Yarr! Calls for an 'All Carolina Conference' Baseless

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 5, 2009 5:35 PM EST Comment 15 comments

Brian: Tonight Virginia Tech goes on the road to face East Carolina in ESPN’s Thursday night game. The Charlotte Observer's Caulton Tudor awoke from college basketball hibernation to wax poetic about how this game would mean more if East Carolina was included in ACC expansion instead of Boston College or Miami. Has the North Carolina media lost all sensibility?

Given the point spread of tonight's game (Virginia Tech is favored by nearly two touchdowns on the road), I fail to see why this game is any more interesting than any other trivial ACC matchup - say, the Virginia at Miami game this weekend. But I digress.

Let us put aside our personal bias in this matter and rationally tell Tudor why a call for an "All Carolina Conference" - that is, wishing that the ACC expanded to include East Carolina over BC or Miami - is completely baseless.

Jeff: East Carolina in the ACC makes no sense right now. It made even less sense a few years ago when they were talking about expansion. Let's start with the geographic "fit" argument. As the league is currently constituted, there are four teams located in North Carolina, four north of North Carolina and four south of North Carolina. As it turns out, now North Carolina is the geographic center of the league. This wasn't the case before Virginia Tech and Boston College were added. The geographic center was somewhere south of North Carolina.

Brian: I agree. I have no idea what "territorial security" is. Are we fighting a war here? Regardless, the geographic fit argument makes no sense. Consider that the old school North Carolina stalwarts probably said the same thing about a geographic "misalignment" when Florida State joined the league in 1991. We now have the benefit of 28 years of hindsight to see that any argument about geographic "misalignment" makes little sense. If the ACC didn't bring on FSU in 1991, there would have been little separation between the ACC and the Sun Belt in football the last 20+ years.

Let's move to the interest/rivalry argument. As per Tudor, for reasons of interest and rivalry, ECU-Virginia Tech "would have been a much more exciting option for the ACC." For one, I don't see much of a rivalry here. Since Virginia Tech exploded on the national scene in college football in the mid to late 1990s, this "rivalry" has been terribly one-sided. Since 1993, the Hokies have won 6 of 7 from the Pirates, dropping only last year's game in Charlotte. This seems to be more of a case of two programs that are in very different stages of development.

This doesn't even mention the fact that the other league rivalries would have been lost if ECU replaced either BC or Miami in the ACC. Miami-Florida State seems to have taken on more meaning since Miami joined the conference. Ask people close to the Boston College and Virginia Tech programs and I think they will all agree that BC-Virginia Tech is continuing to develop into one of the league's best rivalry games. Would you really rather have ECU-Virginia Tech replace Florida State-Miami or even BC-Virginia Tech as a marquee rivalry game for the conference?

Second, interest? You mean, like national interest? With all due respect to East Carolina and their athletic programs, I don't know anyone outside of the Holtz family who really cares about this game on the national stage. Contrast that with Miami and Boston College, who despite what Tudor would have you believe, are much larger draws in terms of national television ratings.

Jeff: This article doesn't even talk about the real reason for expansion. When the ACC added Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami (Fla.), they didn't add those teams just to add "enough helmets to qualify for a conference championship game." They added Miami and their five national championships to boost the calibre and reputation of the league as a football conference. They added Virginia Tech and Boston College who were both ranked annually in the Top 25 in the years leading up to expansion. Both had long streaks of consecutive seasons making it to bowl games before joining the ACC.

Contrast that with the Pirates. East Carolina had nothing ... nothing to offer to bolster the ACC's reputation as a first-rate football conference on the national stage. This is precisely what the ACC was looking for in expansion. Before expansion, the ACC was perceived as "the league that Florida State played in." And, oh yeah, there's a bunch of other Carolina schools that play in the league too. Florida State dominated the league year in and year out. The league had no credibility in football outside of Tallahassee.

Brian: All these points don't even say anything about the disparity in academics between East Carolina and the rest of the ACC member schools. With due respect to ECU, one need only look at national university rankings to see that Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech (all ranked in the Top 100 national universities according to US News & World Report) have much more in common with the Dukes, North Carolinas and Wake Forests of the league in terms of academics than East Carolina (a Tier 4 school). This also doesn't mention the fact that Wilmington, NC is a tiny television market and the Pirates would likely be the doormat of the ACC basketball scene.

