(05-10-2013 01:54 PM)orangefan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 01:23 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Looks like Pitt was well down the list of schools the Big 12 was considering, if it was considering them at all. That would hardly seem to motivate an ACC move to get Pitt and Syracuse.

The obvious motivation - to knock out the Big East, a far bigger threat to the ACC than the Big 12 - still seems to stand.

"Well down the list?" The list was 1) Notre Dame, 2) Arkansas, 3) BYU, 3a) Pitt. 1) and 2) were completely unrealistic, and 3) turned out to be unworkable.

At the time, I believed the primary motivation of grabbing Pitt and SU was 1) to allow the ACC to reopen its TV deal, and 3) to buy insurance against the SEC grabbing an ACC school. I don't recall thinking about the ACC needing to protect itself against B12 incursion into its territory. Now, having thought about it, I would think the bigger concern was to avoid having preferred expansion candidates taken off the board by the B12, since the ACC knew it would have to expand to improve its TV contract and possibly to respond to losing one or more of its own members.

Two bloggers claiming Pitt was mentioned as 4th on some alleged B12 list doesn't seem much to hang a B12 threat motivation to the ACCs actions on. Especially when there is a massive elephant in the living room: the ACCs desire to improve its football and basketball while slaying the Big East, its most proximate rival.

I don't think it's unreasonable to attribute multiple motivations to the ACC's invitation of Pitt. Aside from the basic merits of their inclusion, adding them weakened the Big East, limited future Big 12 options, and helped bulwark the conference against potential SEC incursion. A win-win-win-win situation.

(05-10-2013 04:03 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:57 PM)XLance Wrote:  I've been telling you for a long time that UConn would not be invited to join the ACC and that the lawsuit is one of the biggest reasons.

pitt and cuse were part of that law suit. vt was as well. the law suit is an excuse. the acc invited schools based heavily on who bc wanted. bc does not want uconn in. that is the real reason.

If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

(05-10-2013 05:10 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 04:03 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:57 PM)XLance Wrote:  I've been telling you for a long time that UConn would not be invited to join the ACC and that the lawsuit is one of the biggest reasons.

pitt and cuse were part of that law suit. vt was as well. the law suit is an excuse. the acc invited schools based heavily on who bc wanted. bc does not want uconn in. that is the real reason.

If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

Thats what makes this thread stupid. The OP nor anyone else can explain that if the lawsuit was the case then why is Pitt in the league?

(05-10-2013 05:15 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:10 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 04:03 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:57 PM)XLance Wrote:  I've been telling you for a long time that UConn would not be invited to join the ACC and that the lawsuit is one of the biggest reasons.

pitt and cuse were part of that law suit. vt was as well. the law suit is an excuse. the acc invited schools based heavily on who bc wanted. bc does not want uconn in. that is the real reason.

If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

Thats what makes this thread stupid. The OP nor anyone else can explain that if the lawsuit was the case then why is Pitt in the league?

UConn and the Conn Attourney General pushed the lawsuit further. They personally sued the AD's at Miami and BC and I believe a few presidents as well. Everyone else was just on the lawsuit in name only. The suit was being run by UConn.

(05-10-2013 05:17 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  UConn and the Conn Attourney General pushed the lawsuit further. They personally sued the AD's at Miami and BC and I believe a few presidents as well. Everyone else was just on the lawsuit in name only. The suit was being run by UConn.

That's how I remember the details relating to the lawsuit.

(05-10-2013 05:17 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:15 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:10 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 04:03 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:57 PM)XLance Wrote:  I've been telling you for a long time that UConn would not be invited to join the ACC and that the lawsuit is one of the biggest reasons.

pitt and cuse were part of that law suit. vt was as well. the law suit is an excuse. the acc invited schools based heavily on who bc wanted. bc does not want uconn in. that is the real reason.

If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

Thats what makes this thread stupid. The OP nor anyone else can explain that if the lawsuit was the case then why is Pitt in the league?

UConn and the Conn Attourney General pushed the lawsuit further. They personally sued the AD's at Miami and BC and I believe a few presidents as well. Everyone else was just on the lawsuit in name only. The suit was being run by UConn.

Pushed the lawsuit? Well yeah, thats what you do when you FILE a lawsuit. Oh they were just in on the lawsuit in name only. Im sure if they won they would have taken the payment in money only. Please, this is just more ACC spin. These boards have been full of it for months now.

"The ACC is pissed at UConn for suing them!"

"Then what about Pitt because they sued the ACC too?"

"Well UConn really was a d!ck about it."

"How so?"

