What does the ACC need to do to ensure it’s future as a conference?

Texas A&M didn’t join the SEC this weekend, but the talks of expansion across the country are hardly over. There are rumors that the Aggies could join the SEC within 21 days, a year or not at all. To my personal dismay the ACC is often seen as a conference that will eventually get picked over if the SEC and possibly the Big 10 expands. The greatest fear it seems is that the ACC becomes a hybrid conference full of teams from North Carolina that eventually pair up with the Big East to become an irrelevant football conference. The Basketball though would be by far the best in country, but as much as I like basketball we all know that’s not where the money is at.

I believe there is a way the ACC can ensure it’s future as a viable athletic conference. It’s really very simple. Just win. Football drives everything in college athletics, TV, marketing, national branding, merchandising, expansion etc etc. If you don’t think so then Kansas wouldn’t be sweating out the going’s on in the Big 12,11,10, 9, 8…

This is an absolutely critical year for the ACC to prove it can join the upper echelon of college football conferences. North Carolina had a shot, but screwed things up with a nightmare NCAA investigation. Well maybe you might think the Big 12, 11,10,9, 8… wins plenty. That’s different you have the Texas Longhorns working in their own best interest and schools like Texas A&M clearly having enough of it. There’s always been a source of frustration between the football first schools like Georgia Tech, Clemson, and Florida State and the Tobacco Rd power base, but it’s nothing like the Big 12, 11, 10, 9, 8….

That said the next couple of years can setup the ACC for years to come. It has to start by winning on the football field in the big OOC games. It’s also imperative the ACC has a legitimate BCS Bowl Team, or even a national championship participant. With all due respect to the recent ACC Champions, the ACC’s results in the Orange Bowl have been awful, 1-5 in the last 6 years, with the single win over Cincinnati. There are several non-conference games this year that can boost the ACC’s reputation. Florida State vs Oklahoma, Miami vs Ohio State, Clemson vs Auburn, Georgia Tech vs Georgia, Clemson vs South Carolina, Florida State vs Florida immediately come to mind.

This is what it is about. Start winning and the rest will fall in line regardless of what happens across the rest of the country.