New Big East logo

[Ron Mexico]

A D-I-AA program isn't going to join a conference who completely changed the landscape of college sports to EXPLICITLY MAKE THEM A BETTER FOOTBALL CONFERENCE!

No, but it would make them $20 million richer by allowing them to have a conference championship in football.

There have been some schools that have made the jump, and given time it could be done in Williamsburg.

But let's not fixate on one less-than-ideal suggestion and miss the point. My point is that there are a handful of teams geographically more proximate to the rest of the conference members that would be a markedly better fit than BC. Besides, they aren't close to the powerhouses that have joined the ACC most lately - FSU, Miami, Va. Tech. All have more impressive pedigrees than BC, plus the advantage of geography.

Seriously... a small, private Catholic school in New England in the ACC. ?

Yes, schools do make the jump from I-AA to I-A all the time, but they're generally indepednets when they start out in I-A before moving onto weaker conferences. Would it make sense for a conference who was so hell-bent on becoming a football power conference that they were willing to upend the entire landscape of college sports to add a I-AA team? The entire point of them raiding the Big East was to make themselves stronger for football, and throwing in a I-AA team would run counter to that.

And what if they are a private Catholic school in New England? Wake Forest is an even smaller private secular school in North Carolina. No one cared when the Big Ten added a PA school or the PAC-8 added 2 schools who didn't border the Pacific Ocean.

And saying the Big East is the best basketball conference in the nation isn't exactly going out on a limb, people were saying that about them last year.

[NMLSooner]

I know it will never happen, but if the conferences would give a little it could be better. I think it could look like this with a little compromise.

ACC: gives up Maryland & BC to Big East. gets S. Fla. & S. Carolina.

Big East: gives up Louisville to SEC, Cincy to Big Ten. BE gets Md., Penn State, BC, Marshall & E. Carolina (12 teams total now.) Drop the B-ball only, they'll be gone soon anyway.

SEC: gets Louisville and Memphis. Drop Vandy

Big Ten: give up PSU. get Cincy & ND (12 teams total)

This would make it regional and balanced. The regional thing is what makes college football unique, not the bowl system. blech!

[OMMF]

SEC: gets Louisville and Memphis. Drop Vandy

So you want to drop one Tennessee located team for another? How does that make it more regional?

[NMLSooner]

Exchanging Vandy for Memphis didn't really have anything to do with being more regional. They both are in the same region. The reasons I would put Memphis in instead of Vandy are that Nashville now has a pro team to draw fan interest, Vandy has been so bad for so long in the SEC, Memphis could support a BCS level team, and I think they could be more competative than Vandy (which isn't saying much). I got interested in looking at conference setup when the ACC started the domino effect of teams moving to different conferences. I've got a layout for all D-1A teams and conferences that I think would work well. I based it on attendence averages, population bases, and proximity to NFL teams. Just something to waste my time doing that I think is fun.

[RamblinGamblinTiger]

Kind of reminds me of the Conference USA Logo.....is it the same company?

[HatCityEnforcer]

Big East: gives up Louisville to SEC, Cincy to Big Ten. BE gets Md., Penn State, BC, Marshall & E. Carolina (12 teams total now.) Drop the B-ball only, they'll be gone soon anyway.

It's a nice thought, but I think you'd have a better chance of seeing Elvis before BC would be re-admitted into the Big East.

You'd see Syracuse, Pitt, West Virginia, and UConn all leave if that were the case.

[VitaminD]

The entire point of them raiding the Big East was to make themselves stronger for football, and throwing in a I-AA team would run counter to that.

Ay carumba! And my entire point was that there are schools, both I-A and I-AA, that would be a more natural fit for a conference seated in the Southeast. Whether or not W&M is the wisest choice is debatable, I agree. But there are other schools that could have been considered that would engender more natural rivalries with the current member ACC schools.

And what if they are a private Catholic school in New England?  Wake Forest is an even smaller private secular school in North Carolina. 

Wake Forest was founded by the North Carolina Baptist Convention, and still has some ties to the Baptists, including a recently-opened School of Divinity. Their medical school's main hospital is Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. To call them secular may be just a little bit of a stretch. And Catholicism in the mostly Protestant American South has hardly been welcomed with open arms, historically.