"Well they personally sued the presidents!"

"Well yeah, they were the ones committing the offense that UConn was accusing them of doing. These schools aren't self run."

"B-b-but they were really mean about it!"

(05-10-2013 06:35 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:17 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:15 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:10 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 04:03 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  pitt and cuse were part of that law suit. vt was as well. the law suit is an excuse. the acc invited schools based heavily on who bc wanted. bc does not want uconn in. that is the real reason.

If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

Thats what makes this thread stupid. The OP nor anyone else can explain that if the lawsuit was the case then why is Pitt in the league?

UConn and the Conn Attourney General pushed the lawsuit further. They personally sued the AD's at Miami and BC and I believe a few presidents as well. Everyone else was just on the lawsuit in name only. The suit was being run by UConn.

Pushed the lawsuit? Well yeah, thats what you do when you FILE a lawsuit. Oh they were just in on the lawsuit in name only. Im sure if they won they would have taken the payment in money only. Please, this is just more ACC spin. These boards have been full of it for months now.

"The ACC is pissed at UConn for suing them!"

"Then what about Pitt because they sued the ACC too?"

"Well UConn really was a d!ck about it."

"How so?"

"Well they personally sued the presidents!"

"Well yeah, they were the ones committing the offense that UConn was accusing them of doing. These schools aren't self run."

"B-b-but they were really mean about it!"

You are about as worthless of a poster on here as I've seen. You really don't want to have a discussion with other people so this thread is all your's now.

(05-10-2013 07:26 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 06:35 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:17 PM)4x4hokies Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:15 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 05:10 PM)cuseroc Wrote:  If you had read this thread, you would know that SU was never apart of the lawsuit. Pitt, yes. SU and BC, no. But I agree that the lawsuit is not whats keeping Uconn out, since VT and Pitt were apart of the lawsuit and both are in the Acc.

Thats what makes this thread stupid. The OP nor anyone else can explain that if the lawsuit was the case then why is Pitt in the league?

UConn and the Conn Attourney General pushed the lawsuit further. They personally sued the AD's at Miami and BC and I believe a few presidents as well. Everyone else was just on the lawsuit in name only. The suit was being run by UConn.

Pushed the lawsuit? Well yeah, thats what you do when you FILE a lawsuit. Oh they were just in on the lawsuit in name only. Im sure if they won they would have taken the payment in money only. Please, this is just more ACC spin. These boards have been full of it for months now.

"The ACC is pissed at UConn for suing them!"

"Then what about Pitt because they sued the ACC too?"

"Well UConn really was a d!ck about it."

"How so?"

"Well they personally sued the presidents!"

"Well yeah, they were the ones committing the offense that UConn was accusing them of doing. These schools aren't self run."

"B-b-but they were really mean about it!"

You are about as worthless of a poster on here as I've seen. You really don't want to have a discussion with other people so this thread is all your's now.

I guess discussion is everyone agreeing with each other in your book. If you wanted an ACC centric thread you should have stayed on the ACC board. If you don't care if people disagree with you then post here. I'm sorry if you don't like that I disagree with the rewriting of history.

Insulting me doesn't prove anything other than you have a very thin skin.

Okay. Everybody settle down now...

(05-10-2013 06:35 PM)NJRedMan Wrote:  "The ACC is pissed at UConn for suing them!"

"Then what about Pitt because they sued the ACC too?"

"Well UConn really was a d!ck about it."

"How so?"

"Well they personally sued the presidents!"

"Well yeah, they were the ones committing the offense that UConn was accusing them of doing. These schools aren't self run."

"B-b-but they were really mean about it!"

They personally named the presidents and the presidents are still at their respective schools. Why would they vote for UConn? Especially knowing their fellow named presidents won't be voting for UConn. It has to piss off the presidents that the reasoning and purpose of UConn's lawsuit was absurd. The question I have is that if teams leaving the BE was reason enough to sue last time, why aren't they doing it again this time? No other school left behind has tried it. What' special about UConn that makes them deserve such treatment, when everyone else does not?

(05-10-2013 07:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  I'm not sure the timeline adds up here. IIRC, Pitt and Syracuse joined the ACC in mid-September 2011, about at the same time that the SEC was inviting TAMU and Missouri. Probably a little after TAMU joined but before Mizzo joined. These events were essentially contemporaneous so there surely was no time for Pitt to try and cobble together a group to join the Big 12, so that kind of talk likely could not have influenced ACC thinking.

