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Rethinking conference alignments

GandBinNC

GarnetTrust.com Member/Supporter
Jul 12, 2011
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For shits and giggles... What conference alignment of 14 schools would you choose for South Carolina if you had the pick of both SEC and ACC institutions?

For me:

Division A:
South Carolina, Clemson, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Division B:
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State

Tough choices. No room for Wake, GA Tech and Vandy, but I could see them forming a conference of their own - sort of a Southern Ivy League, along with Rice, Baylor, Tulane and some others.

And giving up LSU and Florida was not easy, but one or two of the big boys had to go. I could see LSU and Arkansas merging with some of the Big 12 schools. Same for Mizzou and Texas A&M, and they don't really belong culturally anyway. Ditto for Syracuse, Pitt, etc, who I could see helping to reform the Big East.

Florida, Florida State and Miami... not sure where to put them.

I'd be interested to see your choices...
 
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I’m going to be in the minority and say group A. Geographically it would be easier to make it to almost every game with a short car drive. It would also be better for basketball.
 
For shits and giggles... What conference alignment of 14 schools would you choose for South Carolina if you had the pick of both SEC and ACC institutions?

For me:

Division A:
South Carolina, Clemson, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Division B:
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State

Tough choices. No room for Wake, GA Tech and Vandy, but I could see them forming a conference of their own - sort of a Southern Ivy League, along with Rice, Baylor, Tulane and some others.

And giving up LSU and Florida was not easy, but one or two of the big boys had to go. I could see LSU and Arkansas merging with some of the Big 12 schools. Same for Mizzou and Texas A&M, and they don't really belong culturally anyway. Ditto for Syracuse, Pitt, etc, who I could see helping to reform the Big East.

Florida, Florida State and Miami... not sure where to put them.

I'd be interested to see your choices...

I could live with what you have, except I'd drop UVA and MSU. I hate unwieldy, 14 team conferences.
 
For shits and giggles... What conference alignment of 14 schools would you choose for South Carolina if you had the pick of both SEC and ACC institutions?

For me:

Division A:
South Carolina, Clemson, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Division B:
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State

Tough choices. No room for Wake, GA Tech and Vandy, but I could see them forming a conference of their own - sort of a Southern Ivy League, along with Rice, Baylor, Tulane and some others.

And giving up LSU and Florida was not easy, but one or two of the big boys had to go. I could see LSU and Arkansas merging with some of the Big 12 schools. Same for Mizzou and Texas A&M, and they don't really belong culturally anyway. Ditto for Syracuse, Pitt, etc, who I could see helping to reform the Big East.

Florida, Florida State and Miami... not sure where to put them.

I'd be interested to see your choices...

I’ll smoke what he’s having.
 
I say screw 14, go back to 12, no permanent opponents from divisions.
 
I'd like teams to be able to designate a rivalry as traditional, and the rest of the season be entirely round robin. Determine your two championship game participants on a points system and ditch divisional play altogether.
 
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I certainly don't like the permanent opponents from other divisions.
Only in some cases. UGA - Auburn, Bama - Tennessee are long time rivalries so giving them a pass is alright in IMHO.
I'm sure there are cases like this in other conferences as well.
Manufacturing a rivalry just to fill in a slot on the schedule just leaves one dissatisfied.
 
Only in some cases. UGA - Auburn, Bama - Tennessee are long time rivalries so giving them a pass is alright in IMHO.
I'm sure there are cases like this in other conferences as well.
Manufacturing a rivalry just to fill in a slot on the schedule just leaves one dissatisfied.

Exactly. Our "rivalry" games, or permanent cross-division opponents since joining the SEC have left much to be desired. First Arkansas and Mississippi State (back when there were two cross-division permanents), then just Arkansas, and since expansion, Texas A&M. We have very little in common with any of them, and the road trips are difficult due to distance.

In the alignment I proposed in the original post, I could see our permanent cross-division rival being UGA, UT, or even UK.

That alignment will never happen, of course, but its interesting to think about. Selfishly, living in NC it would be awesome for me.
 
For shits and giggles... What conference alignment of 14 schools would you choose for South Carolina if you had the pick of both SEC and ACC institutions?

