Totally on board with swapping out Wake Forest for

Jul 27, 2021, 12:55 PM

West Virginia, for football. Leave Wake in for all other sports like we do with ND (16 league teams for all other sports), and help get them into the AAC for football (or Sunbelt or Other). Wake would still earn the 20% ACC media cut like Notre Dame, plus an 80% portion of AAC revenue as that's what football pays out. Better than Group of 5 $ but not quite Power 5 $. Work out a long-term football scheduling agreement where the NC teams would continue to play. Duke could even keep it permanent as an OOC rival - why not.

Keep the league at 14 teams. Get rid of divisions. Schedule 3 annual rivalries per program and rotate all the others 2x every four years so we can maintain an 8 game league schedule. Do we really want to play any more ACC teams yearly than we have to? Here's what the 3 annual match-ups could look like before playing every other team home and away every four years.

Boston College - Miami, Syracuse, UVA
Clemson - FSU, Ga Tech, NC State
Duke - Ga Tech, NC State, UNC
FSU - Clemson, Miami, Syracuse
Ga Tech - Clemson, Duke, Louisville
Louisville - Ga Tech, Syracuse, West Va
Miami - Boston College, FSU, Pitt
NC State - Clemson, Duke, UNC
Pitt - Miami, Va Tech, West Va
Syracuse - Boston College, FSU, Louisville
UNC - Duke, NC State, UVA
UVA - Boston College, UNC, Va Tech
Va Tech - Pitt, UVA, West Va
West Va - Louisville, Pitt, Va Tech

From a financial standpoint, the ACC would only be upping a payout 20% of today's per program payout, while gaining a much more potent football program and content over what Wake Forest provides. There is a large contingency of older fans very loyal to Wake, and with good reason. So keep them in the league, just have them play football at a level better suited for them historically and longer term.

Anyway, there's a lot of pie in the sky thinking and somehow dismantling the B1G to fulfill our goals, or fretting about getting Notre Dame on board full time. This is very, very achievable, and would constitute a net gain. Simply ditching divisions would do it for me without any change, but this one would deliver, and up our football product from where it is today. A good ROI. If actual expansion were in the cards later, this would provide a better foundation to act upon.

Go Tigers.