IMO, the ACC invited Pitt and Syracuse not to thwart a weakened Big 12 but to defeat a threat they perceived to be a much more salient one to their "east coast" footprint: A Big East that had received a media deal offer from ESPN that was about as valuable as the one the ACC had just signed, and was feeling confident enough to actually turn it down and hold out for more.

The ACC was smart enough to perceive that a powerful Big East meant that the ACC would always be squeezed by the Mason-Dixon line to the north and the SEC to the south. That's why it struck at the Big East in 2003, dealing what it believed to be a mortal blow. But miraculously, by 2011 that rump Big East rebounded well enough to merit ACC-level media money so the ACC decided to strike again. This time it worked, killing the Big East as a major conference and opening up the northeast corridor to ACC exploitation. Fundamentally, the Big East died because it never realized that the ACC considered a strong Big East as inherently incompatible with a strong ACC and thus would always seek to undermine/destroy the Big East. The Big East should have learned this after the near-mortal wounds it suffered in 2003, but it didn't. Had the Big East realized this, it would have struck at the ACC first circa 2011, inviting schools like Maryland and BC to join or invaded ACC territory with an invite to ECU.

Of course now having vanquished the Big East, the ACC has to contend with B1G invasion of that same space.

That is Big East fantasy land nonsense.

1.) The timeline absolutely adds up and is indeed what happened. Trust me on that one (or don't).
2.) The Big East was never going to get a better or comparable deal with ESPN to what the ACC got. Now, they could have gotten within four or five million per year but the league with USF and UCF was never going to be more valuable to ESPN than the league with FSU and the U.
3.) Boston College and Maryland were never going to leave the ACC for the Big East. Hell, BC had just made the exact opposite move less than a decade ago.

Just complete nonsense.

If the ACC decision makers have the opinion that UConn was the "bad guy" in the lawsuit, they are entitled to their opinion.

They own it. It is theirs.

Their position on this matter is the only viewpoint that counts in this situation. Not yours, not mine. Theirs.

If they have this opinion/viewpoint, it is not an excuse. It is their position on the issue.

If that is their opinion, reasonable or not to others, game over for UConn (no matter what others think).

Either they really believe this or it is an "excuse". Either way, game over for UConn as far as ACC membership is concerned.

(05-10-2013 09:49 AM)BewareThePhog Wrote:  If the Big 12 really thought Arkansas would leave the SEC, or that ND would join, then there's definitely something interesting being smoked at conference HQ.

Assuming that this all adds up, either the Big 12 missed an opportunity to make a play for a group of BE schools that could have been a good group addition (Pitt/WVU/Louisville and Syracuse or Cincinnati), or else the preference of Pitt (and perhaps others) for ACC membership precluded that being a possibility.

Once the ACC offered Pitt membership in its league, it wouldn't have mattered what the B12 did or who else had agreed to join the Panthers, Pitt was going to the ACC. Now, if the choice had been the AAC or the B12 - as it was for West Virginia a few months later - that would have been different. However, as would have been true of WVU too, once the ACC asked Pitt to join its league, we had no choice but to say yes (and then get onto our knees and thank our lucky stars).

The only other league Pitt would have considered over the ACC, IMHO would have been the B1G. Alas, that was never going to happen based on cable reach and Pitt knew it. For Pitt, it was essentially the ACC or bust.

That's not meant to be in any way disrespectful of the B12 but the ACC is perceived in this neck of the woods as being a FAR more prestigious conference and the schools are much closer in proximity. Also, the road trips are much more attractive. Finally, Pitt takes academics very seriously and we fit better as an institution into the ACC than we would have the B12.

I know that there are some exceptional schools in the B12 - including Kansas, Texas and Iowa State among others. However, there are many more highly regarded ACC schools and that coupled with all of the other factors, made the decision a no-brainer.

(05-10-2013 10:36 AM)Melky Cabrera Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 11:26 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 10:51 PM)UConn-SMU Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 10:04 PM)miko33 Wrote:  When will UCONN fans stop with the delusional BS that their school was going to the ACC except for the block by BC. It's a stupid argument that simply does not hold water. First, BC does not have the juice to single handedly nix UCONN. Second, the ACC could have "corrected the first error" by taking UCONN the second time around - but again failed to get this awesome gem that is head and shoulders above our schools.

I get the red ass you fans have, but c'mon and finally recognize that UCONN was not wanted. It sucks, but it's the truth. UCONN is a basketball school. Despite the recent football foray, UCONN is limited in potential to be a regular FB competitor. Your geography sucks for becoming a FB school. Therefore, you were too much of a risk for a P5 conference to invite you. No one cares about how many BB titles you have nor how dynastic your women's BB school is. FB is easily 80 percent of the equation. Limited upside, no tradition and no AAU membership hurts UCONN.

