Surprised to find folks so against the idea of better

Jul 1, 2012, 11:58 AM

competition in ACC football by re-aligning the divisions to where the better football programs would play each other every year. I ran this by some other fan bases and the general consensus seems to be that despite the perceived weaknesses of the ACC and its position in the national landscape, plus the lack of excitement behind numerous Saturdays, it wouldn't be worth it to essentially swap two of a team's less challenging opponents annually with two tougher league opponents, even with the benefit of an extra league home game every other year as a reward for doing so.

Based on how conference standings would have shaken out over the past several years for seeding, and including the new schools Pitt and Syracuse, Clemson's 2012 schedule would replace a home game against Ball State or Furman with Miami, and instead of @ Wake it would be @ Pitt. Keep in mind that when the league does go to 14 and a 9-game schedule, we'd simply lose that Ball State or Furman home date altogether as it's a home year against SCAR, provided we'd still keep an Auburn on the schedule. Essentially, a top-heavy division format would allow a 7th home game at Death Valley for that season, with that extra game being against Miami. When complaining about league revenue, how much is that worth?

I guess my definition of an elite team is different. It's not a team that simply compiles a great record and has a chance to make it into the semifinals, it's a team that stands at the top consistently over better competition and earns its way into the national talk by steadfastly taking care of business on the field.

There's 4 post-season spots and 5 leagues. Why should a participant in that series not feel compelled to prove itself through the year against the best teams in its region? Plus, for those years (almost every for most programs) where a team isn't championship caliber, wouldn't more attractive home and away games be worth it?

Seems to me like the reason why the league can't consistently put out elite teams anymore is because of how easy it is for teams to play either up or down to the level of competition. By strengthening the competition, I would expect better odds for an elite team to rise up.

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where the lower level of overall competition that ACC schools play in-conference has been blamed for national underperformance in OOC and BCS games, yet when an opportunity to combat this within the conference by making our schedule a little more difficult is largely ignored.

This is just an exercise, as it's a sports message board as a medium, but are those folks who clamor for a more competitive league schedule actually not willing to support it when an opportunity appears to make it happen? Or those folks who lament the dwindling of bigger games and more nooners in Death Valley? Speak up and throw out some opposition. It's in its infancy and needs to find its real weaknesses, because it could produce a huge dividend for the football programs were it to go into action.

Is there bad data on the increase in prime broadcast inventory that would result from the better teams playing each other more often? It's pretty significant - from 13 prime match-ups annually to 21. This higher number though is roughly and evenly spread out at one per among the top division teams.

Or counting seats filled in Death Valley an extra time each year, and 1-2 more games a year being top of the line on top of that? Are those numbers wrong? Would we not make an extra $6 Mil on the extra home game? It would actually come out to an extra game every year if we want to continue to schedule a quality OOC.

Somebody hep me.

Surprised to find folks so against the idea of better

elite teams don't make a 'habit' of playing down to their

Re: elite teams don't make a 'habit' of playing down to their

Re: elite teams don't make a 'habit' of playing down to their

Even with the top teams bunched up, the ACC could hardly

if everything remains the same, perhaps, but it won't.

I like the north/south alignment much better than an

The SEC phenomenon is actually one of the strengths of this

The problem with that is you end up with a

David vs. Goliath. The lower division team would be the best

Re: Surprised to find folks so against the idea of better

^^^^ john swofford approves this message.***

Yes, which would make it an easier sell to those programs to

I can't count the number of times where I've read on here

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