If East Carolina was truly a strategic expansion option and one that would bolster a conference's football reputation, why didn't the Big East come calling? Wouldn't you wonder why when the Big East raided Conference USA for three replacement football programs, that East Carolina wasn't tabbed and the conference instead chose Cincinnati, South Florida and Louisville? East Carolina wasn't even good enough for the Big East in 2005. Yet East Carolina makes sense now for the ACC in 2009? The league already has plenty of North Carolina-based football doormats. We don't need another.

Jeff: The ACC has successfully given itself a new reputation on the national stage by adding Virginia Tech, Miami (Fla.) and Boston College. Again, East Carolina would have done nothing to help accomplish what the league was looking for in 2004.

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Well...

Contrast that with Miami and Boston College, who despite what Tudor would have you believe, are much larger draws in terms of national television ratings.

I understand you saying that about Miami. But BC? Really?

Boston College is a significant, consistent, national ratings draw, more than East Carolina? I believe BC and ECU are highly specialized, highly regional fanbases that have more in common in terms of draw than you would like to believe. I don’t know the numbers, but I could believe ECU has greater draw than BC does, in terms of absolute people.

As far as academics go, BC, VT, and Miami are more with the pack than ECU is right now, but that’s just right now. Who knows what an ACC association could do to the reputation of ECU in a few decades? Big time sports have helped to raise the academic bars of schools in the past. That being said, I don’t see ECU rising to top 30, first tier in 20 years, but I think an increase in publicity would help increase academic reputation.

by yawkey on Nov 5, 2009 6:24 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

To your point about ratings, yes.

Absolutely. BC has had good national TV ratings numbers over the last several years in bowl games:

2008: Music City vs. Vanderbilt (2.80)
2007: Champs Sports vs. Michigan State (3.69)
2006: Meineke Car Care vs. Navy (3.87)
2005: Humanitarian vs. Boise State (2.33)

East Carolina:

2008: Liberty vs. Kentucky (2.70)
2007: Hawaii vs. Boise State (1.47)
2006: Papajohns.com vs. South Florida (1.67)

There’s even a common opponent in Boise State to benchmark against.

To your point about highly specialized, highly regional fanbases, this may be true for East Carolina. But it’s definitely no longer true for Boston College. I would go so far as to say that a minority of BC grads actually end up living in the greater Boston area. BC grads are much more geographically dispersed throughout the country.

Again, I go back to the point about the Big East. The Big East won’t even take on ECU at this point, despite ECU being willing to make significant concessions to join the Big East. Last year, ECU was willing to: play a Big East schedule without compensation from the league, negotiate their own television package, not share in any shared BCS revenues until they make a BCS bowl on their own, and join as a football-only member. The Pirates were willing to bend over backwards to join a lesser conference and the Big East still didn’t want them. Now I’m supposed to believe the ACC would be better off with ECU instead of BC or Miami?

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 5, 2009 7:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The ACC would not be better off with ECU over Miami.

The answer is not as cut and dry with ECU and BC. The problem is you are comparing ACC-BC with nonACC-ECU. BC benefits greatly from the ACC name, and that label gives it a boost over rinky-dink ECU. If you are interested in seeing which school would fare better in the same league, for a fair comparison, you would have to consider both schools in the same environment, whether it is the ACC, the Big East, independent, whatever.

Having the marquee BCS-conference name injects credibility into an institution. ACC-BC received better numbers than nonACC-ECU, sure. We cannot say the same would hold if ECU had a few years under its belt of ACC play. Suppose TCU were interested in joining the Big 12. Do you think their MWC ratings would still apply if they were a Big 12 team? I think their numbers would increase because they would be a visible program in a fertile football region with a big-time conference affiliation.

That both ECU and TCU wear purple is coincidence.

Anyway, I think over a decade to 15 years, the ACC would get as much from ACC-ECU as they would ACC-BC.

by yawkey on Nov 5, 2009 7:57 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"Anyway, I think over a decade to 15 years, the ACC would get as much from ACC-ECU as they would ACC-BC."

I’m failing to see what exactly would ECU bring to the table … even with 15 years of “injection of credibility into an institution”?

