Miami is the third team from the ACC Coastal division to be in trouble with the NCAA in a little over a year.
I'd prefer having an easier conference schedule and an easier road to an undefeated season than to play in the SEC where going undefeated in your own conference is much harder. Once Oklahoma is off our schedule, compare our road to a championship to any SEC school.
[Georgia Tech's] longest win streak against the [D]ogs was 10 games stretching from 1958-1961. As a member of the SEC from 1932-1964, Tech dominated the [D]ogs with a 57-31 overall record. Since joining the ACC, Tech has actually posted a 15-20 record against the [D]ogs. The ACC era included a particularly brutal stretch where the [D]ogs defeated Tech 7 times in a row (Dominique Wilkins' college tenure was right in the middle of this run). Paul Hewitt has yet to amass a winning streak against Georgi[a]. The last time Tech posted a winning streak against the [D]ogs was 1992-1994.
Everyone comes out more or less ahead... Texas gets the big television payday it wanted and the shot at a profitable network it doesn't have to share with anyone. Nebraska and Colorado both move into conferences they consider better academic and cultural fits. Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri and, yes, Baylor hold on to their spots in a big-money conference and aren't forced to seek refuge in the Mountain West, Conference USA or Big East. The Big Ten and Pac-10 (assuming it makes a play for Utah out of the Mountain West) both pick up a 12th member that facilitates a conference championship game. Assuming the Big Ten is content at an even dozen – Missouri is presumably locked into the Big 12 for the foreseeable future, and Notre Dame remains by all appearances firmly committed to independence – the once doomed Big East will remain intact without losing a single member. Even if it loses Utah, the Mountain West picks up the slack with the addition of Boise State, a net boost (albeit a small one) in the MWC's bid for an automatic BCS bid in 2012.
The Pac-10 ultimately whiffed on the blockbuster score it was hoping for, but it did expand in exactly the (relatively modest) fashion everyone expected when it first announced its plan to add teams. No one is in worse position as the smoke begins to clear than they were when the fires started burning.
There are two big questions (assuming the SEC follows suit after the conference expansion begins) for this board: A) Will Clemson get an invite to join the SEC? B) Will Clemson accept an invitation should it be given?
I for one want to see Clemson in the SEC, and would openly applaud membership to this group. Had the ACC and Swoffy not sacked up a few weeks ago in contract negotiations, this one would be a slam dunk. As it sits now, we must get Jimmy Barker and crew on board with this concept. My current opinion of Barker aside, IF he allows Clemson to miss the opportunity to play Georgia on a yearly basis he will have officially lost ALL of my support. . . .
A&M has been in contact with the SEC for months, despite the longstanding assumption that the Texas schools would hang together behind the wildly profitable Longhorn juggernaut. But former Aggie player/coach Gene Stallings, now an A&M regent, has taken control of the push for the SEC, where he won a national championship as Alabama's head coach in 1992. Stepping out of the back channels of Texas politics, Stallings didn't hesitate to distance A&M from the Longhorns on Alabama radio: "I think A&M is now big enough to stand on its own. We don’t need to piggyback on Texas." Truly spoken like a man with only a few months left in his term.
If A&M opts out of the Pac-10 exodus, their crucial position as the 16th team could fall to Kansas or Utah; given the political ramifications and the cold shoulder in scheduling by everyone A&M has ever considered any kind of rival, the odds remain on the Aggies' following the original route to the West Coast – especially if the SEC invite is tied to their ability to deliver Texas, as well, which appears to be a complete nonstarter.
Would Georgia lawmakers step in and fight for Georgia Tech’s athletic future?
If Atlanta is dumb enough to be a part of building an open air stadium without a retractable roof, then the champagne corks will start popping in Birmingham. Because you can bet that they’ll figure out a way to build a ball park to get the SEC championship football game to come back (the first two games were played in Birmingham in 1992 and 1993). And you can bet that New Orleans would be putting together a bid and sprucing up the Superdome. A big part of what has made the SEC championship game one of the great success stories in sport is that weather is not a factor. Weather has been a factor for the Big 12 and the ACC and the results on those championship games has been mixed at best. The SEC, in my opinion, will not play this game in an open air stadium.
Clemson is already nicknamed "Auburn with a lake," and it has plenty of historical ties to various SEC schools. It's a seamless fit culturally as a football first school, it brings South Carolina's primary rival in house, and it allows a renewal of the dormant Georgia-Clemson series.
Hypothetical Expansion Dominoes has focused exclusively so far on the Big Ten, Pac-10 and their possible targets for poaching in the Big 12, but some scenarios are taking the game a step or two further: The Greenville News' Bart Wright, for example, looks down the road and sees a chance for Clemson to join the SEC if Arkansas -- for some inexplicable reason -- decided to rejoin some of its old Southwest Conference rivals if/when a spot opens up in the Big 12, fulfilling the Tigers' longstanding urge to be among their cultural brethren in the South. Gamecock fans, of course, project certain doom. I project the SEC will remain intact, because no one walks on that kind of dough.