Re: next round of expansion already getting underway
Sadly, knowing Slive this sounds about right... and incredibly stupid. Only he would help the Big 10 get the top two targets. He's a blundering fool. He should, absolutely back off now if this is how things look. It's not like Virginia Tech and NC State have a lot of suitors they want to pay 50 million to leave for. All he's doing is helping the Big 10 try to lure Virginia and North Carolina.
Moron...
Krazy, what is your opinion? Given how difficult this is getting do you think the SEC should go ahead push its membership from 14 to 20 and make a basketball play? Scheduling would be difficult in football but how do you take a UNC, UVA and not take Duke. To me there is too much basketball value being left on the table here. Whatever value you lose incrementally with each expansion based on football can you make up the difference in basketball. It would seem to make more sense to make a play for VT, UVA, UNC, NCST, Duke, and Clemson. It sounds more natural for those schools to affiliate with brethren located below the Mason-Dixon line rather a bunch Midwestern elitists. Doing so would instantly make the SEC arguably the most competitive conference in football and basketball and likely baseball too. Wake Forest, GA Tech, FSU, and Miami along with WVa go to the Big 12. Let the Big 10 go after Boston College and Syracuse and UConn whoever else is left in the Northeast. Seems pretty simple when you look at this way. Politically speaking, it would seem easier to get such a deal done to the SEC rather the Big 10 trying to cherrypick from the ACC.
4 Divisions with 5 teams. Play 3 teams in your division, play 2 teams (home and away) from each of the other 3 divisions on a 9 game conference schedule. In 3 years you would have played everyone in a 20 team conference! If we went to 24 teams you could still play every team every 3 years which would allow us to take GA Tech, FSU, Wake, and Miami. Everybody has home if you go to 24 and you eliminate the scheduling issues for UGA, USC, and UF since their rivalry games then have conference implications.
Personally, I believe that we have maxed out, for now, all the revenue potential of expansion based on football. It would seem further expansion should be based on maximizing revenue and market reach to support a conference network. If that is the goal, then you have to look at the other sports as revenue drivers as what you can sell ad space around.