Conference Realignment

[Techster]

It is also annoying, if one likes logical arguments, to state an abstract principle but not have the facts on the ground fit the principle. Committed to academics? Joining the B1G does not violate that principle in the least but having Louisville join the ACC probably does.

I would have liked a better explanation from Peterson because the one he gave left me with more questions.

Peterson also underestimated GT's (more specifically, Atlanta's) leverage. This is something I wrote in an earlier discussion: Atlanta is the single biggest Southern market (if you don't include Florida as a whole as a market). If GT would have left, and given the value of linear TV rights and TV markets at the time, the ACC would have been in a WORLD of hurt. It would have been a masterstroke by B1G's Jim Delany because it would have probably forced UNC and UVA (Both were tier 1 targets for the B1G) to move to the B1G as well because losing the GT/Atlanta market would have severely hurt the ACC's media value.

There was a LOT of pressure from the Carolina Mafia to keep GT in the ACC.

 

[cpf2001]

B1G reached out to UTexas a while back. I believe around the same time B1G reached out to GT. UTexas obviously declined (as did GT ).

TAMU is a top 20 public school, with a top 15 engineering school, and they are AAU. In terms of sports, they would automatically vault up near the top, if not the top, of the B1G in terms of revenue and donor money. They have not been happy with the SEC since Texas was announced as a new member as, according to them, TAMU would be the only school from Texas the SEC would invite.

IMO, either one would be a coup for the B1G.

A&M ranks CONSIDERABLY higher in the irrational cult department than UT in all the ways that fit wonderfully in the SEC. The Aggies would be a wonderful SEC fit if they didn’t keep letting their UT inferiority complex dominate their brains.

 

[Techster]

A&M ranks CONSIDERABLY higher in the irrational cult department than UT in all the ways that fit wonderfully in the SEC. The Aggies would be a wonderful SEC fit if they didn’t keep letting their UT inferiority complex dominate their brains.

LOL, you're not wrong.

 

[yeti92]

Same money, more academic prestige, easier path to playoffs, and less of a cannibalistic environment that occurs in the SEC...oh, and they can get away from UTexas like they thought they did when they went to the SEC.

Would actually be a little more money I think? Isn't the SEC supposed to be getting ~80m/team and the BIG getting $90-100m/team?

 

[TechPhi97]

GD, why is our leadership so shortsighted?

Back then, I think the travel distance was a huge negative, and our fans probably would’ve complained a lot about not being able to go to away games. With exponential revenue growth the travel concerns dissipated, but it was a big deal at the time.

 

[bobongo]

Back then, I think the travel distance was a huge negative, and our fans probably would’ve complained a lot about not being able to go to away games. With exponential revenue growth the travel concerns dissipated, but it was a big deal at the time.

Indeed. The picture then didn't have the sharp focus it has now, and the question wasn't the no brainer it is today. Regionality carried far more importance than it does currently.

 

[slugboy]

Indeed. The picture then didn't have the sharp focus it has now, and the question wasn't the no brainer it is today. Regionality carried far more importance than it does currently.

It seemed like a no-brainer back then. More often than not fans were talking about full stadiums to watch us match up against Michigan rather than Duke.

 

[CEB]

It seemed like a no-brainer back then. More often than not fans were talking about full stadiums to watch us match up against Michigan rather than Duke.

Agree… there were plenty of really compelling reasons to leave. Most thought there HAD to be more to it than we realized when it didn’t happen.
The decision not to go gave legs to the notion that the invitation never actually existed.

 

[LT 1967]

My wife and I attended the 2012 ACC Championship game against FSU. The talk about GT going to the B1G was really a hot topic on Friday before the game on Saturday. I remember getting up early on Sunday morning after the game to find a Charlotte paper to see if there was any final news. I really didn't hear anything until we returned home on Sunday afternoon. On the way, I stopped in Atlanta and picked up a paper (AJC) which had the attached article. The talk about the instability of the ACC was already circulating in the Media. So, I was disappointed that we did not make the move.

As far as the denial, I think one phrase may reveal something. When you say, "We are staying in the ACC", does that not imply there was an option?

Regardless, maybe we will get another opportunity if the ACC disintegrates. I am pretty sure Michigan, OSU, PENN State, Nebraska and others will be happy to visit Bobby Dodd Stadium and recruit local football talent.

.

