expansion special

This kind of thing probably gets announced on Saturday mornings because every fan is either sleeping or drunk at 10:30 in the morning, so maybe it doesn't get blogged on til it's too late.  Well, I'm too slick for them.  The latest, which you can tell I think is plausible enough and happening enough to worry about because I'm bothering with it on Saturday morning like this, is the possibility of Pittsburgh and Syracuse making their way to the ACC.

The other major news from the article is that the ACC schools unanimously - unanimously, mind you - voted to increase the departure buyout to $20 million.  That is a whopping figure; if a team were to leave for the SEC it would take them at least four years to earn that back in the increased TV revenue.

It's just like I've been telling you, then: The ACC is in little danger of being raided for its best teams, and in fact is a "winner" and not a loser in this musical chairs game - at least as much as you can call it winning when you continue to water down your traditional matchups.  The ACC claims to have been approached by as many as 10 teams.  It's silly to speculate who, which is why I will anyway: the aforementioned Pitt and Syracuse, probably Texas putting out feelers about whether the ACC is bitch enough to let it operate it's TV network.  Probably some other Big East teams like maybe Rutgers.  Bet anything ECU at least took a shot in the dark.  Maybe West Virginia.  Heck, maybe at least half of the football-playing Big Easters.

Anyway, though, the words "formally applied" and on ESPN carry a lot more weight than "in talks with" or "reached out to," which is why we're here today instead of me just blowing it off as more hot air.  Most of this crap is, you know.  It's not like ESPN's never been wrong before, but this has a lot more of a reality feeling to it.

Mind you, I don't want to expand at all.  If I were king of college football with the one stipulation that I couldn't undo anything that had already been done, I'd add TCU (not in the Big East til 2012, mind you) and maybe Boise to the Big 12 and make everyone else sit down and shut up and 12 teams would be great.  I'm already on record as hating it that we have to go four calendar years between playing teams like Clemson and NC State.  Obviously that situation ain't gonna improve with two more teams.  But if we must expand, Syracuse and Pittsburgh are two of my top three choices.  Better idea than Notre Dame, IMO, for several reasons.  Much better than Texas.

If this has enough legs to it, and I think it will, later this week I will offer up thoughts on what the addition of Pitt and Cuse would do for the conference in various sports.