For me:

Division A:
South Carolina, Clemson, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Division B:
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State

Tough choices. No room for Wake, GA Tech and Vandy, but I could see them forming a conference of their own - sort of a Southern Ivy League, along with Rice, Baylor, Tulane and some others.

And giving up LSU and Florida was not easy, but one or two of the big boys had to go. I could see LSU and Arkansas merging with some of the Big 12 schools. Same for Mizzou and Texas A&M, and they don't really belong culturally anyway. Ditto for Syracuse, Pitt, etc, who I could see helping to reform the Big East.

Florida, Florida State and Miami... not sure where to put them.

I'd be interested to see your choices...

Not a bad mix!

IMO this is how you “fix” CFB. It is clear to me this is the only equitable way to do it-
Power 5 should be power 4. 4 conferences with 14 teams each, 7 per division. Playoff games stay at 4, but in this case the conf championships are truly the first round of the playoffs- as they were supposed to be bu the NCAA is too feckless to make it so. Thus we now have an 8 team playoff without adding any extra games. It really is that easy.

I also like the idea of eliminating FCS regular season games and making the “Spring game” a scrimmage vs an FCS TEAM.

“What about the teams that are D1 and don’t get into a power conference”? In short... Eff em.
Obviously you could make the power conferences 16,18,20... Teams each if need be, but their should be some qualifier to get into a major conference- some combination of revenue, history, TV Ratings... There is a way to do it without just subjectively picking teams.
 
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Only in some cases. UGA - Auburn, Bama - Tennessee are long time rivalries so giving them a pass is alright in IMHO.
I'm sure there are cases like this in other conferences as well.
Manufacturing a rivalry just to fill in a slot on the schedule just leaves one dissatisfied.

Florida - Auburn used to be a big game too. They don’t play every year any longer. 1st year would be odd, but after a few it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s really not all that fair to UT that they have Alabama as their permanent, when Missouri gets Arkansas.

While there are a couple of games that it’s worth having, I think 10-12 teams in the conference benefit more from eliminating them.

heck, if UGA and Auburn want to play every year, let them schedule it as an OCC game when it’s not on the conference schedule. They are scheduling other teams like Clemson, Oregon, etc... See how bad they really want it. Nobody would stop them from doing that.
 
I say we just pull a Texas A&M. Stop playing Clemson. We really don’t need them on our schedule. The SEC is hard enough.
 
For shits and giggles... What conference alignment of 14 schools would you choose for South Carolina if you had the pick of both SEC and ACC institutions?

For me:

Division A:
South Carolina, Clemson, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Division B:
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State

Tough choices. No room for Wake, GA Tech and Vandy, but I could see them forming a conference of their own - sort of a Southern Ivy League, along with Rice, Baylor, Tulane and some others.

And giving up LSU and Florida was not easy, but one or two of the big boys had to go. I could see LSU and Arkansas merging with some of the Big 12 schools. Same for Mizzou and Texas A&M, and they don't really belong culturally anyway. Ditto for Syracuse, Pitt, etc, who I could see helping to reform the Big East.

Florida, Florida State and Miami... not sure where to put them.

I'd be interested to see your choices...

I think Vandy, Wake and Tech would sorely be missed, when Homecoming rolled around.
 
Mike Slive missed his chance in 2009. He could have kneecapped the ACC (and Clemson). He could have "made it so" and had a 16 team SEC by adding Texas A&M, North Carolina State (maybe could have gotten UNC instead?), UVA, and Virginia Tech. A sweeping behemoth from Texas to the nation's capital.

Is there anything that makes you think those teams would like to be in the SEC? It appears to me FSU and Clemson are the only two who could compete. The remainder wouldn’t do any better than we have.
 
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Love OP's Div 1A. Can't beat that.
I was excited at first about A&M and Mo joining but now wish we had remained a 12 team conference.
Mo brings nothing and doesn't fit culturally-should have invited W Va instead. Mo whored themselves out to the B10 and lifted her skirt but B10 said I smell something fishy.
 
