Dennis Dodd Partially Realizes Value of the ACC: ESPN Knows It More

Dennis Dodd reminds me of Pat Forde. Each is a Missouri graduate, and each loves to ignite or pour kerosene on a fire of controversy.

But what most intrigues me about them is that each is always ready to regurgitate some put down of the ACC. What leads Mizzou-trained sports journalists to denigrate the ACC repeatedly? Familiarity did not breed that contempt; perhaps envy did.

An example of an ACC put-down from Forde is in his piece "Conference Expansion's Winners and Losers" http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=5291319. 

Forde places the ACC among the Losers: "The good news: It didn't get raided during this realignment spasm. The bad news: None of its schools is attractive enough to raid."

I assume that Forde is still denying that the SEC gave an offer to Florida State back in 1991, because he, an expert, is absolutely certain that no school with an SEC offer would even begin to consider joining the ACC.

In this at least way Dodd has become Forde's superior. His version of Forde's expansion winners and losers is found in his "National Notebook" of July 9: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/story/13622550/national-notebook-tuberville-tells-big-12-truth-and-pays?tag=pageRow;pageContainer  

The three-part column concludes with "Boiling Down Realignment."

Dodd declares that expansion "...comes down to Texas, Notre Dame, Duke-Carolina, and the ACC basketball tournament. Those are the trigger points for any movement. None of the four entities changed homes so the alignment, this time, was minor."

In direct contrast to Forde, Dodd concludes, "The ACC? Suddenly looking strong after mucking through five seasons since expansion."

Dodd is on to something that few seem to have grasped, and because he merely outlines it, I will fill in the blanks.

The ACC is indeed far stronger a conference than most outside the ACC can guess. I do not mean merely that it has won five of the last ten NCAA basketball national championships, nor that it is a great conference for non-revenue sports. I mean that the ACC is well-run, so well-run that despite it being the only BCS conference with multiple private schools, and despite it being the BCS conference with easily the smallest student bodies, it was never in danger of being poached.

The reason is not the one silly Pat Forde imagined; the reason is partly what Dodd sees. The ACC is unlike the Big East (which will die as a BCS league once the ACC and/or Big Ten take at least two BE members) or the Big 12. The ACC works too well for its members for any of them to leave (unless, like South Carolina in 1971, a school demands lowered academic standards).

Before the new ACC deal with ESPN was announced, it was widely circulated, by legitimate sports journalists as well as by Internet posters, that the ACC would be very lucky to sign a new deal worth even as much as its old deals. That assumption, combined with the assumption that the Big Ten was expanding to either 14 or 16, which would push the SEC to do the same, led all kinds of people to predict the demise of the ACC, as the SEC and Big Ten would take its most valuable members.

Forde ignores what the ACC is actually worth and spews his assessment that the reason the ACC remains intact is that its members are worth nothing. Dodd faces the ESPN deal and realizes that the ACC is simply worth more than he had ever imagined. Dodd, to his dismay, realizes that the ACC, perhaps primarily because of Duke and North Carolina and the ACC basketball tournament, is of a value roughly equal to that of Notre Dame and Texas in recent and any subsequent conference realignments.

Look at it this way: Texas is seen as the second most powerful and coveted athletics department, behind Notre Dame. Yet both conferences headed by Texas have been raided by another conference. The SWC is long dead, and many agree with Tommy Tuberville that the Big 12 is not long for this world.

If Texas cannot protect its own conferences, then either Texas is not as powerful as most assume, or Texas cares little or nothing for its conferences and their members.

If you were Baylor or even Missouri, which would you prefer as your big name heading your league and protecting your status: Texas or Duke vs. North Carolina? 

The ACC has loyalty to all members from the top down, stability, top-level competitiveness across the range of college sports, financial success that astonishes outsiders, and, to top it off, the best academics among major college conferences: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/406659-academic-rankings-and-conference-realignments.

If you want know why Florida State chose the ACC over the SEC, and why the ACC is not going to lose members to the SEC or Big Ten, that is it. It is all this which makes the ACC much more valuable than most sports journalists, much less fans of other conferences, can imagine even now.

That all duly noted, I need to clarify some things that Dodd confuses. Football is king of sports. That is true worldwide. We see it in the many forms of football that are far and away the biggest sports in most nations. Soccer certainly heads the list, but rugby, Australian rules football, and Gaelic football all show the preeminence of football games.

That truth is what confuses most people about the value of the ACC. They see the smallest student bodies among BCS leagues, a conference with four private schools, and no recent football success at the National Championship level. They then assume that the ACC is as weak as the Big East.

The big picture that ESPN and Fox both grasp is that ACC football the previous seven years or so has been about as far down as it can be. What were the odds that both FSU and Miami would be down, far down for each, for seven straight years? What are the odds that pattern continues even to 2011?

Even with that pair floundering on the field, they have continued to draw very large TV audiences: http://hurricanesports.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/100809aag.html/  ESPN knows that as soon as both rebuild and have Top 15 teams, they will draw even larger TV audiences to ACC football. ESPN also knows that the top-flight Virginia Tech, Boston College, Clemson, and perhaps especially North Carolina (which has an all-sports name recognition third in the country behind only Notre Dame and Texas) football teams will draw large TV audiences.

It is that certainty that ACC football cannot remain as weak as it has been the previous seven years (during which the ACC set an NCAA record by having 10 bowl teams in one year) combined with ACC basketball (especially the Duke-UNC games and the ACC tournament) and the many first-rate ACC non-revenue sports (many more of which ESPN plans to broadcast) that secured the new ACC TV deal.

All things considered, the ACC is easily the third most-valuable conference—even when its football has been down for almost a decade.

And I suspect that ESPN plans to nudge the ACC towards expansion in order to add to its value.

ESPN has been tied to the Big East since its founding. ESPN has promoted the BE, first its basketball and then its football, from inception. The BE has been the "home" conference for ESPN, beloved especially as the vehicle to expand interest in college basketball in the northeast.

Now, I think ESPN has accepted the handwriting on the wall: BE football is a dead-man walking as a BCS conference, and the loss of BCS status will result in a demotion of BE basketball.

Before continuing with that thought, I think it pertinent to note that the BE has recognized its peril since the late 1990s. In fact, then-BE Commissioner Mike Tranghese offered the ACC the use of its original four football schools: BC, Syracuse, Pitt, and Miami http://articles.courant.com/2003-06-12/features/0306120470_1_big-east-acc-acc-president-acc-expansion-plan .

The ACC did not sneak up and pilfer BE members; rather, BE members approached the ACC about joining, and in an unprecedented move to attempt to save BE basketball as a major player, the BE offered to allow the ACC to have its then-four marquee football names during football season.

What ESPN now accepts is that the BE as we know it probably cannot be saved from the forces behind conference realignment. That means that ESPN is going to want the ACC to salvage even more of the BE, specifically Syracuse.

Syracuse has the largest basketball fanbase and best basketball TV drawing power in the northeast. Adding that to the ACC, which already has large basketball audiences in both the Philadelphia and NYC TV markets, would make ACC basketball the replacement for BE basketball for ESPN.

ESPN knows that football is much bigger than basketball, but it also knows the great value of the ACC tournament and the NCAA tournament. ESPN is confident that if one basketball conference can have the media power and value roughly equal to that of  SEC and Big Ten football, it would be the ACC with Syracuse.

So what would be the value of the ACC once FSU and Miami football recover and Syracuse joins to make ACC basketball the lone truly major conference on the entire East Coast?

More than the new deal with ESPN.