FAR more worried about a Kentucky or Tennessee being lured away by huge B1G money than ACC money, as the B1G is far more likely to have that kind of money.
3) When others have mentioned the very low chance of Tennessee ever abandoning its SEC roots for the ACC, you note that the same could have been said of Maryland three years ago, but money tempted them away anyway.
But, IMO, Maryland and Tennessee are different. I grew up in Maryland, spent the first 17 years of my life living within 10 miles of College Park, have plenty of friends and family there (half my old childhood friends are Maryland alums) and I still visit frequently (I am visiting Maryland this Thursday). I grew up saturated in the Maryland sports culture and am still in close touch with it. And, there was ALWAYS a "love-hate" relationship with the ACC in the Maryland community. It was mostly love, but there was always a strong strain of "hate", dissatisfaction, running through it. Essentially, it boiled down to the feeling that the conference was run out of the state of North Carolina, that big conference decisions were made by and for the benefit of the four North Carolina schools and that Maryland was given short-shrift. E.g., growing up, Maryland fans constantly complained about the home-court advantage the NC schools had in the ACC tournament, and struggled to get the ACC tournament played periodically closer to Maryland or at least out of North Carolina.
That's why, when Maryland announced it was leaving for the B1G, while there was SOME uproar from the Maryland community about abandoning the ACC, it never reached anything like the crescendo needed to reverse that decision or else make the admins who made it pariahs. The mourning over the loss of the ACC was tempered by a strain of "good riddance, we're finally free of the North Carolina yoke".
With Tennessee, there is no such feeling. Their culture is 100% SEC, period. Now can money trump that? Sure, as you say, it can trump anything. But IMO, it would take MORE money to lure Tennessee away than it took to lure Maryland away from the ACC. Now Penn State? No, because their B1G roots aren't nearly as strong. But Tennessee leaving the SEC would be more like NC State leaving the ACC than Maryland leaving it.
