The Pac 12 Network is a bust but the conference owns it.
The ACC football schools may be concerned about the lack of growth in their money.

Could some of the ACC and Pac 12 schools use this as an opportunity to explore moving schools from the ACC to the Pac 12 or the Pac 12 to the ACC with hopes of increasing the payouts to a competitive level?

Consider: The ACC schools and Pac 12 schools could run independent leagues for all non-football sports. The football schools would only meet in a conference championship/playoff. Ultimately, this is an East League and a West League.

Basically, a merger with the ACC lead could eliminate schools like Oregon State and Washington State. With a Pac 12 lead, maybe a school like Wake Forest gets eliminated. Or- All schools are members.

The real question is- How does a school like, say, Southern Cal or Clemson compete in a world where neighboring conference schools get $10-20 million more in television revenue?

Could rename it the Panama Canal conference

I think ESPN probably wants a strong ACC if only to counter the strength that they're creating in the SEC. Basically, they don't want the SEC calling the shots. They'd rather have two powerful entities that they can play off each other that are both within the ESPN sphere. So yeah, I could see the ACC making a move on the top Pac-12 schools while simultaneously pushing Notre Dame to commit as a full member. I'm sure ESPN could make it worth everyone's consideration.

(07-28-2021 12:25 PM)Eichorst Wrote:  I think ESPN probably wants a strong ACC if only to counter the strength that they're creating in the SEC. Basically, they don't want the SEC calling the shots. They'd rather have two powerful entities that they can play off each other that are both within the ESPN sphere. So yeah, I could see the ACC making a move on the top Pac-12 schools while simultaneously pushing Notre Dame to commit as a full member. I'm sure ESPN could make it worth everyone's consideration.

The ACC isn’t a strong conference though—it’s very weak relative to the SEC and Big 10.

The west coast teams are screwed. They are forever apart from each other. They don't have ratings. They don't have fans. Hell, they don't have PEOPLE.

I see no real way for the west coast schools to keep up.

(07-28-2021 12:21 PM)bluesox Wrote:  Could rename it the Panama Canal conference

Great idea. Won't be long until someone starts a thread on this board about how much ESPN will pay the conference for capturing the huge TV markets in Panama.

(07-28-2021 02:41 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  

(07-28-2021 12:25 PM)Eichorst Wrote:  I think ESPN probably wants a strong ACC if only to counter the strength that they're creating in the SEC. Basically, they don't want the SEC calling the shots. They'd rather have two powerful entities that they can play off each other that are both within the ESPN sphere. So yeah, I could see the ACC making a move on the top Pac-12 schools while simultaneously pushing Notre Dame to commit as a full member. I'm sure ESPN could make it worth everyone's consideration.

The ACC isn’t a strong conference though—it’s very weak relative to the SEC and Ohio State.

FIFY. The ACC and the B1G are extremely comparable leagues in basketball, even though it's been over two decades since a then-current B1G member actually won March Madness (ACC has 7 in that span, excluding Cuse's 2003 win when in the Big East, Louisville's 2013 title, when they were in the AAC and which was vacated, and Maryland's 2002 crown, because, well, f*ck Maryland). Yet we all know FB is what drives this, and Ohio State is what's keeping the B1G relevant in FB, just like Clemson has carried the water for the ACC since FSU fell off a cliff during the end of Jimbo's tenure. It's not like the football at Minnesota, Illinois, Rutgers, Northwestern, Maryland, Michigan or Michigan State is substantially better than UNC, Miami, Virginia, VPI, Pitt, or Louisville. The thing I find most interesting about the SEC expansion drama isn't that the Big XII was kept in the dark, but that the B1G got caught flat-footed by this. I do think it is a pipe-dream to consider adding PAC-12 teams to the ACC, but an out-of-conference scheduling arrangement between the two, akin to the proposed B1G-Pac 12 plan that never came to fruition, might make sense.