 

[CEB]

My wife and I attended the 2012 ACC Championship game against FSU. The talk about GT going to the B1G was really a hot topic on Friday before the game on Saturday. I remember getting up early on Sunday morning after the game to find a Charlotte paper to see if there was any final news. I really didn't hear anything until we returned home on Sunday afternoon. On the way, I stopped in Atlanta and picked up a paper (AJC) which had the attached article. The talk about the instability of the ACC was already circulating in the Media. So, I was disappointed that we did not make the move.

As far as the denial, I think one phrase may reveal something. When you say, "We are staying in the ACC", does that not imply there was an option?

Regardless, maybe we will get another opportunity if the ACC disintegrates. I am pretty sure Michigan, OSU, PENN State, Nebraska and others will be happy to visit Bobby Dodd Stadium and recruit local football talent.

.

Lots of disturbing events in that article…
Our fans doing the gator chomp was the rotten cherry on top of that sh** sundae. What the heck? Why people?

 

[iceeater1969]

Peterson also underestimated GT's (more specifically, Atlanta's) leverage. This is something I wrote in an earlier discussion: Atlanta is the single biggest Southern market (if you don't include Florida as a whole as a market). If GT would have left, and given the value of linear TV rights and TV markets at the time, the ACC would have been in a WORLD of hurt. It would have been a masterstroke by B1G's Jim Delany because it would have probably forced UNC and UVA (Both were tier 1 targets for the B1G) to move to the B1G as well because losing the GT/Atlanta market would have severely hurt the ACC's media value.

There was a LOT of pressure from the Carolina Mafia to keep GT in the ACC.

Peterson under estimated......
About gtaa, what a swing and miss.

As Pres of NCAA board of Gov, he under estimated the need to share revenue with players. Massive Settlement is coming soon ......
Great job w turning down Bg1 to stay in acc ..
Since he never acknowledged the gtaa 250,000,000 debt, it didnt exist.
Hired MBob but didn't assure he and cpj worked as a team so cpj had resources.

 

[MWBATL]

Peterson....failed.

 

[bobongo]

It seemed like a no-brainer back then. More often than not fans were talking about full stadiums to watch us match up against Michigan rather than Duke.

Or Illinois, rather than Florida State (since we're picking cherries). Yeah, the matchups were generally bigger, as were the distances. And I remember a lot of folks adverse to the idea because of them.
I didn't say the B1G wasn't the better choice, or that such couldn't be seen at the time by prescient souls. I just made the point that the choice wasn't as crystal clear as it seems today.

 

[Northeast Stinger]

It seemed like a no-brainer back then. More often than not fans were talking about full stadiums to watch us match up against Michigan rather than Duke.

Seemed that way to me too. I remember thinking that the prestige of the B1G compared to the ACC should have made this impossible to turn down.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

There have been many accusations of shortsightedness leveled at the decision in 2012 to stick with the ACC. While I will readily agree that GT has made some bone jarringly obvious shortsighted decisions over the decades, I'm not sure that the decision was that obvious in 2012. In point of fact, the decision by the B1G to add Maryland and Rutgers was questioned by some. The B1G hadn't exactly been a NCAAF juggernaut, and the ACC was viewed as on the rise with both Clemson and FSU returning to form, VT just having completed a long string of 10+ win seasons, and a firm belief that Miami football would find it's way back. It's easy, hindsight being 20/20, to look back and complain, but at the time it didn't look like the bad decision that it does today.

 

[stinger 1957]

As has been mentioned academics don't need to be making business decisions, there are exceptions and hopefully we have an exception in our school President, kinda think we do, but we'll see.

 

[yeti92]

There have been many accusations of shortsightedness leveled at the decision in 2012 to stick with the ACC. While I will readily agree that GT has made some bone jarringly obvious shortsighted decisions over the decades, I'm not sure that the decision was that obvious in 2012. In point of fact, the decision by the B1G to add Maryland and Rutgers was questioned by some. The B1G hadn't exactly been a NCAAF juggernaut, and the ACC was viewed as on the rise with both Clemson and FSU returning to form, VT just having completed a long string of 10+ win seasons, and a firm belief that Miami football would find it's way back. It's easy, hindsight being 20/20, to look back and complain, but at the time it didn't look like the bad decision that it does today.

Agreed, I don't think the decision was necessarily a bad one at the time. The BIG is IMO STILL overrated as a football conference and getting a lot of undeserved credit, we would have ended basically every rivalry we had except uga, put additional travel strain on our student athletes, and at the time the monetary gain would have been minimal. Sticking with an ACC committed to achieving excellence would have been the right move.

