(05-25-2019 08:54 PM)Statefan Wrote:  Nerd,

Miami had no say in divisions. Divisions are based on the various school's list of what they want and what they don't want.

1. UNC has to play Duke, UVa, and NC State every year, and wants to play GT every year and wants to avoid Clemson and FSU
2. NC State has to play UNC, Clemson, and WF every year and wants to play MD and avoid FSU
3. UVa has to play UNC and VT every year, and wants to play WF, Duke, MD, and GT every year
4. WF has to play NC State every year, and wants to play UNC, Duke, UVa, VT, and Clemson.
5. Duke has to play UNC every year, and wants to play WF, UNC, VT, and NC State every year.
6. MD wants to play UVa, UNC, NC State, VT every year
7. Clemson has to play FSU and GT every year, and wants to play NC State, UVa, and UNC every year. They want to avoid Duke
8. GT has to play Duke and Clemson every year, and wants to play UNC every year and wants to avoid FSU every year
9. FSU has to play Miami every year, and wants to play GT and Clemson every year and wants to avoid WF and Duke every year

That's what you have to juggle and what makes 5 of nine happy is what goes. FSU and UNC are going to be made happy and that results in the blues all together. Once FSU and Miami are split, Clemson ends up with FSU. Once you make FSU and UNC happy, knowing FSU and Miami have to be split you get:

A - UNC/Duke/UVa/Miami/TBD/TBD
B - FSU/Clemson/TBD/TBD/TBD/TBD

Then you put in GT/NCSU/MD and they almost auto-sort.

When these decisions were made, Clemson had been mediocre by their standards for some time. From 92-2004 if you awarded points 4, 3, 2, 1 for place of finish 1-4 in the ACC, over that time span FSU has 50 points, UNC 14, UVa 12, GT 11, NC State and Clemson 8, and MD 7. At 12, you are seeing the ones you don't play on an annual basis every three years instead of the current 6.

What's fair on the field doesn't match what the AD's want regarding football ticketing policies. When MD left, the divisions should have been shuffled rather than substituting Louisville for MD because that was a straight loss for Atlantic Division recruiting. Pitt, VT, or UVa should have taken MD's old spot giving Atlantic teams a game in Pa or Va as consolation for losing DC.

Interesting point about schools looking to avoid sharing a division with others! I can see why GT wouldn't want to be in a division with FSU, but at the time, I'd think sharing a division with Miami would have been similarly undesirable.

I could certainly be wrong, but some of your "has to play" and "wants to play" seem to be based more on the outcome of the realignment or on present day rivalry strength rather than contemporary. For instance, was NCSU/WF that much more important to preserve than Duke/NCSU? And was the Clemson/FSU rivalry all that strong at the time? These questions aren't meant to be rhetorical -- I genuinely don't know the answers.

That's a fair point about Louisville replacing Maryland. You can't move Virginia to the Atlantic because that would break up UNC/UVA, and moving VT would make the Atlantic even stronger relative to the Coastal than it already was. So that leaves Pitt, which gives us this:

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

Still sucks for Miami, with no northeastern teams in their division.