I'm no Miss Cleo, but the future of Duke athletics doesn't look like it will improve if the ACC gobbles up Big East schools Miami, Syracuse and Boston College. I can see the future Chronicle headlines - the opening day of football season 2005: 'A Hurricane Strikes Durham-Miami 87, Duke 3,' followed three months later by, 'Basketball finishes five day northern road trip, splits at Boston College, Syracuse.' While ACC Commissioner (and former UNC President) John Swofford is trumpeting the potential benefits of expansion to all who will listen, the new ACC would make things worse for Duke.
First, the obvious - the whole purpose of getting 12 teams is to split into two divisions and have a football championship game. Okay, sounds good - but I'd like someone to show me a divisional alignment that makes any sense at all.
Do you divide the league up geographically, like the Big 12, with the ACC North and ACC South? No, then the two Florida teams are together with Clemson, Georgia Tech, and the North Carolina state schools. A division like that would be pretty heavy on football, and pretty light on basketball. If you try to even the conferences out power-wise in both sports, you almost have to split up Duke, UNC and Maryland, which means that we would lose home and home with the Terps in basketball. Duke, Carolina, N.C. State, and probably Wake will insist on being kept together, and Miami and Florida State have to be split up, otherwise they cannot meet in the championship game. Any way you slice it, dividing up the ACC is going to be messy, and somebody's not going to be happy.
Once they break up the divisions, you've got to play the football games, and I can't see our football program being happy about having to play Miami, Syracuse or B.C., three very solid teams. We're trying to get ourselves out of the ACC's basement right now, and that's going to be a lot harder with more conference games against top-flight teams. Duke football is on the verge of making a breakthrough with the experienced team we have next year, and that could be set back a long way by expansion.
More serious than football, at least to your average Dukie, is basketball. Right now the ACC and the Pac-10 are the only conferences which have home-and-home games with each of other teams in the league during basketball season. Can you imagine a season where we don't get two games against Carolina and Maryland? It's unthinkable. Yeah, Syracuse and B.C. are good teams, and Miami's decent, but we can, and do schedule teams like that out of conference every year. In addition, having to travel to upstate New York, Boston and southern Florida each year would be a lot more time and money for not only the basketball team, but all Duke sports. Flying from RDU to the Northeast and back is a much bigger ordeal than taking a bus up to UVa or down to Clemson.
One aspect of the expansion plan that does not seem like it has an immediate affect on Duke and Duke fans is that this effectively cripples the Big East as a major conference.
I, for one, like the Big East as it exists right now, as one of the best basketball leagues around (four teams in the Sweet 16 last year, as well as the men's and women's champions), and a solid football league. Maybe it's because I'm from the Northeast, but I think that the current conference alignments of the Big East and ACC make a lot more sense for both leagues than what would happen if expansion went through.
There's a lot of history, especially in basketball, with Georgetown, Syracuse, UConn, Seton Hall, St. John's, B.C. and other Big East schools, which would be ruined if the league split up. I know the ACC Commissioner doesn't really care about this, but any fan of college sports should. Imagine the response if another conference suggested grabbing Maryland, N.C. State and Virginia from the ACC. There would be an army of sports fans, with both Duke and Carolina blue war paint, protesting against the presumptive pilferer of our conference rivals.
I know this deal is all about money, and although I don't know the specific numbers, I do know this - the ACC has the highest average payout per school of any athletic conference anywhere, even more than 12-team SEC and Big 12. These two have higher total profit margins, but dividing the money 12 ways instead of nine means the ACC schools come out better. If we're already on top financially, why take the risk that one game - remember, this is all about the one conference football championship game - may or may not improve our situation?
Yes, the expansion means that the ACC will get a nice big TV contract for football, but recent reports have indicated that BC and Syracuse want to start playing in the ACC in one year, and not two, to minimize their time as lame ducks in the Big East. The ACC football TV contract ends in two years, not one, and if those teams start playing ACC games in the 2004-2005 school year, we might actually lose money before the big contract gets negotiated.
Earlier last week, President Keohane sent a letter to her fellow ACC university presidents explaining her opposition to expansion. Ironically, our only firm ally in the expansion debate is our hated rival, Carolina. Hopefully, the 15-501 Alliance will be able to convince one more school that the expansion plan is a bad idea, and the ACC will be left as it is. If not, the Crazies should get ready to tent for the Syracuse and B.C. games in two years.
Jon Ross is a Trinity sophomore and a regular Chronicle columnist.
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