Two part blog article out of Carolina of relatively recent vintage discussing how much success if any did the ACC realize with their 2003 expansion?
Part 1 at http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/19/evaluating-acc-expansion-part-i-evolution

Part 2 at http://www.statefansnation.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/20/evaluating-acc-expansion-part-ii-measuring-success

This series of ACC articles are interesting and sadly not at all surprising.

Many of the old post on this board called out for caution and for the ACC to take it slow with expansion, yet the powers of the ACC jumped fully into an unknown or unpredictable future.

If you could only go back in time. Maybe those same ACC Leaders would have selected only the U of Miami for 10 as UNC and Duke were willing to vote without the help of the state of Virginia.

U of Miami and Boston College should be in the Big East. This is more true today than before ACC expansion. USF would provide UM a close for travel instate conference rival game and the heated FSU and U of Florida rival game would not necessarily hurt Miami chances of winning the conference or playing for a BCS bid.

Boston College would again be politically correct by playing eastern conference schools with the likes of Syracuse and UConn.

The ACC could return to true round robin basketball and only stretch from Maryland to northern Florida.

Basically the ACC could return to its roots. Florida State may again become significant on the college football scene with flag ship conference football status.

Big East football has not only survived it has thrived by remaining small and having all schools play each other for football. This promotes better rivalries in the short and longer term. The Big East football schools are fairly new and yet the much larger ACC appears to be more disconnected by broken rivalries in football and especially basketball.

If only the ACC and Big East football schools could simply work together on a true super conference as the old Blockbuster proposal we may have a true super conference of two distinct 10 team round robin all sports divisions.

Maybe you can turn back time or maybe just move a little more foreward into the future.

Blockbuster propasal was to have Big East football champion play the ACC champion with the winner going to the Orange bowl and loser going to the Gator.

In todays world of Big East football success, the loser of this game would probably go to an at large BCS bowl.

The ACC was either going to expand or have risked defections of their own.

They wanted 12 for one prime reason: 12 is required for a conference championship game.

I expect that conference is settled in terms of membership for a very long.

Perhaps certain expectations may not have been fully reached yet, but in terms of the current full structure, it is still relatively young.

The ACC needed the money as their contracts were going to go down between 25 and 40%.

We obviously don't know for sure if FSU and the others would have actually left the ACC. I think it was just idle threats. I mean, the SEC is full at 12. The only other option would be the Big East. Do you think they would want to be associated with what is essentially a northern league?

Perhaps idle threats, but it was an element of pressure nevertheless. The vague, and speculative thought, at the time was that schools such as FSU, GT, & Clemson could break away, but not join the BE, rather add certain schools from the BE such as Miami and VT and perhaps from elsewhere. I doubt it had substance.

What did happen, the solid 4-State of North Carolina showed a break on its ACC stranglehold.

University of South Carolina understood that many years earlier.

And one could argue that the non-NC ACC schools showed they held the power.

What could the NC4 do? Walk away? The then ACC5 could have added Miami, WVU, VA Tech, Boston College or tried to get Penn St. and add Syracuse and another school. In football, it would have been superior.

Without the Nc4, you gotta figure that south Carolina would have taken a look. If Penn St. had no interest, Pitt certainly would.

North:
Boston College
Syracuse
Penn St./Pitt
WVU
Maryland
Virginia Tech

South:
Virginia
Clemson
South Carolina
GA Tech
Florida State
Miami

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Here is an April 24, 2008, article related to ACC expansion and the NFL draft with comments from a couple of ACC fb coaches:

http://www.pressboxonline.com/story.cfm?id=3550

The ACC will be fine.

I think there are some factors that have come into play that might not be in the publics mind when thinking that the ACC has been hurt:

1) Florida St. has been on a steady decline despite the ACC expansion
2) Miami has not been the program it has been the past 7 years

These were the two heavyweights and they haven't performed up to expectations. the initial thoughts of adding Miami was to add a 2nd big-time player. The ACC even split Miami and FSU into separate conferences...since the expectatiosn were that they would play in the conference championship every year.

