Let’s cut to the chance – @BCInterruption has a terrific blog post today on the future of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).
Personally, I am fine with the Coastal and the Atlantic Divisions the way they are. Here are your two divisions right now:
- In the ACC Coastal Division, member institutions include North Carolina, Duke, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Miami, and Pittsburgh.
- In the ACC Atlantic Division, member institutions, include Boston College, Florida State, Wake Forest, North Carolina State, Clemson, Syracuse, Maryland (which will be replaced by Louisville in 2014 – the ACC got the better of the deal there with the Big 10)
The folks at BC Interruption present two options in their blog post linked above:
1. The ACC retains the current Atlantic / Coastal divisional alignment but either scraps the permanent cross-over opponents altogether or moves to a hybrid cross-over rotation similar to the one employed by the Pac-12’s California schools. It doesn’t make sense that Louisville and Virginia will meet every season. Other cross-over rivalries, including Boston College-Virginia Tech and Syracuse-Pittsburgh, are lukewarm at best. The current schedule exists to pair Florida State with Miami and the Carolina schools together.
The ACC could keep the same divisions, end five of the seven cross-over permanent rivalries, keep N.C. State-North Carolina and Wake Forest-Duke and rotate the rest. Though something about FSU-Miami and Clemson-Georgia Tech occurring once every 5-6 seasons seems to make this idea a nonstarter.
2. Go North / South by screwing Wake Forest (sending them to the North in a division with BC, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Virginia and Virginia Tech) and scrapping the cross-over schedule altogether. This moves every permanent cross-over rival within the division with the exception of Wake Forest-Duke. However, this alignment does separate Virginia from both North Carolina and Duke. Good luck getting the UNC-Duke-UVa-Virginia Tech voting bloc to agree to that.
If I had to pick between one of these options, it would be #1. BC Interruption is 100% correct that the Virginia Tech – Boston College is lukewarm rivalry, as is Syracuse – Pittsburgh. In fact, I’m surprised that the ACC didn’t take the opportunity to change the permanent cross-over rivalry to have Virginia Tech play Louisville every year – and have Virginia play Boston College every year (those were missed opportunities for the ACC).
Personally, as I said, I like the current Coastal/Atlantic Division alignments – I’d make a just a couple of minor modifications – Georgia Tech would go to the Atlantic Division (who would become Virginia Tech’s cross-over opponent every year) and Louisville would come to the Coastal Division (and would end up playing Virginia Tech every other Coastal division team each year). I think you have a chance to create some marquee match-ups if this strategy is taken.
And that’s my two cents on that topic.
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