Putting the Cart Before the Horse in Virginia Tech/SEC Conference Realignment Talk
by furrer4heisman on Jun 9, 2010 1:21 AM EDT
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Since I got called out for not offering my own opinion on this "Virginia Tech-to-SEC" kerfuffle (what's AP Style for kerfuffle?), I figured I'd chime in quickly. Then again, it's me so quickly is a pretty relative term, right Joe?
First of all, I'm happy that Virginia Tech is in the ACC. It's a fine, stable conference that just signed a pretty good TV deal. I like the teams that are currently in the league and am enjoying the developing rivalries with schools like Georgia Tech in football and Maryland in basketball. I have a good deal of respect for almost every school in the ACC. The conference feels like home.
And stability isn't something to dismiss when talking about conference health these days. The Big 12 is being pulled apart from all sides, has a terrible TV deal and its revenue (non) sharing agreement has some schools feeling unappreciated. The Big East might see its destruction if teams are gobbled up by the Big Ten and/or SEC.
The ACC is a strong conference. But, at the risk of sounding opportunistic, ungrateful and unsatisfied (In all seriousness, read Pitt Blather. That dude has been summing up Expansionpalooza on a near-daily basis better than anyone on the Series of Tubes), Virginia Tech would pretty much have to accept an offer to join God's Conference.
Joe from The Key Play sums it up nicely:
Being a member of the SEC, the premier college football conference, would provide more national and regional television exposure (CBS, ESPN, ABC broadcasts), increased recruiting clout and revenue (dump trucks full of money).
But while Joe and other Virginia Tech fans remain optimistic that Cool Hand Slive will eventually knock on Jim Weaver's door, I am not. It's been argued that Virginia Tech helps deliver a new media market for the SEC in Washington, DC. I don't think the Hokies deliver DC any more than Virginia or Maryland does or any more than Rutgers delivers NYC. None of them do because those are pro sports towns that really don't care that much about college sports.
Plus, the SEC doesn't need to expand carriage rights for a conference network like the Big Ten does because the SEC already has a conference network with four letters that doesn't need any help saturating any market.
Virginia Tech does fit into the SEC culturally, as a few mainstream media folks are quick to point out. But that's about the only way it fits. At the end of the day, the having the Hokies as part of an expanded SEC just means God's Conference would have to cut its pie into 16 slices instead of 12. And while the idea of expansion may have already been worked into the SEC's lucrative TV deal, I still think it would mean less money per team, something none of them will probably be willing to sign off on.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that when it comes to the SEC, expansion for the sake of expansion probably isn't going to happen and that means any expansion scenario for God's Conference probably won't involve Virginia Tech. I also don't think it involves the SEC "gutting" the ACC by taking four members.
So while you all fret about whether or not chips are going to fall a certain way and the Hokies might get into the SEC, I'm just going to remain satisfied with our current position in the ACC and enjoy watching the carnage.
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At this point I don’t think Tech will go to the SEC but I think you might be overstating the makeup of DC as a professional sports team. I know and live around more Hokies and have been to just as many Hokie football parties as I ever was a Tech. Hokie pride is strong in NOVA (I can’t speak for Maryland). Honestly I think the majority of people would like to get excited about the professional DC sports programs but we have had very little to cheer about recently. The Capitals have been a bright spot but the Redskins have left something to be desired, perhaps with the new coaching staff that will change but in the mean time people around here are rooting for their Hokies! Gobble Gobble!!
They don't have to dominate DC to deliver DC
With the advent of networks like the B10 network, the important thing isn’t necessarily getting everyone in the media market to watch, it’s getting enough interest in that market to get cable stations to pick up the channel and force their subscribers to pay for it.
VT may be overshadowed by the Redskins and other pro teams, but there are enough VT fans in NoVA and DC to get any SEC channel or SEC broadcast on every TV in the DC area.
I don’t think an ACC team going to the SEC would get the dump trucks of money people think they will. The number I keep seeing for the SEC’s TV deal is $17 million, per school, per year. The ACC will provide about $13 million. But if two ACC teams jump ship and make the SEC a 14-team conference, that number goes down to about $14.5 million. Would an ACC team leave for an extra million and a half? Would the SEC teams be willing to spread the money around more? I think the SEC is more likely to pick off whatever conference gets torn apart by the expansions, and offer them half-shares or worse, the alternative being irrelevance.
by MaizeAndBlueWahoo on Jun 9, 2010 9:11 AM EDT reply actions
Unless You're a Hokie, Washingtonians Don't Care About VT
That’s the difference between people in SEC land and people in DC. SEC folk are fed college sports from birth and don’t need to go to the school to be hardcore fans. Most people in DC don’t live and die by the Hokies unless they have some family link to the school and they mostly root for the pro teams around. I’m not saying that Hokie Alum don’t match the intensity of any SEC school Alum. I would put us up against any of those schools any day, but its the die hard fans in the South that have nothing do with the school that make God’s Conference what it is.
this sure is fun
fireworks start in 2 days … right now we are just setting the lawn chairs up and getting ready for the show.
Why would we leave?
Since joining the ACC we have seen the highest level of play in Tech’s football history and the turnaround of the basketball program. Why leave a conference where we get to go to the BCS every other year and have the longest 10 win season streak outside of Texas? The reputation is growing every year thanks to the improvement of schools like UNC and GT. And do we want to play in a conference where our speed won’t match up? I have a hard time believing we can win in the SEC like we win in the ACC, and that’s what its all about: W’s.
For fans, it may be all about Ws
but for administrators its all about $.
A bullhorn, a bottle of whiskey and a dream. GobblerCountry.com
by furrer4heisman on Jun 9, 2010 3:33 PM EDT up reply actions
For athletic administrators, the two are very tightly linked...
