As a college basketball traditionalist, conference expansion has been a sore subject for me. I miss the days of a full round-robin ACC conference schedule and ACC basketball being something truly unique and special. Over the past few months, expansion has become a big topic of discussion again, with the Big Ten and Pac 10 planning possible expansion in the near future. The most likely scenario has the Big Ten moving to fourteen teams- a move that will cause a major ripple effect in the current college athletics landscape. Some commentators believe that eventually there will be four or five super-conferences. An intriguing possiblity was recently postulated by Brendan Prunty of
The Star-Ledger (New Jersey). Prunty predicted that the ACC and Big East could combine to form the Big Atlantic Conference, consisting of the
following teams:
Boston College, Wake Forest, Maryland, North Carolina, NC State, Duke, Virginia, Virginia Tech, UConn, Cincinnati, West Virginia, South Florida, Memphis, Temple, UCF, Louisville, Villanova, Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. John's.
(Note: FSU, Miami, Clemson and Georgia Tech joined the SEC in this scenario)
At first glance, I am opposed to additional expansion past the current twelve teams. My ideal ACC would include nine or ten teams so that basketball could play a round-robin schedule. I grew up watching an eight team league in the era of Cremins, Valvano, Smith, and K. The conference was exclusive, arenas were small, and fans were able to become familiar with opposing players. It was a special time for college basketball. That said, things change and evolve. To survive, the ACC must change with the times, or its members will be reduced to mid-major status. The "Big Atlantic Conference" as proposed by Prunty is particularly appealing, and I would be in support of this alliance of teams.
The "Big Atlantic Conference" would be a respectable football conference and would provide sufficient opportunities for the member schools to compete at the highest level. More importantly, it would remain true to the history and tradition of the basketball-centric ACC and Big East by creating perhaps the best college basketball conference imaginable. In fact, twelve of the twenty schools that would play basketball in the conference are ranked in
Triangle Hoops Journals' Top 30 programs of all time. That means forty percent of the nation's best historical basketball programs would be in one conference.
The league could be split into two divisions. The North would include Boston College, UConn, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Temple, Villanova, Notre Dame, Georgetown, St. John's and Maryland. The South would include Wake, UNC, NC State, Duke, Louisville, UCF, South Florida, Virginia, Virginia Tech, and Memphis.
State, Duke, UNC and Wake would get to play each other twice each regular season. Traditional rivalries in each league would be respected and promoted. Basketball power Temple (currently in the Atlantic 10) would have the opportunity to be in a great conference, which would allow it to achieve its full potential as a great basketball school. Imagine a conference tournament arranged as follows: The South division plays two rounds in Greensboro, the North in Madison Square Garden. The four semi-finalists from each division would then play out the tournament in Greensboro or the Garden, alternating each season.
Not only would our beloved Tobacco Road schools survive, they would be big winners in conference expansion. The ACC would effectively be able to flourish in a world dominated by football by forming a tremendous basketball conference, while preserving its traditions and rivalries.
