Rapid Reaction: ACC Accepts Pitt and Syracuse

I apologize for not writing for a while.  Due to a period of transition within my personal life, I had to slow down on writing blog entries.  I still need to get to the MAC and the Sun Belt conferences, but thought that this news from ACC land was too important and needed some analysis. By now you have probably heard that Pittsburgh and Syracuse are leaving for the ACC.  This will put the ACC at 14 teams, which could potentially result in the first super-conference.  Let's take a look at the new ACC:

Duke

UNC

NC State

Wake Forest

Virginia

Virginia Tech

Miami

Florida State

Georgia Tech

Clemson

Maryland

Boston College

*Syracuse

*Pittsburgh

Essentially rivalries are retained and actually created in this new version of the ACC.  Pittsburgh will create a rivalry with Maryland and Syracuse with Boston College.  Unless....

If the ACC decides to move to 16 teams the top 2 prospects should be UConn and Rutgers.  Adding UConn and Rutgers would put the ACC in control of the NYC and NE markets.   UConn could form a rivalry with Boston College, while the Syracuse-Rutgers rivalry would be renewed in a stronger conference.  Ultimately, I like the look of this ACC even better than my originally proposed look.  If you are from Iowa or Kansas, you should be hoping the ACC decides to expand to 16.  why?  let's take a look from the Big 10's perspective:

If the Big 10 expanded, the conference wanted to pick up a couple of major media markets in New England and NYC.  By the ACC picking up all of NE and NYC, it does two things:

1) forces the Big Ten to be active in expansion-with the formation of the first super-conference, the Big Ten will have to act and expand to keep up with the ACC and possibly the SEC and Pac

2) remove the attractive options from the Big East, forcing the Big Ten to look at the remnants of the Big 12.

The remnants of the Big East (if UConn and Rutgers joined the ACC) would be West Virginia, Louisville, Cincinatti, and South Florida.  The SEC is looking into courting West Virginia to offset the addition of Texas A&M. That essentially leaves Louisville, Cincinatti, and South Florida.  Alternatively, the remnants of the Big 12 available are Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, Missouri (may be going to SEC) and Baylor (assuming the Oklahoma schools and Texas/TexTech go west).  With the pool of viable options shrinking and no home-run option, the Big Ten might pick up the Kansas schools and Iowa State (really the only conference that could).  It will be interesting to see how the next few days develop but already the landscape is starting to look interesting.