BTW...I wouldn't put too much stock in Jurich's comments concerning UCONN's name being inked for the ACC. Recall that Luck stated WVU was off to the SEC, so...

UConn FB has just as much going for it as Pitt, plus we have other several other successful sports programs that have lapped Pitt several times. For example, our hockey program is going into the top NCAA hockey conference next year. Multiply that by 100 and you get an idea of how strong the UConn athletic program is.

No one gives a rat's ass about Pitt's glory days 40 years ago. UConn was able to match Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt, and Rutgers over the last nine years despite our late start into 1-A FB. Given another 10 years with a playing level field, UConn would have blown past Pitt in FB. Our trajectory was up. Your trajectory has been flat or sinking since the Ford Administration.

You don't get it. No one cares about your other athletic programs. It's not unique to just UCONN but everywhere. A great hockey team will NOT get you an invite to the P5 conferences. A dynastic women's BB team will NOT get you an invite to a P5 conference. A great track and field team... By now, you SHOULD get the picture. Sadly, you and most UCONN fans will simply never get it. The tangible things that the P5 conferences were looking for are football, football potential, how likely are the people in your TV footprint will want to consume the football product and how fertile are your local recruiting grounds? So despite your awesome athletic programs, UCONN is located in a part of the country that could give a rat's ass about CFB, your recruiting grounds suck and you have no tradition in CFB. It cannot be made any simpler for you than that. Wake up.

Don't even bother to try to spin the story that UCONN's trajectory is soooo much greater than Pitt's or Syracuse's. It isn't, and it's stupid to even suggest this to be true. Again, it ties back to the same reasons I gave above. Pitt and Syracuse royally screwed up their coaching hires the past decade, and this is why both schools have been down in FB. UCONN was lucky to have Edsall at the beginning. And common sense tells you that when you start something, your gains will be significant up front. Don't be stupid and try to project the initial early gains of your young program to continue indefinitely. When you start from basically nothing, you have only one way to go but up. Bottom line is that you have garbage for a recruiting region, you're located in a region of the country that does not care for CFB and you have no tradition. It should be obvious why UCONN is not in a P5 conference. Men's BB doesn't mean a whole lot when it comes to realignment.

Yeah, the 41,000 fans that Pitt drew in a 65,000 seat stadium last year speaks volumes about the interest and fan support for this legendary program.

In another post you wanted a larger sample for TV ratings. Here you are happy to use a single year's data. Let's be consistent. If you take the last 5 years of attendance and I would bet Pitt is on average somewhere between 8 - 10k higher.

As far as us playing in a "pro" stadium, let's clarify something. Unlike Temple and USF, we do not sublet the stadium from the Steelers. Pitt is a co-anchor tenant with the Steelers. We lease from the Stadium Authority. We own the concessions at our events. For every Steelers logo in the stadium there ie a Pitt logo. The Steelers rent space at Pitt's practice facility. Pitt and the Steelers are partners. We are the only NCAA program in the country that shares a stadium with a pro team that can say that. Ask Cinci what it costs them to play at Paul Brown Stadium. The Bengals charge them to sublet the stadium and most if not all the concession receipts go to the Bengals. The only thing the Steelers have over Pitt is they have first choice of the dates they want for the season. Pitt gets second choice. You will never see Pitt pushed aside for a special event like USF was a few years ago. This is an apples to orange argument.

Pitt is on pace to sell out the stadium on season tickets this year. We will average over 60k this season. UConn will pull 2/3 of that if they sell out every game. You can use all the selective data you like, but Pitt has a much richer history and a much higher ceiling than UConn does.

Sent from my AT100 using Tapatalk HD

(05-10-2013 03:57 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  So your example is that a program in seemingly total disarray, with its third HC in 3 seasons and a pissed off fan base, that subsequently has one of the worst home schedules in its history, lost to an FCS team in its home opener, and "achieved" a bid to a meaningless, lowest rung bowl game with only 6 wins still outdrew UConn during its Fiesta Bowl/BE championship season, the best year in UConn's entire history? That's the logic you are going with to make your point?

That about sums things up on that front.

University presidents have become leaders because they are capable of running multi million dollar businesses. It's about $, that's it.

Sports are inherently supposed to be about establishing rules between the lines that ensure equality and let the best team win. College Football continues to perpetuate a system that ensures the powerful stay in power and create barriers for entry. It's un-American, and I'm not talking the AAC.