- Immediate competitiveness in ACC football? Nope. ECU is 28-61-1 lifetime against ACC opponents … including 19-35-1 against your North Carolina state “rivals” (who have been historically bad at football). Yes, ECU has knocked off ACC schools over the past few years, but those games are ECU’s Super Bowl. They are just another non-conference game for ACC programs.

- Competitiveness in basketball? That’s a joke. ECU hasn’t even posted a winning record in men’s hoops since joining Conference USA. And just how much better could this get in the ACC? You’d be competing with all four NC schools – not to mention the other established ACC hoops programs – for recruits.

- Quality acadamics? ECU is a tier 4 school. BC is #34 in the country. Even with modest gains in academic quality/reputation with joining the ACC, how high can you really expect ECU to rise in terms of academics? Local area kids are going to choose Duke, UNC, Wake and even NCSU over attending ECU. Why would the ACC want to take on a project like improving academics at ECU via exposure to big time college sports when they already have an academic institution ranked in the top 50 in the country?

And before you go discounting the academic factor, note that the Big East is having trouble with South Florida in terms of academics. USF has been on the verge of losing football scholarships the past few years due to very low APR scores.

- TV ratings/viewership? Greenville isn’t even one of the 50th largest TV markets in the country. Without seeing any numbers, I’ll say that ECU has a much more geographically centralized fanbase/following than BC.

So tell me again why the ACC would get as much from ECU as they would from BC? If ECU to the ACC was such a solid value proposition, again, why weren’t they in the conversation 5 years ago? Why is the Big East unwilling to pick them up as a football-only member?

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 5, 2009 8:35 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

As I said earlier, I don’t think ECU will use the ACC to somehow vault into the first tier. I’m saying the association with the league and good football can enhance their academic reputation. ECU can go from tier 4 to being an average BCS state school. Good football helped raise the profile and visibility of a number of schools, such as Notre Dame, USC, and that “women’s college in Tallahassee.”

ECU would be more desirable for the ACC than the Big East because ECU is in Carolina and would keep the ACC in the South. The Big East would like BC because they are in Boston and would help that Northeast feel. I don’t think we need to ignore the regional thing here: the ACC likes keeping things in the South and the Big East would have loved a strong New England/ Mid-Atlantic (Penn State, Pitt, WVU, BC, UConn, Syracuse, Rutgers, etc). Regardless, BC has no reason to leave the ACC. I’m not saying BC should apologize for being in Boston and bow out, either. It doesn’t make sense for BC to leave the ACC. BC is on the winning end of the ACC relationship.

The ACC wanted BC, VT, and Miami because they were quality BCS teams at the time. I don’t think the ACC would have taken BC if they happened to be in a non-BCS conference. Because of histories, BC was in the right place at the right time, and ECU wasn’t. BC benefited from positive associations, built history, improved image, and assembled a top-30 name athletic brand.

Greenville may not be a Nielsen behemoth, but what good is being in a top ten media market if no one is watching? BC puts together back-to-back double-digit wins, rises to #2 in the BCS rankings, has an absolute stud QB, and falls victim to being in Boston. It is already established that BC has issues filling out its home stadium and their fans do not have the greatest record of traveling to bowl games. I hear about BC being a victim of the pro sports town; BC competes with the Red Sox, the Celtics, the Patriots, the Bruins, the Red Sox off-season news, and then the other colleges in the area.

The ACC could get all that many miles closer in ECU.

by yawkey on Nov 5, 2009 11:55 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

"ECU would be more desirable for the ACC than the Big East because ECU is in Carolina and would keep the ACC in the South."

At the end of the day, college athletics is a business. How does “keeping it in the South” make any business sense? The money to be made from the gate now pales in comparison to what can be made on lucrative television contracts.

Put simply, ECU in the league destroys value for any future ACC television contracts:
- Non-competitive in basketball. Painfully non-competitive. No one outside of the triangle will tune in to watch Duke hang 120 on ECU in hoops.
- Same television market as Wake, Duke, UNC and NC State (ask NC State fans if they are happy their football program is constantly relegated to ESPN360.com. There is a reason that ESPN never picks up NCSU-UNC, Duke-UNC, Wake-Duke in football). This wouldn’t exactly be expanding the TV market pie. As Jeff mentioned, Wake-Tech is on TV in New England this weekend. I would say Wake and Georgia Tech are fairly happy about the exposure they get in a new market.

