DeCock Nails It – Quote of the Day

Luke DeCock wrote a good article today about the hot topic of ACC scheduling/expansion.

The following quote really resonated with me as a point that I’ve been trying to make for a while:

The ACC’s dominance and success was built on rivalries like N.C. State and North Carolina, not the television markets delivered by ex-Big East schools or the money delivered by ESPN. Dilute those rivalries, and you risk destroying the product for which ESPN has paid so dearly.

Long-term decisions being made by conferences based on much shorter-term cycles is going to backfire in some faces. I certainly hope that it isn’t the ACC’s.

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33 Responses to DeCock Nails It – Quote of the Day

  1. packplantpath 02/06/2012 at 9:27 AM #

    Post title made me LOL. Juvenile humor, FTW!

  2. DC_wolf 02/06/2012 at 9:51 AM #

    I guess I’m showing my true basketball colors because I agree big time w/DeCock. I can’t say it any better so I won’t even try but I could kind of see this “dilution” coming when they were trying to arrange the Va. Tech deal. Don’t get me wrong – I like college football as much as the majority of the posters on here – but I kind of miss the days when we played the basketball home-&-home w/everyone in the league & you could say: “ok, you may have won @ your place but just wait till we get you back in OUR barn…”

  3. Daily Update 02/06/2012 at 10:35 AM #

    I usually skip going to the UNC game at home. I hate seeing my own funeral in person. It isn’t like we are not going to see games against quality teams like Pitt and Cuse.

    The ACC would have been non-competitive monetarily without expansion, so all of this talk is essentially useless. We had to expand and something had to be sacrificed in that expansion. Since seeding in the ACC tournament is based on conference standings and not performance vs. strength of conference schedule, then you had to go with a scheduling strategy based on equality of competition. Having more than 1 partner would have made it more difficult for our program to finish higher in the ACC standings(which leads to better ACC tourney performance to more NCAA bids to better NCAA seeding to more NCAA wins to more top 25 rankings to better recruits etc….)

  4. 61Packer 02/06/2012 at 10:48 AM #

    I didn’t like expansion past 8 teams, but I could live with 12 teams. Going to 14 and beyond is the real problem here, because it’s taking away home and home rivalries in basketball and rivalries period in football. If they’re ADDING games next season in basketball, then why do they have to REDUCE rival games? Makes no sense to me; I think they ought to be able to give a team 3 primary rivals instead of only one. That would go a long way in solving this mess they’ve created by pairing us with Wake Forest.

    Time to bring back the Big Four Tournament.

  5. DC_wolf 02/06/2012 at 11:38 AM #

    I’m not sure I see how the ACC would be non-competitive monetarily without bringing in Pitt & Syracuse. Duke, UNC, & FSU typically are @ the top nationally in merchandising & endorsement money (K is 1 of the top, if not top paid coaches in the country). And even State, UMD, Clemson & Va. Tech are nationally well known for the quality of their facilities.

    If its football we are trying to compete monetarily in, I still don’t see how bringing in Big East also-rans will help. It sounds like a lot of mass media group think that is being perpetrated. And if bringing in Rutgers & UConn will help us compete monetarily in football – by all means bring them in.

    And if you’re willing to give up a tradition-rich basketball rivalry in the hope you “go with a scheduling strategy based on equality of competition” you’re just giving up too easy…

  6. jwrenn29 02/06/2012 at 2:11 PM #

    The harping that I’ve heard on this site about joining the SEC was mostly ridiculous until now. Now that we don’t play UNC twice in basketball every year, we don’t have a rival (Wake Forest is our rival? Get real, ACC! Who cares about Wake Forest!?). We might as well leave for the SEC, not that they would have us.

    But seriously, this is probably the worst decision I’ve seen from the ACC. EVER.

  7. ldr of the pk 75 02/06/2012 at 6:06 PM #

    For the record, you have to go back before the ACC to the days when Wake Forest was our real rival. That also precedes the days of any relevance for football related to State, Duke, UNC, and Wake. It was our Southern Conference days and the rivalry was Baseball. Wake was indeed our rival. It was the Wake County Championship.

    Though alive at the inception of the ACC, I don’t recollect the sports and political arguments of the day. I’d bet there were those that lamented the decline of the Southern Conference we were in, saying everything is going to hell in a handbag.

    I suppose if we all live another 50 or so years, perhaps ESPN will have forced all into one huge Super Conference administered and dictated by ESPN TV. Maybe then laws about monopolies can kick in and we can begin the slow process of reducing into the conferences of old. Of course this isn’t likely, just another lament on how all this maneuvering of conferences sucks.

  8. tjfoose1 02/06/2012 at 8:13 PM #

    “I suppose if we all live another 50 or so years, perhaps ESPN will have forced all into one huge Super Conference administered and dictated by ESPN TV.”

    50 years? We have that now, just not in name. That’s why I suggested doing away with the pretences and change that name of the ACC to ESPN East.

    ESPN slready owns and televises every bowl game. They’ve already destroyed rivalries and traditions in college football. College basketball will soon follow.

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