Here's my uneducated guess as to how Splitting new ACC into two divisions will work out.
Let assume we get the favorites to join: Miami, Syracuse, and BC. Lets also assume we have 6 teams in each division. In football you play everyone in your division, and 1/2 of the other division for 8 conference games - the same number as you have now. In basketball, you play everyone in your division twice, and everyone in the other division once for 16 conference games, the same you have now.
A geographic split would give you Miami, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Clemson, and two North Carolina schools in the South, with the other two NC schools in the North with Virginia, Maryland, Syracuse and BC. Now, assuming that you've got to keep Duke and UNC together for financial reasons, rivaly reasons, and geographic reasons, what do you do?
If you put them in the North, you've got the "basketball division" with UNC, Duke, Syracuse, and Maryland all in the North. That's just too much. Assuming the big basketball schools are playing at their historic levels, how hard would it be to make the NCAA tournament from the North - as, for example, Virginia? You start the season with 8 likely losses while Wake, for example, who is in the South, has got 1/2 as many. And its even worse when you consider where the historic weaklings are. Wake, in this senario, has 6 games against traditional whipping boys Clemson, Florida State, and Miami, while Virginia has only got 3. As for whipping boys in the North, Virginia would only have BC. With this divisional format, the same team that would go 9-7 or even 10-6 in the South, would go 6-10 in the North.
So I guess you gotta put State and Wake in the North, and Duke and UNC in the South. That means Duke and MD, who have a great rivalry now, play only once a year. It also means UNC and Duke have a big advantage - they've got the three whipping boys in the South, while MD and 'Cuse get only BC, but maybe they'll just have to get over it.
On the other hand, this format has another big problem: after the regular season battle royale in the South between Miami and Florida State for the right to go to the conference's football championship game, one of those teams gets to roll right over the North's representative. Who's is the best football team up there? Syracuse? Maryland? Virginia? Not pretty. One or the other of Miami and Florida State has been in the top 5 since 1990, at least. Have ANY of the North teams been in the top 5 since Virginia in the late 80s?
But, maybe you can fix the football imbalance and the basketball imbalance at the same time. You put Miami in the North. They've been playing in the Big East anyway, so they are used to the travel. You then put N.C. State in the South. That not only makes the football championship interesting, it also evens up the cannon fodder in basketball: Florida State and Clemson in the South, BC and Miami in the North. You also get 3 of the 4 NC schools in the same division, keeping UNC and State's football rivalry (such that it is) an every year event.
So, here is my bold prediction, not that I like it one bit: the North is Miami, Wake, Maryland, Virginia, BC, and Syracuse; the South is UNC, Duke, N.C. State, Florida State, Clemson, and Georgia Tech. So there.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 3:40 PM