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"Please do what you can to realign the conference," Miller wrote in the e-mail, obtained recently through a public records request. "Put Georgia Tech in [the Atlantic] Division. Give them Maryland."Here's the article: LINK
For those who don't know (and many don't), here are the current ACC divisions:
Atlantic:
Boston College
Clemson
Florida State
Maryland
NC State
Wake Forest
Coastal:
Duke
Georgia Tech
Miami
UNC
Virginia
Virginia Tech
Each team plays every team in their division and has one team in the other division that they play every year (ours is Clemson). Basketball doesn't use the divisions, but that's being discussed as well (LINK). More on that in a later post.
So what do you think of the idea of Tech swapping with Maryland? It's not completely likely, but it's being discussed. Really, I wouldn't mind it. We'd still play Clemson every year, and we'd basically swap "hard teams" - VT for FSU. It would be fun to bring back the annual rivalry with FSU, especially since CPJ has already proven he can beat them.
Really, though, the biggest question is why such randomness with the divisions from the start? Obviously, the ACC was hoping for a semi-regular Miami vs. FSU championship game. How has that worked out? Just for fun, let's look at what would have been had they divided up the conference by geography, the way the SEC and Big XII do.
Fictional ACC South:
Miami
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Clemson
NC State
Wake Forest
Fictional ACC North:
Duke
UNC
Virginia Tech
Virginia
Maryland
Boston College
So the four North Carolina schools are interchangeable, but I figured you have to keep UNC and Duke together in one division or another. If it was done rationally like this, I would say do it like the other 12-team conferences and play each team in your division once, and then play 3 of the teams from the other division, and switch those three teams every 2 years (after a home and away).
The South division would appear to be tougher, no matter which two North Carolina schools you include. The FSU booster is already proposing swapping Tech for Maryland, so just swap Miami for Boston College as well and you've got divisions that make sense geographically.
Anyway, this is all just for fun, but what do you think of the proposal to switch Tech for Maryland?
More coming on the ACC Spring Meetings in another post.
And on a related note, check out a pretty entertaining ACC geography game Hector over at North Avenue Bulletin came up with: LINK
1 comments:
Part of it was the obvious Miami/FSU championship. The other part was to try to maintain competitive balance. Miami and FSU were obviously supposed to be heavy weights, but Clemson was also the most consistently good team prior to FSU joining the league. Georgia Tech was also known for good teams and has been very consistent for a while now (Gailey did get his standard 7 wins every year). On the other hand, you essentially have VT running away with the ACC North. Maryland had some good seasons at the start of the decade, but has become inconsistent. Ditto for Boston College. What you do not want is something like the Big XII, where you have an obviously dominant South. You would like something like the SEC, where you have Florida, that school where even professors are criminals (yeah, I went there), and Tennessee. In the other division you have LSU, Alabama, and Auburn.
Now, if Clemson and GT can be in the same division as VT, that might be good, but it might depend on how things lined up. In truth, it's usually best not to worry about this type of thing because rivals will end up changing and teams will step up against the competition if they see a chance.
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