FriarFan & Lash
I regretted writing that line about the NCAA basketball champs, and you have corrected me with the UNLV and Louisville titles. I have always thought of the BE as a BCS conference and two of those titles were obviously before the BCS, but I stand corrected. Any Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, or Rose Bowls for those teams?

I don't feel any ACC hatred on this board at all. I find the opposing views refreshing, and as long as I can make my rant, I'm comfortable. I still think that the SEC, Big 12, and ACC offer a "playoff" to provide the best BCS representative. The BCS then takes the top 2 teams for the championship game and that can and will always be debated. I like that with 12 teams, you play to win your division and then win the championship game. The "like" schools statement meant that BC fields "like" athletic teams. It could have been W. Va or Syracuse, but we love the Red Sox down here, especially Trot Nixon.

I think the ACC was securing their future and I know it is disappointing to the BE fans that didn't get invited. Miami, Va Tech, and BC could have declined or never listened in the first place.

My view of history: The SEC actually began the demise of the SWC when Arkansas left. The Big 12 killed the SWC just ask SMU, TCU, Rice, and Houston shortly after that to follow the SEC model. Houston was actually pretty good in both football and basketball before the SWC demise. These moves make the CUSA office seem brilliant, or they too would be history thanks to the BE taking 5 teams to fill 3 spots. I think the ACC wished it had added (again) S. Carolina when the SEC did, so we were caught sleeping on that one. When the opportunity to add Miami presented itself, the ACC was aggressive. I remember when FSU was added that took some getting used to (63-7 blowouts!), but the ACC is ready to upgrade football and both expansion moves were great.

I think we all have drawn up better conference alignments, but the reality is what we have now. I don't think that the SEC, Big 12, ACC are going to make 12 team leagues a liability. If the BCS needs tweaking for access, I believe fully that there will be a nice self-serving component added to it also. I also cannot see the BE surviving with 16 teams, but perhaps I will be proven wrong.

StatePackMan, you have raised a really interesting point with your reference to non-BCS teams winning basketball championships. Since UNLV's championship in '90, BCS schools have dominated not only in championships won but also in Final Four appearances. This is not a good thing IMHO. Not all schools can afford a football program, but students at those schools get a flavor of big time sports & have a lot of fun cheering for their hoops teams.

I root for a couple of all-sports schools & a few basketball-only schools, so I would like to see some resurgence of the basketball schools to where they were pre-1990 to restore some balance. Marquette's Final Four appearance last year offered some hope. I noticed that Gonzaga is ranked in the Top Ten in the pre-season poll. It would be nice to see them have a break-through year.

(Just for the record, for all practical purposes the Big East is 2 leagues - a football league & a basketball league. The Georgetown, Villanova, & UConn championships came from non-BCS schools, while the Syracuse championship was won by a BCS school.)

The point I was trying to make was that even though the Basketball Tourney offers guaranteed access, it is very difficult to make that run to the finals. The BCS offers access to a deserving Top 6 team, but the rating is certainly weighted towards the BCS teams. The SOS part just kills TCU. Access is available though and it would never have been without the BCS. If TCU had wn the SWC they would have gone to the Cotton Bowl, but an undefeated Oklahoma would have won the voting! I think that the ebb is flowing more and more towards these BCS schools wininng most every championship. They are funding all sports at a higher level and getting the best recruits and coaches. I enjoyed the Rice CWS win, but that was a rare exception to Stanford, Texas, and LSU.

Good points, SPM. :)

FriarFan,
You made me look up the NCAA Final 4 info, and since 1984, (1983 8-) would have been a perfect year to begin this analysis but let's look at the past 20 Final 4's). I was looking at BCS schools dominance of the NCAA Final 4.
here is the info:
1984-2003 (80 Final Four participants)
ACC teams 19
Big 10 teams 13
SEC teams 12
Big 12 (8) teams 10
Pac 10 teams 6
BE teams 10
Other teams 10
(Houston, Louisville, Memphis, UNLV(3), Cincy, UMass, Utah, Marquette)
This isn't about the ACC, since I know that Duke and UNC make up 15 of those. It is about the BCS conferences. The BCS conferences have 60 of those slots 75%. Since 1994 over the past 10 years the BCS conferences have had 34 of 40 Final 4 slots 85%. The trend for basketball is geared towards the BCS conferences. Through in the College World Series and even the Cross Country Champions, they all trend towards the BCS conferences. Just some info to kick around.

StStatePackMan, interesting stats.

Just for the heck of it, I went back & checked the previous 20 years. 30 non-BCS schools went to the Final Four in that period - an average of 15 per decade.

The thing that I find interesting is that 7 of the 10 Big East spots were in the '80s when the Big East had no football league. Furthermore 6 of those schools are non-BCS schools to this day. 7 of the 10 "Other" that you mention also went in the '84 - '93 decade. Add those to the 6 Big East schools & that decade was about the same as the 20 years before it. The impact of football conferences on basketball has really been a phenomenon of the past decade.

