Football? Miami has 5 football national titles, Penn State has titles too and biggest school and stadium in east seating over 100,000, BC football has great tradition with Flutie, Romanowski, Coughlin, etc., is the biggest college draw in all of New England and will be consistently good with their new coach who was at UVA while it was winning over a dozen straight 7 win seasons and recruits well, Syracuse has a national title, only college dome, ESPN's greatest player ever in Jim Brown, and 15 straight winning seasons and counting.
ACC only has 2 or 3 good basketball programs, Duke, UMD, UNC. College basketball changed completely in the mid 80s with shot clock, 3 point line, and 64 team NCAA field, before that there were games with final scores like 7-6 and underdogs like Villanova or NCSU having a chance in postseason, no more. NCSU may have benefitted from having first 13 ACC tourneys in Raleigh in Reynolds Coliseum, enrolling 400 SAT bball morons, and cheating with Valvano, but haven't done squat recently with 1 meaningless NCAA bid in over 10 years. The only ACC teams to even make final four since then have been Duke, UNC, UMD, and GT. How many NCAA tourney bids have NCSU and Clemson combined gotten in the last 10 years, 1? Wake is just a terrible sports school period, just one final four from 40 years ago, bad overall sports, and football has worst alltime winning percentage of all 117 div.IA schools, dead last. Syracuse has the biggest basketball stadium in the world and so they will always hire great coaches in order to sell tickets, played in 96 title game, recruits well, and has been consistently good with Boeheim. Miami is building an on campus arena but has already been consistently good with Leonard Hamilton and Perry Clark. BC beat #1 UNC in 94 in NCAAA, is on the rise with the Conte Crazies and recent NCAA appearances, lots of potential as the only bball school plus good academics in the best college town in the world. Penn State beat ACC cochamp UNC in 2001 NCAA tourney, and as the biggest school in the east has tremendous potential with membership in the best basketball league like the Atlantic League, being in midwestern football oriented Big 10 has held them back as PA recruits has gone to ACC, Big East, even Atlantic 10 schools. The extra revenue from A League membership would allow these schools to hire even better coaches and be even better in basketball, football, and everything else.
Overall sports, Penn State is often top 5 in Sears Cup with titles in all kinds of sports like womens volleyball and football, Syracuse has best lacrosse national champs in nation, BC has best hockey national champs, Miami national champs in football and baseball. A League would have best teams and national champs of every major US sport, football, basketball, soccer, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, etc.
Academics, NCSU and Clemson are at the bottom of the ACC in academics and Wake is mediocre behind Duke, UNC, UVA, with GT having higher SATs as well. Penn State and BC are top 50 US News and Syracuse has been as well recently, Miami has great potential as small school and the only one anyone knows about in one of the most exciting cities in the world.
The only great ACC rivalry is Duke-UNC with Duke-UMD coming on recently. A League would have those plus many more nationally significant rivalries, FSU-Miami, FSU-PSU, PSU-UMD-UVA-UNC-GT-FSU, Miami-Syracuse-BC-Duke, etc.
Fun, Penn State is a top 10 party and tailgating school, Miami is extremely fun, Boston is the best college town, Syracuse fans have fun all year long with 15 straight winning seasons in fball, great basketball, and national lacrosse champs. Wake, Clemson, and NCSU, are the least fun ACC schools, 2 in the middle of nowhere.
Prestige, ACC is clearly 2nd best of 2 conferences in southeast plus Clemson has 15 NCAA violations every year. Atlantic League would be not only best in the nation by far overall, but best in every individual sport and way, football, basketball, overall sports, rivalries, fun, academics, prestige, recruiting, fan base, exposure, revenue, etc., doubling or tripling everything.
Noticed you didn't mention revenue, obviously doubling or tripling TV region while dropping noncontributors like Wake, NCSU, and Clemson, would lead to tens of millions more per school. That's the reason conferences realign, plus all the reasons above and more.
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