"In 1833 the Baptist State Convention authorized the establishment of a literary institute largely for the training of ministers. To help reduce tuition the convention endorsed a program of manual labor and purchased a farm in Wake County as the site for the school, called the Wake Forest Institute." [from: "History of Wake Forest University".

No one cared when the Big Ten added a PA school or the PAC-8 added 2 schools who didn't border the Pacific Ocean.

Because Penn State is a logical fit! Pennsylvania borders Big Ten country (Ohio), so the league keeps contiguous borders, and Penn State is a gigantic, state school - like 8 of the other 10 schools in the conference it joined! Similarly, when the Pac-8 expanded, it expanded into a state bordering its area at the time, and it added 2 large state schools. Both expansions made sense, as did adding Florida State, Virginia Tech and Miami to the ACC. I proposed a few teams that don't touch the Atlantic coast (Louisville, for example), but are still large southeastern schools. Massachusetts is 6 hours by car from the nearest ACC school. No other school in the ACC has a tradition of being a private, Catholic, New England school.

Finally, consider this with regard to adding a "weak member" school:

Duke's signature program is men's basketball. Duke basketball was not one of the 20 winningest teams of the 1980s. Their team didn't crack the national top 25 from 1971 through the '76-'77 season. The school as a whole has won just 6 national titles in all sports. It is a small, private school, far smaller than the larger state schools that comprise the ACC.

By your logic and standards, would Duke have been a viable expansion candidate 25 years ago? I strongly doubt it - look at the records, and imagine if the school's name wasn't "DUKE UNIVERSITY". No way would they have gotten the precious 12th bid. So can things change in the course of 25 years? Absolutely! Clemson won the 1981 football national title, and haven't gotten a sniff of a national title ever since. So to completely write off a school because it is weak athletically now is a little ridiculous. Things can be cyclical, and if the administration ever put some effort into it, a school like W&M, with a large endowment, could field a better program. A perennial all-sports powerhouse... probably not.

[Ron Mexico]

When a conference is looking to strengthen as a football conference RIGHT NOW, because football makes conferences obscene amounts of money, they will tend to go to schools that can make them a stronger football conference RIGHT NOW. This isn't a difficult concept.

And because Catholocism has been met with resistance in the South at times, a Catholic school shouldn't be joining the ACC? Schools in the ACC should only have a secular or Protestant affiliation? Please tell me which religions are allowed in which conferences, so I'll know just which home offices I should send death threats too for allowing a bunch of drunken mick papists in.

[VitaminD]

And because Catholocism has been met with resistance in the South at times, a Catholic school shouldn't be joining the ACC?  Schools in the ACC should only have a secular or Protestant affiliation?  Please tell me which religions are allowed in which conferences, so I'll know just which home offices I should send death threats too for allowing a bunch of drunken mick papists in.

When a conference is looking to strengthen as a football conference RIGHT NOW, because football makes conferences obscene amounts of money, they will tend to go to schools that can make them a stronger football conference RIGHT NOW.  This isn't a difficult concept.

Some numbers to crunch when assessing how BC "strengthens" the ACC's football profile:

Since 2000 and through 2004, BC's winning percentage - based on playing in a conference populated by the likes of Temple (.283), and Rutgers (.239) - is .640. The same winning percentage as Clemson achieved playing in the ACC. That's good for SIXTH BEST.

Let's go back a little further. From 1990 forward, BC plays to a .542 winning percentage, including Big East games. In that same time, FSU played at .825; Clemson, .608; NC State, .595; UNC, .587; Georgia Tech, .584. For the record, Miami and Virginia Tech played to winning percentages of .817 and .687, reepectively - against the same conference competition as BC. Syracuse (.654) and West Virginia (.564) also outplayed BC over this same period of time.

This is strengthening the conference?

So what then is BC's appeal? Are they a school with a national following like UNC, Duke, Miami, Florida State? Hardly.