Obviously most of these haven't worked out - the ACC if likely collapsing, the rivalry games have ended anyway, and the BIG is now making waaaay more money. But hindsight is 20/20

 

[Vespidae]

I don't think enough thought goes into the CHANGE in the culture of the Institute that occurred, at least in my lifetime, when discussing the whole athletic conference issue.

Prior to Joe Petit, GT still thought of itself as D1 athletics program. It wasn't THAT far removed from SEC play and most students, especially the Greek ones, regularly participated in and supported GT athletics. This was also true from faculty and staff. I knew many professors who had tickets and regularly made comments (and assignments) around Tech sports.

Petit fundamentally changed GT. He is the one who jumpstarted GTRI and many other initiatives. Tech went from being a technical school to a major research school with research jumping to $100 million under his tenure to over $1 billion today. The faculty changed as well with the turnover creating faculty more interested in research dollars and contracts than supporting a traditional D1 type university. Those faculty had, on occasion, wanted to end athletics entirely as a diversion to the new mission of expanding research. (Petit himself wanted to end the football program entirely in 1980.)

Flash forward to Bud Peterson. He famously quipped that his sole responsibility to athletics at GT was to name the AD. That's it. His performance wasn't measured at all at the BOR level and again, as he himself said, [paraphrasing] ... "I am not going to spend a lot of time on matters that affect less than 400 students." I believe one of the reasons he said no to the B1G was they expected MORE in terms of athletic support and that wasn't something he, nor the faculty at the time, really wanted to do.

Don't underestimate the voice of the faculty. It's not just about media dollars. The faculty can, and does, have a significant opinion about Tech's investment in sports. I don't think the Hill makes bone-headed decisions as much as they have changed the make-up of the Institute in a way that makes it more difficult and many simply .... punt.

 

[ThatGuy]

There have been many accusations of shortsightedness leveled at the decision in 2012 to stick with the ACC. While I will readily agree that GT has made some bone jarringly obvious shortsighted decisions over the decades, I'm not sure that the decision was that obvious in 2012. In point of fact, the decision by the B1G to add Maryland and Rutgers was questioned by some. The B1G hadn't exactly been a NCAAF juggernaut, and the ACC was viewed as on the rise with both Clemson and FSU returning to form, VT just having completed a long string of 10+ win seasons, and a firm belief that Miami football would find it's way back. It's easy, hindsight being 20/20, to look back and complain, but at the time it didn't look like the bad decision that it does today.

This.

With so many things in college football, it's easy to look at it through the retrospective lens we have today, rather than the blurry lens turned towards the future we had at the time.

Case in point: Everyone talks about how dominant FSU was last year (and they were). But they also conveniently neglect to report the 8 years prior to that, when FSU wasn't doing anything. Same goes for Clemson. It's assumed that FSU and Clemson have always been "blue bloods," because of their performance during a select time period. But that's only if you look at a specific time period, and the story drummed up by the media during and since. (FSU, granted, has a longer story of success when compared to Clemson. But I still say that the past almost 10 years shows that things can change, and rapidly. All it takes is a miracle on North Avenue to set the events in motion.)

Back to the fallacy of retrospect, same goes for our turning down the Big 10. At the time, the ACC was on the rise - in fact, when we signed our ESPN deal in 2013, we then had the most lucrative TV deal on the books at the time. (We displaced the Pac-10, who had previously had the most lucrative deal).

Read that again: 10 years ago, the Pac-10 and the ACC were getting paid the most from their TV contracts.

Bottom line: things change. They always have, they always will. And to look back at an event 12 years ago without considering how much was fundamentally different at the time is ludicrous.

(And by the same token, looking to the future based on things that have happened in the past is also somewhat ludicrous. Past performance is not prescriptive of future returns. Just ask Nebraska and Miami about that one.)

 

[RamblinRed]

As mentioned by others the TV contracts weren't all that different by conference back in the 2012-2013 timeframe. It wasn't until the last 5-6 years that the contracts have become very different.

I'll also add just adding money doesn't make you a better athletic program. Almost every program that has jumped from 1 power conference to another has had a worse record in their new conference than their old conference (both overall and in conference games). Fans think, "well now we are making more money then we were in the old conference", but you are no longer playing and competing against the old conference teams, you are now competing against the new conference teams. In many cases the programs are in a worse competitive position after moving than before as the new conference competitors are making so much more money than the new programs - often because they have much larger fanbases.