I agree completely. Look at the Kansas State's of the world. Mark my words. If you're any kind of college football fan you'll know what I'm about to say is true. Twenty-Five years from now, those who are small children will laugh when we tell them how good a few teams used to be who are now good here in 2003. They will also be shocked when we tell them how much some Duke/NW/Arizona/Miss.State/Indiana team used to suck back in 2003. College football is an ever changing world. Look at K-State. Who knows? There may be some kind of reform in the next half-century and it may return to a type of atmosphere where private schools rule the roost. The point is you never know. Yes, I would be insulted to be one of the ACC "also rans." To have divisions based on an allusive concept called competitiveness. The SEC keeps it simple. What are you going to do in the ACC? Re-evaluate every couple of years and realign when Clemson takes 4 of 5 from Florida State in some future half-decade? Where's the continuity? the competive division that Tennessee and Florida fought over year after year only to have a resurgence in Athens? Ole Miss trying to put behind them being the only school not to win the SEC West? Where will be some good old-fashioned stability? I know, I know. I DO like nice well-defined geographical stuff. But, at least that's something that doesn't change. You can't base your basic organization on theory and conjecture.

Ooops. I should have typed "elusive"

stevus, you are right on! ;D Draw the lines at a natural rivalry line ( no matter what it looks like now). and let it ride.

J-man, I don't know how I missed this quote but...well said! :)

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/martzke/2004-02-10-martzke_x.htm

This USA Today article shows exactly what we in the ACC were talking about last summer. Now that television revenue has increased, along with football season ticket revenue, athletic giving and donations, more marketing dollars from sponsors will be following and soon the addition of more bowl tie-ins for the ACC, the facts are that the ACC acted to become the best or "one of the best" conferences around.
"What this means is that the ACC, in my view, is one of the three premier conferences," said ACC negotiator Barry Frank of IMG. "Combined with its strength in basketball, it's on its way to being the premier conference."
Here is the revised Wolfpack football schedule for 2004 below and our basketball schedule is already loaded with Top 25 teams and all nine b-ball team's are in the top 60 in RPI. (BC 26, VT 123, Miami 163 FYI)
NCSU FOOTBALL 2004
Sept. 4 Richmond Raleigh, NC TBA
Sept. 11 Open
Sept. 18 Ohio State Raleigh, NC TBA
Sept. 25 at Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA TBA
Oct. 2 Wake Forest Raleigh, NC TBA
Oct. 9 at North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC TBA
Oct. 16 at Maryland College Park, MD TBA
Oct. 23 Miami Raleigh, NC TBA
Oct. 30 at Clemson Clemson, SC TBA
Nov. 6 Georgia Tech Raleigh, NC TBA
Nov. 11 Florida State Raleigh, NC TBA
Nov. 20 Open
Nov. 27 East Carolina Charlotte, NC TBA
Now, granted we have to improve to actually compete for the title, but WOW! Now the football schedule competes head to head with the MBB schedule.

Great leagues are not built on a bc or votech.Miami is a great team but the kind of athletes it lets in include those with BAD backgrounds.Would it not be funny if both flast and miami enjoyed probation at the same time.Don't forget miami's last group of ncaa violations.They will match well with flast.

While StatePackMan's assertions may have carried too much bravado for you, this sounds simply bitter.

What constitutes great leagues rests in the eye of the beholder. Me? I'll take schools the calibre of BC and fans as vigilant as VT's any day. There are many peices to this puzzle and time will tell if they all fit into a nice, great whole.

I will certainly not defend any transgressions of the past by any major programs, but as for the future, the ACC has certainly improved it's place at the table. The ACC was certainly not built on BC or Va Tech, but they are nice additions to a great conference. My point has always been that for the current nine members of the ACC the additions of Miami, Va Tech, and BC are huge and we are excited. I wish the fiasco had played out more fairly, but the end result will be what the ACC fans had hoped.

TS2 has a point in that FSU & Miami have taken quite a few recruits with troubled backgrounds and not much evidence of academic prowess.
While these two are among the most notable in compromising their academic standards when it comes to luring favored athletic picks, unfortunately this practice is widespread throughout the country. It may be FSU & Miami are among the more savvy at it, and have greater numbers of troubled types to pick from.

Some of these schools that exclaim lofty graduation rates from their athletes, are often throwing in numbers from their women's and minor sports; and in case of football and basketball, are counting in the mass a multitude of those sitting on the bench and rarely playing. Could some be recruited knowing they will be sitting on the bench, but serve to enhance academic figures?

It would be interesting to see an objective, honest, school by school graduation rate comparisons of football and basketball first stringers and starters and/or those who have had pre-determined and substantial playing time. I do not know if anyone has done this (using playing time variables), but I expect the statistics would be quite revealing. Accomodations could be made in factoring in those that turn pro early. Another revealing figure would be specifying the academic majors of these athletes---American Studies, Communications, Exploratory, Sports Administration, etc. So many of these schools have certain majors and professors serving as "athletic" facilitators, but not sure how one could control for that. Some quality academic institutions have an undocumented, "mini school" for the academically deficient, preferred, athlete within the larger campus.

I wonder how many of the University of Michigan's football players would have been accepted to the institution had they not had a football background and recruited.

When people on these boards talk about a school's "academic profile" fitting into a particular conference, some would be quite surprised in knowing that the "University of BIG STATE's" fb and bb players may have SATs and GPAs not much better, and perhaps less than, "Southwestern Podunk U."

I would agree with you Dogs and TS2 that recruiting walks the edge on those that "qualify" to be admitted. I remember the great scene in Forest Gump with Bear Bryant... Hopefully, the Kinght Commission and the NCAA Presidents will get serious about grad rates, but until it is enforced, the cost of winning will probably override what is right. Those grad rates/starters numbers would be interesting to see if they are even kept. No major conference can boast about a scholar-athlete program in football or men's basketball.