RE: Do folks here see ESPN as a good 'partner' with the ACC?
To say the ACC has done nothing - is doing nothing - to improve the stature of its football in the public perception ignores history.
The ACC has no plan? What do you call adding Georgia Tech, Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Louisville, and Pitt? Who else that was/is reasonably available to them could they have added to do more to improve its football product?
I doubt the ACC was ever truly earning more from its football than other conferences. I suspect that 20-30 years ago a lot of its appeal, and financial compensation, even if nominally for football, was a product of the name recognition it had from basketball. Competitively, in its first 30 years as a football conference, the ACC was, IMO, barely above the level of today's G5 conferences. We have come a very long way since then.
At the end of the day, we can't expect some administrative entity - the "Conference" - to do anything its individual members aren't motivated to do. Do schools like Duke, Wake, Miami, BC, Syracuse et al, want to place the kind of emphasis on football success that most SEC schools do? Not that I can see. Is that a failing? Not that I can see. I think those schools are happy with their overall athletic programs, and with the dramatic improvement in the financial resources needed to sustain them.
And if they are happy, why should they change, if that means changing who they are at their core? Why should they change because some members of their conference want different things?
Are there other things individual members who want those different things can do to improve their own situation? Well, one thing they can do is to stop complaining about the advantages other schools/conferences have. I came to North Carolina as an adult more than 40 years ago, and didn't bring the baggage of 20-30 years of perceived slights that someone who grew up here might have. One thing I observed was a recurring theme - the league and the state was dominated by UNC.
That theme was voiced throughout the league, and widely so. But never as much as it was voiced by NC State and its fans. I can't tell you how many times I have been told by State fans that I just don't understand the lengths UNC will go to in order to insure that State won't ever surpass Carolina in anything - not just sports. "The BOT will never let us (fill in the blank)" was/is the mantra.
Clearly, State bristles at being what they perceive is being treated as a second class citizen. If that is true, imagine how ECU must feel. That's what they get not only from UNC but from State as well. But there's a difference. ECU fans don't embrace victimhood as their self-image the way State fans do. They just bow their necks and do more with less, and take enormous pride in that. They over-achieve as much as State under-achieves.
I believe I saw that same attitude on the part of FSU and its fans years ago. They would take on all comers, and played with a chip on their shoulder. They were ultra successful because they didn't dwell on whatever limitations or handicaps they may have had. They won in spite of them. Today, I don't see that as much.
You may not think my advice is worth much. Maybe you think it is totally worthless. In all my life, I have never seen an enterprise improve by either public or private self-flagellation, but I have seen some crumble because of it.
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