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I can be an ACC critic about some historical aspects, but your commentary is way too assuming. I concur the ACC does not have any very top powerhouses right now and each has one plus loses. Teams such as Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, BC, Georgia Tech and North Carolina are playing very well. FSU seems to be steadily improving. Virginia has won their last two games. Maryland, Duke, and Miami do not have a losing record at this moment as well. Only NC State has a losing record right now and they play FSU tonight. Even the ACC's bottom team for several years, Duke, is much improved. Pre-season favorite, Clemson, is unpredictable and appears to have some problems. I see the league more "balanced" than "weak". They could have a one-loss team for the BCS later, probably no worst than a two game loss team. The ACC is not great this year, but certainly OK.

Anyone following closely knows that the SEC and Big 12 have the abundance of power teams in terms of depth. Certainly others such as USC, Penn State, Ohio State, etc. will be up there as well.

I don't care for much of the BCS set-up as well. I sympathize with MWC sentiments, maybe others, to have their highly ranked teams placed.

I think the Big East has more to worry about than the ACC in terms of looking BCS deserving. The ACC has more conference teams and whomever wins the ACC championship game will garner a late season boost. The BE does not have that option. South Florida and Cincy have single loses, but both could have more. Even the PAC 10 doesn't have an undefeated team.

The problem is that the QOS for those ACC teams to be .500 or better is so deplorable that their highest-ranked team is behind 2 BE teams that have already played each other, 2 MWC teams, and a WAC team, and your second place team is behind a MAC team, a C-USA team, and a third MWC team. While that bodes to how weak the schedules are this year, the problem is they're in this situation year-in and year-out, not to mention having fallen so far behind the BE in final rankings that the ACC champ is usually behind at least 2 BE teams.

You're trying to base long-term projections on just this year, which is flawed logic. The fact is the ACC has lost their BCS bowls since expanding, while the Big East has won all three of theirs since their conference retooling. Even for a down year in the BE, the fact is they're still proving to be a better conference on the field, and the rankings reflect that. If we consistently start to see two or so MWC teams, or at least a MWC and WAC team above the ACC champion every year, the ACC has real reason to worry that they may end up getting the boot in favor of the MWC. Their best chance to break that string was last year, when VaTech played a Kansas team that arguably didn't belong in the BCS (see Nebraska 2001), but they still lost to them. If anything the BE has proven they belong in the big games with convincing wins over SEC, ACC, and Big 12 champions, and they only need to be concerned ultimately with the basketball schools splitting in 2010, which won't affect football schools at all.

Nice post Tarkio! The only thing is that there is no way the ACC loses its bid as its contractually bound to the Orange Bowl.

Why is there this notion that more teams = better - especially for the BE? That may certainly be the case for some of the BCS conferences but it ISN'T be true for the BE. Adding 4 CUSA schools isn't all of a sudden going to make the BE 'better' or make them a more 'deserving' BCS conference or make the CFB audience all of a sudden notice the BE. You add quality - NOT quantity. Adding four teams - at least at this point - would only drag the BE ratings down and NOT up.

Please remember that UL had the largest athletic budget of any non-BCS team (besides BYU IIRC) and some BCS teams before the BE expanded. UCinn had started construction on Varsity Village - a $100 million facilities upgradge in 2001 or 2002 - again before BE expansion. Make yourselves attractive and you will get noticed! I know that BE expansion candidates noticed that too.

CUSA candidates for the BE are doing what they should do (facilities upgrades, academic improvements, building a fanbase that can be sustained even in DOWN years, etc) in order to take advantage of a split BE or a expanded Big 10 (RU or SU). JMO.....

Blog article showing how BCS computers are rating the conferences.The ACC is apparently in the middle of the pack,about where it probably is financially also.

The 2003 ACC raid has put that conference in a good position to capitalize on it's markets and BB fans in the next round of tv rights negotiations prior to 2011.There appears to be some correlation between long term conference financial strength and long term conference on field success.