UConn has competed at a championship level in every sport they've endeavored to play. They have achieved more than many of the "haves" in the power 5. It's now an unknown whether they will continue their success because of $. F That.

(05-10-2013 10:15 PM)Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Wrote:  

(05-10-2013 07:56 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  I'm not sure the timeline adds up here. IIRC, Pitt and Syracuse joined the ACC in mid-September 2011, about at the same time that the SEC was inviting TAMU and Missouri. Probably a little after TAMU joined but before Mizzo joined. These events were essentially contemporaneous so there surely was no time for Pitt to try and cobble together a group to join the Big 12, so that kind of talk likely could not have influenced ACC thinking.

IMO, the ACC invited Pitt and Syracuse not to thwart a weakened Big 12 but to defeat a threat they perceived to be a much more salient one to their "east coast" footprint: A Big East that had received a media deal offer from ESPN that was about as valuable as the one the ACC had just signed, and was feeling confident enough to actually turn it down and hold out for more.

The ACC was smart enough to perceive that a powerful Big East meant that the ACC would always be squeezed by the Mason-Dixon line to the north and the SEC to the south. That's why it struck at the Big East in 2003, dealing what it believed to be a mortal blow. But miraculously, by 2011 that rump Big East rebounded well enough to merit ACC-level media money so the ACC decided to strike again. This time it worked, killing the Big East as a major conference and opening up the northeast corridor to ACC exploitation. Fundamentally, the Big East died because it never realized that the ACC considered a strong Big East as inherently incompatible with a strong ACC and thus would always seek to undermine/destroy the Big East. The Big East should have learned this after the near-mortal wounds it suffered in 2003, but it didn't. Had the Big East realized this, it would have struck at the ACC first circa 2011, inviting schools like Maryland and BC to join or invaded ACC territory with an invite to ECU.

Of course now having vanquished the Big East, the ACC has to contend with B1G invasion of that same space.

That is Big East fantasy land nonsense.

1.) The timeline absolutely adds up and is indeed what happened. Trust me on that one (or don't).
2.) The Big East was never going to get a better or comparable deal with ESPN to what the ACC got. Now, they could have gotten within four or five million per year but the league with USF and UCF was never going to be more valuable to ESPN than the league with FSU and the U.
3.) Boston College and Maryland were never going to leave the ACC for the Big East. Hell, BC had just made the exact opposite move less than a decade ago.

1) Well, as I explained, the situation in September 2011 was very fluid, with lots of names being bandied about. Nobody was sure what the B1G, SEC, Big 12, PAC, or ACC was going to do. Not a lot of time there for Pitt to try and rustle up a group to join the Big 12.

2) ESPN signed the ACC for $1.86 billion for 12 years, or $155 million per year and offered the Big East $1.4 billion for 9 years, essentially the same money. So Big East football schools were going to be getting essentially what ACC schools were getting. Not merely "within 4 or 5 million". And yet the Big East - rightly or wrongly - was so confident of its market position that it turned ESPN down. That suggests the Big East was a formidable rival for the ACC, or was going to be once it started cashing a big media check. The ACC surely noticed that.

3) BC and MD probably would not have left the ACC for the Big East, but that was just an example of the pro-active moves the Big East needed to make to defend itself from ACC predation. The ACC made it very clear from 2003 onwards that it saw the Big East as the prime roadblock in its desire to penetrate the Northeast, and for the obvious reason that the Big East had the most schools in the Northeast. What the Big 12 was doing was probably not nearly as prominent on the ACC radar.

Let's face it: You can make far-fetched claims about the ACC being worried about Big 12 (!!) incursions into Pennsylvania (!!) and New York (!!!) if you want, but the obvious motivation for taking Big East teams was to combat the Big East, not anybody else.

(05-10-2013 11:44 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Let's face it: You can make far-fetched claims about the ACC being worried about Big 12 (!!) incursions into Pennsylvania (!!) and New York (!!!) if you want, but the obvious motivation for taking Big East teams was to combat the Big East, not anybody else.

No, the ACC expanded into the East/Northeast to expand their footprint and television markets. The Big East never a threat to the ACC.

UConn isn't in the ACC because of any lawsuits or bitterness from the ACC. They aren't in the ACC because they offer nothing at all to the ACC in terms of television markets or in football. Period. If they did, everyone would shake hands and forget about prior litigation. When Maryland left it was a no-brainer to take Louisville over UConn. Louisville didn't get lucky because of bitterness towards UConn. Louisville offers 100 times more than UConn. The Big 12 really hosed up not taking Louisville.