Love OP's Div 1A. Can't beat that.
I was excited at first about A&M and Mo joining but now wish we had remained a 12 team conference.
Mo brings nothing and doesn't fit culturally-should have invited W Va instead. Mo whored themselves out to the B10 and lifted her skirt but B10 said I smell something fishy.

Not so sure about Mizzou. The TV market, granted Its not Texas, but two cities over a million with the campus in a small town, fit the SEC image. It gives us more exposure than some of the old regulars in the SEC. It brings more than Auburn, Miss St. and Vandy because the conference would have those markets without them. It brings more than Arkansas and SC, even though SC take in western NC.
 
Is there anything that makes you think those teams would like to be in the SEC? It appears to me FSU and Clemson are the only two who could compete. The remainder wouldn’t do any better than we have.

I can tell you, living here in Raleigh, there is a sizable contingent of NC State fans who would have been excited about the prospect. Its more of a football-first culture than the other NC schools. And there is a natural rivalry with South Carolina - it was one of the better, more heated rivalries we have enjoyed over the years (prior to our joining the SEC). There are State fans who would have welcomed a jump to the SEC, and State would have been instantly South Carolina's biggest conference rivalry. Bigger than UGA, in my opinion, because UGA fans/alums don't consider USC to be a true rival. State fans would have fully embraced the rivalry.
 
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I can tell you, living here in Raleigh, there is a sizable contingent of NC State fans who would have been excited about the prospect. Its more of a football-first culture than the other NC schools. And there is a natural rivalry with South Carolina - it was one of the better, more heated rivalries we have enjoyed over the years (prior to our joining the SEC). There are State fans who would have welcomed a jump to the SEC, and State would have been instantly South Carolina's biggest conference rivalry. Bigger than UGA, in my opinion, because UGA fans/alums don't consider USC to be a true rival. State fans would have fully embraced the rivalry.

Unfortunately, the fans would not have been making those decisions. I agree, State would be a great fit in both football and basketball, but being a part of the NC system might prevent them from going anywhere. The other two up there would have a hissy fit if State appeared to be building a better program. I can remember when they did that to us.
 
With Tanner as AD, we should consider the Southern Conference or something similar.
 
Go back to 1972, stay in ACC. We'd be better in football and basketball
Yeah, big big mistake. Dietzel was an idiot who was behind getting out. Our natural rivals were the ACC teams. Probably wouldn't have gotten Lou or Steve without SEC membership but even they couldn't win a conference championship.
Would be better in MBB. Not sure about FB.
Loved hating the ACC teams.
 
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Yeah, big big mistake. Dietzel was an idiot who was behind getting out. Our natural rivals were the ACC teams. Probably wouldn't have gotten Lou or Steve without SEC membership but even they couldn't win a conference championship.
Would be better in MBB. Not sure about FB.
Loved hating the ACC teams.

Basketball was the obvious loser when USC bolted the ACC. But its reasonable to think that Football lost too. Remember, Carolina won it's only conference championship ('69) just two years prior to leaving. And the program had won a share of another championship ('65) just a few years prior, although that one was vacated due to violations.

Suffice it to say, the entire athletic department was on the upswing just at the moment USC left the ACC. Our facilities in basketball (Carolina Coliseum), football (west upper deck), and baseball (George Terry Spring Sports Complex, and what would later be renamed Sarge Frye Field) had all been built or upgraded substantially between 1968 and 1971.

Carolina had the best facilities in the ACC, and ACC titles in football and basketball, not to mention a brand new hire for baseball (Bobby Richardson) who would bring USC baseball into the modern era - all happening within two years of leaving the conference in 1971.

It was a travesty, and the greatest mistake not only in athletic department history, but quite possibly in the history of NCAA sports.
 
Hey I never knew that. He was Dean of Libraries...didn't know he had his name on a sports facility

Terry came to USC along with Dietzel in '66 if I'm not mistaken. He was an associate AD of some sort, and then I suppose moved onto other duties within the University. This is from from an old entry on the USC athletic website:

Sarge Frye Field is part of a 30-acre complex of athletic fields and buildings at the Rex Enright Athletic Center, named for the late University of South Carolina director of athletics and head football coach. Other facilities include the "Roundhouse" office building and the George Terry Olympic Sports building which houses dressing and sports medicine facilities.
 
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