Link at http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/007813.php

Disagree. The question was whether the ACC should lose their BCS bid. I am not going to critique polls here or BCS bowl wins. For the BE, the recent past hung with basically two schools..W. Virginia and Louisville. It is still mid-season.
Conferences are a collection of individual schools, and criteria among BCS is consistent. While there may be regional constraints; historically the ACC have members that have been in the thick of things. Pointing out a non-BCS conference school beat a BCS one is...so what? Since Michigan, a premier Big 10 school lost last year to Appalachian State and this year to Toledo, the Big 10 should drop from the BCS? Maybe Ohio State since they blew their last two, or is it three, championship bowls?
South Fla and Pitt may be ranked ahead of any ACC team. There are a couple ACC teams with equivalent records.
Panther, since you endorsed Tark's statement, maybe then, use your own phrase..."don't count your chickens before they hatch".
The ACC is not exiting the BCS and to suggest otherwise, is nonsense. To imply the BE is in a better permanent situation than the ACC is also partisan wishing. Offer Pitt or Rutger or Syracuse or Louisville or West Virginia or South Florida, ACC membership and see how they respond? Or the Big 10?

As to dismissing numbers, quantity is a factor. When the BE added L'ville, USF, and Cincy, only L'ville had made any appreciable noise. USF was still in the infant period with football and Cincy was no queen of the gridiron. BCS membership opens doors certain schools would not otherwise have.

Some points of clarification sec03 -

I will try to clarify my support for Tarkio's post and some other points as well.

I have NEVER said the ACC SHOULD or WOULD lose their BCS status. Their status is SECURE. There is no doubting that whatsoever.

I have NEVER said the BEs long term position is secure while the ACCs is not.

My comments supporting Tarkio's post was only that the ACC has been OVERVALUED in terms of on the field performance SO FAR under the expanded ACC. The ACC was supposed to be THE BCS Superconference - according to several statements by ACC coaches and ADs (doing their PR of course) challenging the SEC for supremecy. They were certainly paid that way under the contract they signed in 2003. What has turned out - SO FAR - is that the ACC is having trouble on the field - especially in BCS games. As stated to out by Tarkio - the ACC is 1-9 in BCS games since 1998 and 0 for since expansion while the BE - a conference that the ACC wanted to destroy - is 3-0.

I truely believe at some point the ACC will eventually get 'it' and will be one of the top BCS conferernce. It just hasn't happened YET. But they will NEVER be the SEC.

Maybe the ACC champ will finish 12-1 and be ranked in the top-6. Who knows? But there was hardly any BUZZ surrounding the conference this year.

It is certainly noted what I said earlier about the chickens comment.

QUANTITY is not a factor. Why is there no talk about the Pac 10 at 10 teams while they losing to the MWC?

What you suggest in your post that QUALITY is more of a factor. Again, if the BE adds 4 teams from CUSA - who have low attendance and who lose their OOC games - do you think that helps or hurts the BE? None of those teams from CUSA is going to make the CFB take notice of the BE. Many fans looked at the BE in 2003 like - USF and Cincy - are you kidding me? What will happen if they take Memphis, ECU, UCF, etc?

The reason the BE is looked at like such a step child is simply because the current BE has only 3 teams with any significant history at all by the CFB people - SU, Pitt, and WVu and look at how bad SU and Pitt have done lately. As mentioned in the previous paragraph - Everyone else looks at USF, UL, UC, and UConn as 'who in the hell are they'. They have no 'history' - which is important to many people. If you had SU, WVu, and Pitt dominating the league, I honestly don't think many pundits or CFB fans would make it such a big deal, IMO.

The Big East needs to take care of their own business. If you look at this week's polls, BE has nothing to brag about over the ACC.

Maybe Seton Hall and De Paul are going to help out? Give them a chance to think about it, they're still celebrating Notre Dame's big win over Washington; and moaning about Penn State being overrated.