…but Jim Weaver and his fellow ADs don’t make this decision. Presidents do, and research money counts at least as much as football money in their world. And that aligns us much more tightly with the ACC, considering the ACC-IAC (whose eventual goal is to become the equivalent of the Big Ten’s CIC) and the fact that we have existing academic joint ventures with three other ACC schools already, two purely at graduate level.
Remember 2003. Our presence in the ACC ultimately came down to four people: Mark Warner, John Casteen, Charles Steger, and Minnis Ridenour (to demonstrate that our financial house was/could be in order). Not an athletics guy on that list.
That 17-year-old Hokie sitting in the rafters in Greensboro didn't see any of this coming.
notice i said administrators
not “athletics administrators”. yes, i know presidents have the final say in stuff like this.
A bullhorn, a bottle of whiskey and a dream. GobblerCountry.com
by furrer4heisman on Jun 9, 2010 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions
Chas at Pitt Blather has been following the realignment saga...
…for a long, long time. He knows what he’s talking about, despite the blue and gold goggles and rather perverse view of 2003.
I’m not nearly as optimistic on this SEC thing as a lot of people. The “cultural” fit people keep talking about is true in precisely one facet: we’re a football-first school. Everything else, though, not so much.
- Our alumni base points north and east, not south (except in the Research Triangle, hardly SEC land).
- We’ve been trying to move up the US News academic rankings, which is mostly through graduate research; the ACC helps with that, the SEC does not.
- The Hokie Club neither donates nor does the athletic department spend the kind of money we’d need to to survive in SEC football.
Practical issues get even worse:
- We’d hamstring men’s basketball recruiting again by being forced to recruit out of our geographic niche (a problem we had in the Big East). Virginia and NC kids grow up on ACC basketball, and that isn’t changing as long as North Carolina and Duke play in the ACC. Talking kids out of that is tough.
- Non-revenue sports competition would get much harder and a lot more expensive. Ever watched the Olympics and paid attention to where lots of European and African athletes developed into international-caliber competitors? The SEC and the Pac-10. That takes money that we don’t have, and that I find it difficult to believe we’d generate that much additional revenue on our own in the SEC.
- Travel goes back to sucking. We saved millions, which we were able to plow back into recruiting, coaching and scholarships, by being able to bus non-revenue teams to 2/3 of the ACC, as opposed to having to fly to all but 2-3 schools in the BE. Costs go right back up if we’re having to fly the field hockey team to Athens and Gainesville, rather than drive them to Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill.
That 17-year-old Hokie sitting in the rafters in Greensboro didn't see any of this coming.
i know a person or 2
all they have said … the SEC will give a serious look. i’m just some guy on the internet … you know who isn’t, rivals, espn, sporting news and the orlando sentinel. do you think they just magically picked vt out of the air last friday after 2 weeks of only mentioning fsu, clemson, miami and gt? of course not, those reporters were fed information by someone, likely different people too. could be smoke, but i doubt it. SEC isn’t worried about the B10 coming to get VT.
that does not mean offer. that does not mean acceptance if offered. just means they will look at VT.
you stating the bad fits are for VT not so much for the SEC. that is our problem, not theres. Don’t kid yourself to think they won’t give VT a look. ANYONE who says otherwise is just talking and has no sources.
Game changer
is Texas. Let’s say the Baylor crap works and the three public Texas schools have to take them along for the ride. If the Pac 10 says no, do UT and A&M look at the SEC, politicians be damned? It’s possible.
A bullhorn, a bottle of whiskey and a dream. GobblerCountry.com
by furrer4heisman on Jun 9, 2010 11:20 PM EDT up reply actions
"Politicians be damned?" Does not compute.
Politicians control the boards (of visitors/regents/whatever), which hire and fire university presidents. None of these people are going to risk their cushy, prestigious jobs.
Remember that UVa President John Casteen’s vote for us for ACC admission in 2003 wasn’t secure until Mark Warner reminded a couple of anti-VT members of the UVa Board of Visitors who were hassling Casteen that they served at the pleasure of the governor.
That 17-year-old Hokie sitting in the Greensboro Coliseum rafters in 1997 didn't see any of this coming.
Yes, I know
that Warner pushed for us. Yes, I know that the politicians select the leaders of the universities.
But OU and Texas A&M have looked into the SEC and I’m pretty sure Texas has, too. And I seriously doubt the SEC would take Baylor along for the ride.
A bullhorn, a bottle of whiskey and a dream. GobblerCountry.com
by furrer4heisman on Jun 10, 2010 1:17 PM EDT up reply actions
I'm not saying they won't give us a look.
We’re an obvious option for the SEC if they feel like they have to expand. I fully expect they’ve got projections on us, particularly in terms of how much of the DC market we can deliver.
I just don’t think it’d be a good idea for VT.
That 17-year-old Hokie sitting in the Greensboro Coliseum rafters in 1997 didn't see any of this coming.
also
on another message board that makes a lot of sense …
a poster said the SEC would take their time and expand later if …
they can’t get texas (unlikely)
and see how it works for the pac 10 and if money is left on the table.
a well respected, pretty good connected hoo who lives in alabama agreed.
let’s face it, the SEC can get anyone from the ACC they wanted if their money is A LOT better. getting a lot better money isn’t going to come over night, i don’t think. they make enough money to wait this out a bit.
so in a couple years do this all again?
i could see the big 10 holding at 12 and waiting for ND and take another be it this year, next year or even later. that means mizzou, has to sit and spin til then. going to be interesting if this does not happen this year. how do kanas, kstate, iowa st and baylor handle the tigers going fwd?
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