How Involved Was ESPN In ACC Expansion Into The Big East?
by Winfield Featherston on Oct 10, 2011 10:12 AM EDT
in Georgia Tech Football
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PrintThe news is scattered around the network today but Big East Biass first published the quote generated from a Boston Herald report entitled "Power Move By ACC". The article aims at devaluing the idea that conference realignment focused on basketball.
"[The move] had nothing to do with basketball,’’ said [Boston College Athletic Director Gene]DeFilippo. "It was football money which drove expansion. It was football money and securing our future.’
Making a statement like this should really come as no surprise, specifically to those of us who live in the South. Football is king and basketball, sometimes, is a hold over until more football, usually during March Madness. But to see it come from the mouth of a university official should still raise eyebrows. He is confirming what we have always known.
DeFilippo continues:
"We always keep our television partners close to us,’’ he said. "You don’t get extra money for basketball. It’s 85 percent football money. TV - ESPN - is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball.’’
I won't say that Swofford had an ESPN henchman in the board room telling the ACC who to invite for expansion and who to leave out but the ESPN comment simply shows how powerful and manipulative the machine has become and how dependent we are on it.
If you continue reading the Herald article, it continues to lay out specific tactics laid by Boston College to keep UCONN out of the ACC. That rivalry is deep.
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The SB Nation coverage is more believable
Than the boston herald’s. The paper makes it seem like the only decision makers in the acc are unc and duke, and that the rest of the conference blindly does their bidding (except when bc manipulates them with their silver tongue).
by Joe Hamilton's Chauffeur on Oct 10, 2011 12:41 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
What we have always known?
That anytime you mix multimillion dollar business with amateur athletics you get Corruption?
I am erecting a miniature soapbox for a second…
The NCAA has the nerve to “make an example” out of Georgia Tech over $312 in returned sports apparel, while the following is happening under their watch…
1) Players from The U are getting taken out to clubs by a Booster who also by the way is a Ponzi schemer
2) Scumbags like Jeremiah Masoli get kicked out of a school for damn near committing felony theft, and get picked up by Ole Miss as if he were a professional Free Agent?
3) Cam Newton can continue to play football even though there is documented proof that his father was soliciting a 6-figure payment for his services.
4) John Junker and the Fiesta Bowl making a mockery of how out of touch and corrupt the Bowl System is. Will this guy ever go to prison and the system become transparent? The passion for using this to right College Football’s wrong seems to have subsided.
5) Reckless and inefficient Conference rescheduling, that’s going to see a school like TCU go from the WAC, to the Big East, and to the Big 12 in less than 6 months.
Which brings me back to my original point. What brings me a smile, as idiot and hippocrate Conference commissioners an University Presidents lie through their teeth about the “ethics” of amateur athletics, is that they will soon fall victim to their own greed. As conferences get bigger and bigger…and more regionally asymmetric…the system of human judgement and picking larger draws over merit-worthy teams for bowls will grow that much more erratic, unmanageable, and unfair to a larger number of schools.
Either a body like Congress will get involved, or they will be forced to develop a playoff system based on the ineffiiencies of their Greed-centered model…
by TBuzz on Oct 10, 2011 12:52 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
Here Here.
The inconsistency and incompetency of the en see two ay and the bee see ess drive me crazy. And I’m not sure if I’ve just been paying more attention in the last few years, or if it has just been getting worse.
Go Jackets, go America.
THWG.
So from the West, to representing the East…to representing the Big 12 which now only has 9 or 10 schools in it?
It’s more practical for these big power conferences to keep their logos and branding intact than to accurately refer to themselves with the proper number of schools in conference. This should tell you all you need to know about the NCAA…
by TBuzz on Oct 10, 2011 4:11 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Yeah
I mean, in all fairness, the Mountain West and Big East were both geographically illogical choices for TCU. I’m a big believer in geographically-based conference alignment, and if you hail from Fort Worth why not play natural rivalry games in Austin, Waco, Lubbock, etc? So after all that’s happened with the SEC, PAC, and ACC…this was a step in the general direction of common sense.
None of this surprises me in the least.
It’s shocking to see in print, but any of really think it otherwise? I did not realize the extent to which BC blocked the move by UConn to the ACC, but It makes sense.
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca
"We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal." - Tennessee Williams
No surprise about the Tobacco Road pull...
Remembering back to the Jefferson-Pilot (based in Charlotte) Sports broadcast days, and all the sponsors were Lowe’s (based in NC), Food Lion (ditto), Holly Farms (ditto), Pepsi (founded in New Bern), Hardee’s (ditto)…and Wake-NCSU would get picked up by J-P before Tech-UVA would and we’d be relegated to listening to Al Ciraldo on WGST 92 or 680…AGAIN…not that listening to Al was that bad :)
Now we have a bowl (the Belk [based in Charlotte] Bowl) that favors NC teams and won’t venture past SC or VA.
A cautionary tale for UNC and Duke, after seeing how Bama almost killed the SEC in the 1960s over schollies and integration, and more recently t.u. and the Big XII over TV money…
But I digress.
Wow…the ACC must really want to take out the Big East…?!?
Time for the Deep South football schools (SC and southward) to make some national noise to put some counterweight to the NC schools…we’re talking about you, FSU and Miami….
How did Bama almost kill the SEC
When GT was the only school who quit? Just curious.
"You play fast! You play strong! You go out there and dominate the man you're playing against, and you make his ass quit! That's our trademark! That's our M.O.... as a team! That's what people know us as!" - Coach Nick Saban before the 2008 LSU game.
by 12NationalChampionships on Oct 13, 2011 10:00 AM EDT reply actions
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