Also, show me a program who isn’t currently struggling to get fans to the stadium. Florida State just beat NC State in front of 20,000 empty seats at Doak Campbell. That is not a problem that is unique to BC.

If conferences were simply about regional or “territorial security” and not about making money, sure ECU would be desirable to the ACC. But so would Appalachian State, Gardner-Webb, Western Carolina, NC Central, NC A&T State, and UNC Charlotte’s new upstart football program.

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 6, 2009 7:49 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Greenville may not be a Nielsen behemoth, but what good is being in a top ten media market if no one is watching? BC puts together back-to-back double-digit wins, rises to #2 in the BCS rankings, has an absolute stud QB, and falls victim to being in Boston.

You are incorrect. BC has well-documented issues with attendance, local media coverage, and traveling fans, but they are a huge television draw.

Some tidbits from that article:
-The 2007 BC-Virginia Tech game when BC was number 2 was ESPN’s highest rated Thursday night game ever (and it was competing directly with a Red Sox World Series game)
-Raycom set its own ratings records the first year BC was in the ACC.
-BC set ratings records for the bowl game they were in from 2005-2007

Your other arguments don’t make much sense to me either. Yes, being associated with the ACC may increase ECU’s academic profile, but why take that risk when a school that already had that profile in BC was available? You also don’t factor in the way that effect has played out for BC. The numbers for the average accepted student since the move to the ACC are up as is the number of applications from the South by a big number. ECU would have even further to go.

Also there’s a good chance ECU would have ended up a lot like Baylor in the Big XII, unable to compete with a lot of in state schools in the same conference with more resources and ended up being a drag on the conference.

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by John B on Nov 14, 2009 6:09 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Sorry

forgot the link

http://atleagle.blogspot.com/2008/05/bc-continues-to-dominate-tv-ratings.html#comments

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by John B on Nov 14, 2009 6:10 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

The ACC loves BC much more than any available Carolina School

The 3:30 ABC ACC game which this week is Wake Forest at Georgia Tech is on in Boston and New England because BC is in the ACC. The regional coverage map would not have changed with ECU joining the ACC because the ACC already gets coverage through the entire state of North Carolina. BC brought more to the ACC than ECU could’ve from that fact alone.

And let’s not even talk basketball where I would wager that it would take ECU more than 5 years before they won 2 conference games in the same season.

by Jeff @ BCI on Nov 6, 2009 1:39 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

LOL @ the ECU homer

Maybe step one is being competitive in C*USA?

by BCMike22 on Nov 6, 2009 9:33 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Clemson view

I don’t know about BC, but Clemson fans already hate the huge North Carolina contingent as it is. They hold far too much sway over the conference that has eight other teams not in that state. No one wants another NC school, even one that would be the little brother as ECU would.

yawkey doesn’t seem to understand the central problem here with ECU. Adding ECU instead of BC would be GREAT for ECU, but it doesn’t do a whole lot for anyone else.

BC has:
Better academics
A footprint in a large city (even if it’s dwarfed by the pro sports in the area)
Existing rivalries with the other two additions to the ACC (VT and Miami)
A historically more successful football program
A recently more successful football program
A national profile (Ever heard of Doug Flutie? Everyone else has.)

This one is a no-brainer. Certainly, you could probably argue that the ACC might have found a better fit than BC, given geography, but ECU is most certainly not it.

by OrangeBritches on Nov 6, 2009 9:48 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Thanks for the Clemson view

We haven’t even touched on the reaction from the rest of the ACC.

Not only would the other 8 non-North Carolina schools not vote in favor of adding ECU, but the 4 current North Carolina schools would be the LAST members to vote for ECU’s inclusion. Duke and UNC were against expansion from the beginning, and I can’t imagine NC State and Wake Forest would welcome more in-state competition.

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 6, 2009 9:54 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Duke and UNC

I don’t know that Duke/UNC were against expansion purely for expansion’s sake as much as they did not like the idea of the unbalanced conference basketball schedule.

by OrangeBritches on Nov 6, 2009 10:08 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Maybe true

But if this ECU to the ACC idea every became more than poorly written article from an ECU alum, I don’t see any reason why any of the four North Carolina schools would welcome more in-state “competition” for recruits, students and attention.

by Brian @ BCI on Nov 6, 2009 10:14 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs