re: Lots of realignment rumors spiking back up

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There’s the problem. The NCAA/Conferences had dang near 5 decades to work on it, and we have no more of a plan today than we did then.

Instead, they chose to ignore the problem and ride it til the wheels fell off.

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Correct. The NCAA television contract model did not work in the emerging cable/satellite television era. The NCAA refused to recognize that they could maximize the revenue better by unfettering television appearance limits and making deals with ESPN and others in the early cable/sat era. They couldn't recognize it because of the same reasons wise changes befuddle the NCAA to this day: some group is going to lose out in the change.

At the same time, nobody adequately recognized that allowing the schools - or conferences as their representation - would lead to a huge disparities in revenue that would slowly lead to pronounce competitive separation and confound the arguments of amateurism when players correctly ask why they aren't entitled to a slice of this multi-billion dollar pie.

The universities needed to recognize where the world was going to be in 20 years. That's a lot to ask of anyone to be quite honest.

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I'm skeptical that the unhappy schools in the ACC will find a way out of the grant of rights, other than buying their way out. And, when it comes time to do that, OU and Texas were only able to buy out one year early from the Big XII -- hard to see those schools doing any better with the ACC, especially considering how dire their departure would be for the remaining schools.

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Agree. The ACC only has 3-6 schools who could find SEC or B10 homes so they don’t have the numbers to vote to disband or dissolve the GoR. Maybe if another 4 or 5 schools were offered Big12 spots and more money. But this would require a level of coordination and collusion to pull this off simultaneously with so many schools, conferences, and tv networks that it would be impractical and the lawsuits from left out teams would be enormous.

So if they can’t vote to dissolve the conference or GoR, the only other option is buyouts, but with the ACC being near worthless without UNC, FSU, Clemson, etc there is almost no dollar figure the remaining schools could accept that would come close to compensating for the lost revenue and prestige of those schools leaving. The B12 got lucky with the timing of their tv deal, and is located in a college football crazed region despite having no premier names. The ACC doesn’t have that to fall back on. Plus Texas and OU had the option of leaving for free by waiting one more year so they had leverage. The ACC schools are stuck another decade with no leverage to negotiate an exit.

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It doesn’t really matter what the 6 ‘big’ schools in the ACC want. The remaining 8 midget schools like Syracuse and Boston college will never agree to blow up the ACC because it would absolutely ruin their athletic programs

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I disagree. I think some of the middle tier ACC schools would be better off in the Big 12 than they are presently. First, the Big 12 has a pro rate clause, so new additions automatically get a new slice of the pie generated for them. It’s why the media deal payout per school has actually increased for the Big 12 despite losing Texas and OU. So a Pitt or an NC State might actually make more money in the Big 12 in the coming years than in the current ACC. Second, it would give those schools some stability. The ACC is fricked eventually. Better to dictate the terms of that ending and arrange a soft landing. Who knows what the landscape will look like once FSU, Clemson, and co. do finally tunnel their way out of the ACC prison.

So it’s really a few ACC schools who are totally screwed since they might not have a landing spot in the Big 12 or PAC. Wake Forest, Boston College, probably Louisville, probably Syracuse are in a very bad spot.