Save College Sports As We Know It!
I'm really unhappy about the iminent plans to expand the ACC to twelve schools. First of all, I hate the fact that Syracuse basketball will be leaving the Big East. Their long-standing rivalry with Georgetown is one of the best in college basketball, harking back to the days of John Thompson, Billy Owens, Alonzo Mourning and Sherman Douglass. I hope they'll still schedule some non-conference games with their old Big East foes.
Secondly, the expansion to 12 teams ruins the round-robin format of the ACC regular season. It's so much fairer when every team plays every other team home-and-home. But now, the ACC is going to turn into a conference like the Big 12, where Kansas and Oklahoma only meet once a year. Now the Pac-10 will be the only power conference to keep the round-robin format.
Thirdly, I'm not a huge fan of conference championship games in football. The leagues like them because they generate millions, but they never match up the two best teams in the conference. For example, Texas and Oklahoma are usually the two best teams in the Big 12, but they're both in the South division. In the new ACC, Florida State and Miami will likely be in the same division and thus would never play for in the title game despite being the obvious football powers.
Lastly, this move is going to severely weaken several other conferences. The Big East's stint as a football power is obviously over, Big East basketball will have to scramble to survive while Conference USA and the Atlantic 10 will both be raided of its best teams. Here's hoping for some last-minute snafu that will derail this unfortunate development.