The Big 12 and the SEC's agreement to have an equivalent to what the PAC-12 and the Big Ten have in the Rose Bowl presents some potentially serious problems for the ACC. There's more money on the table and while we don't know exactly how the Big 12 distributes things, we're pretty sure it's not the one-for-all model the ACC uses.
Still, it's certainly not likely to lessen the love-'em-and-leave-'em faction at FSU and perhaps Miami (the 'Canes may have at least temporarily limited options due to the football scandal, which is likely to limit talent, wins and at least for a while, hubris).
The ACC is outside looking in at the moment and will have to be creative to deal with this.
One of the things we'd like to see, assuming it's okay by the NCAA, is a league-run scouting program, one which is relentlessly thorough and which distributes the same information to each school.
We'd also like to see a league-wide commitment to using bleeding edge technology wherever possible, although we're not sure how or where. We do know that the NBA is starting to use analytics in a fascinating way, just as MLB has. Perhaps that's a starting point.
Who knows? As Pete Thamel says, things may not work out until a playoff system is settled. Wherever it goes, we hope that the ACC is smarter. If you can't be bigger, you pretty much have to be smarter.
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