NatsFan2004

Men's basketball, an actual revenue-generating sport, is being treated as an afterthought in all this conference realignment hubbub. There's no way lacrosse and baseball factor into who goes where.

Make no mistake, I'm not saying that baseball and lacrosse are going to change what the ACC does in terms of bringing in new dance partners - I'm just saying that it's going to be something the conference has to consider moving forward and for which they'll need to come up with solutions.

Clearly, the ACC wins on the men's basketball side by bringing in Syracuse and Pitt. There's no question about that.

Moving forward, if UConn wants to be in, I think the ACC takes them in a heartbeat - even though their football program isn't hugely strong, the basketball side makes up for that in spades.

I don't really understand Rutgers - it's a good school, but their football and basketball programs are awful. Plus, the ACC now has a big foothold in the New York market with Syracuse, so I'm not sure what they'd gain by adding Rutgers. WVU makes more sense, IMO.

Two other points which aren't being discussed:

• Bringing over Pitt right now breaks up the conference rivalry between Pitt and West Virginia. Regardless of academics (and really, with the exception of perhaps the Big Ten, who's paying attention to academics in the formation of athletics conferences these days?), West Virginia would seem to be the best fit for the ACC in terms of natural ties. Bringing them over would keep their rivalry with Pitt, plus you'd have regional tie-ins with Virginia, Virginia Tech and Maryland.
  
• The addition of Syracuse and Pitt means that there will be an odd number of teams for both baseball and men's lacrosse (Syracuse does not have a baseball team and Pitt does not have a men's lacrosse team). For lacrosse, it's probably not a big deal to have 5 schools involved, but 15 schools in baseball presents some scheduling issues. Perhaps this is another indication that the ACC isn't done expanding yet (ie, accept one more baseball school and one more non-baseball school, and ideally the same thing with men's lacrosse). Or perhaps they'd encourage Syracuse to take up baseball again and for Pitt to start men's lacrosse - the ACC has traditionally wanted all its members to field teams in its core sports.
  

There's a few schools I'm really wondering about:

1. Villanova & Georgetown: These two Big East basketball schools are in FCS in football. Will they jump to FBS, or will they move conferences?

Nova could theoretically step up to FBS, but it would take a tremendous commitment on the part of the school to expand Villanova Stadium to anything remotely resembling a 1-FBS facility. And IMO, Georgetown is a no-go because there's nowhere for them to play that would qualify as a 1-FBS facility - they can't build a suitable stadium on campus because of lack of space (as a tightly-fit city university) and all the other non-college stadiums in the area are way too big. (I guess they could play at decrepit old RFK, but YOU try to recruit at the FBS level in a stadium like that...)

If this all goes through, hopefully the ACC would reorganize it's football divisons. Potentially......

Not sure what value geographical alignment would bring to the table here. When the ACC expanded to 2 divisions, the alignments were decidedly mixed-up to preserve rivalries within the same division. Also, the ACC chose the same alignment for both football and men's basketball - I doubt that's going to change.

Assuming the ACC goes to 16, I'd expect them to do something like this:

Atlantic Division

Boston College

Connecticut

Florida State

Maryland

Miami

Pittsburgh

Syracuse

West Virginia/Rutgers

Coastal Division

Clemson

Duke

Georgia Tech

North Carolina

NC State

Virginia

Virginia Tech

Wake Forest