And though you seem to have trouble grasping the idea - as evidenced by the tangential attempt at sarcasm and drunken papists - the fact remains that Boston College shares next to nothing with the schools that it is joining. Different cultures, different traditions, different rivalries. Your misguided comparisons to Penn State joining the Big 10 and the Arizona schools joining the Pac-8 only serve to make my case better. Penn State is a large, public university - like every Big Ten school save Northwestern - in a state adjacent to Big Ten's previous territory. Arizona and Arizona State are similarly large public universities - like every Pac-8 school except Stanford - in a state adjacent to the Pac-8's territory.

What does Boston College have in common with the ACC schools? Geography? Culture? History?

Nowhere did I say that a Catholic school shouldn't join the ACC. (There is a quote feature on the board; feel free to use it.) I'm just trying to demonstrate yet another way that BC is a bad fit for the ACC in its blind quest for cash.

I have yet to see any defensible reason that BC is a good fit. They're a good football program, but certainly not a "must-have" powerhouse, not in this conference. There's no natural rivalry between BC and Clemson that this makes better. All I have ever said about this is that BC is a terrible choice at worst, illogical at best, to be the 12th school in the ACC.

The money is great, and college football drives the wagon, but it's costing the ACC part of what made it magical - bitter local rivalries, home-and-home basketball games, and the like.

EDIT: As pointed out by HatCityEnforcer in the next post, UConn joined in football last year. As such, their statistics aren't relevant or germane. So withdrawn. BC is still a stupid choice for the ACC.

[HatCityEnforcer]

BC has a national following?

News to me...sheesh, they have a hard enough time generating any interest in Boston proper, much less the rest of New England...

Face it, the real reason BC jumped to the ACC was because they saw a big payday with a super football conference...anyone thinking otherwise is delusional...

FYI, VitaminD...UConn didn't become a full member of the Big East football conference until last season...it wasn't supposed to happen until THIS season but they were admitted a year early due to Miami and VTech departing from the Big East for the ACC.

[VitaminD]

BC has a national following?

News to me...sheesh, they have a hard enough time generating any interest in Boston proper, much less the rest of New England...

Face it, the real reason BC jumped to the ACC was because they saw a big payday with a super football conference...anyone thinking otherwise is delusional...

FYI, VitaminD...UConn didn't become a full member of the Big East football conference until last season...it wasn't supposed to happen until THIS season but they were admitted a year early due to Miami and VTech departing from the Big East for the ACC.

Good point, HCE. I will retract UConn from the last post. It really won't hurt my point.

And when I posed the question about BC having a national following, please notice my answer was "Hardly." BC saw an opening and jumped at it; my beef is with the ACC for being blinded by loot and eroding the fabric of a wonderful conference by admitting a team it had no business courting.

Paradoxically, BC's defection opened the door for all the new schools to join the Big East, which will be stronger in hoops as a result. So they left a conference that got stronger in its wake to be an also-ran in football in a basketball-first conference with its eyes on the prize, even if it costs them valued tradition.

!

[HatCityEnforcer]

Never said the good fathers up on Chestnut Hill were really smart Greedy, yes...smart, um no.

Have to agree...the ACC fluffed up bad when they brought in BC.

Miami's reasoning for leaving was all messed up as well and it was on the spurring of their admin. that the ACC got the idea of raiding the Big East and trying to woo Syracuse as well...in the end, Miami leaving was good for both sides...actually it was more of a relief among Big East fans like myself.

VTech at least was up front about the whole thing and said if they got an official invite from the ACC, they were inclined to accept seeing their arch rivals are there and it made more sense for them geographically.

BC, on the other hand, lied their asses off and got what they wanted...a chance at a big payday in a sport they're only so-so at (hard to take a team that always seemed destined to finish behind Miami and VTech in the Big East that much more seriously in the ACC)...and it's cost BC big around these parts, seeing that NONE of the other New England Big East schools will even consider putting them on the sched anymore in hoops. Also, BC's one trip to Rentschler Field in 2003 will be their last ever as long as coach Edsall and the AD have anything to say about it...meaning all the BC alums in the area will either have to schlep it to Chestnut Hill or go on massive road trips to see their beloved Gilded Pigeons play.

They got the money, but they'll get some hellacious beatings on the gridiron and hardwood this upcoming year....and I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't looking forward to seeing BC get b!tchslapped by everyone in the ACC (yes, even by Duke and Miami...)