Originally Posted by
4decadedukie
Is anyone else troubled by additional ACC expansion, especially with more "thuggish" Big East schools? I see very significant cultural and academic differences between universities like Pitt, UConn, WVU, and so on -- or even with Miami, FSU, Virginia Tech -- and with Duke, UNC, UVa, Wake, etc.
Many believe the ACC's recent expansion (Miami, Virginia Tech and then BC) and its next-to-last expansion (FSU) were mistakes that have not even achieved alleged financial promises -- and please consider, the most-reputable ACC universities (Duke, UNC and UVa) opposed the more-recent change (with UVa eventually strong-armed to accede by Virginia politicians, who wanted to have VPI added to the ACC). We should remember that expansions/consolidations of this sort will include ALL intercollegiate athletics, not just the traditional, major revenue sports (men's football and basketball).
If one wants Duke to have excellent competition and cultural/academic compatibility for all sports, why not consider a sixteen-team Atlantic conference (no longer the ACC) that melds the best of the Ivy League -- currently unmentioned in all the uber-expansion chatter -- the ACC, and a few others, such as:
Duke
UNC
UVa
BC
Wake
Syracuse
Notre Dame (a long-shot, but this whole proposal is mighty theoretical)
Army
Navy
Cornell
Dartmouth
Yale
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
Brown
Or one could have great academic and cultural similarity, if geographic parameters (and travel costs) were increased, with Atlantic and Pacific Divisions (such as):
Duke
UNC
UVa
BC
Wake
Syracuse
Army
Navy
Stanford
Northwestern
Air Force
Rice
Tulane
TCU
Vanderbilt
Notre Dame