UNC has the three first games of the season televised avoiding relegation to ESPN3. Game times have something to do with that. For example, the Elon game will be at 12:30 which will roundly be complained about and result is some suspect attendance. However if UNC has the game at 6:00 PM chances are it would be pushed to ESPN3 which is exactly what happened to Florida State’s first two games. The Wake Forest match-up will be carried on RSN or as most people know it, Fox Sports Carolinas or Fox Sports South. Since the game at Louisville is a non-conference away game, no game time has been set but it will be televised on one of the three ESPN platforms.

UNC will play at Virginia on Thursday night this season. Somewhere John Bunting cringing.

The ACC meetings at Amelia Island have proven to be far less exciting than we all hoped with the “FSU wants to leave for the Big 12″ talk. So far the only two items of note is an expansion of the ACC Tournament and the football regular season schedule.

ACC commissioner John Swofford announced that with the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, the ACC Tournament will include all fourteen league teams. That will necessitate the addition of a Wednesday round of games involving the bottom four teams in the ACC. The winners of the #11 vs #14 and #12 vs #13 games would advance to play the #5 and #6 seeds respectively on Thursday. Needless to say the excitement is more than I can bear. After all we know just how good the Thursday games have been, adding games on Wednesday will have us all taking the week off from work simply to take it all in. /sarcasm

Unfortunately this is what expansion has wrought. I imagine part of the new TV deal with ESPN included two more ACC Tournament games plus the Big East tried excluding teams from their behemoth of a league tourney and it did not go over all. Never mind the fact all this does is create two more bad games which could see fewer people in the Greensboro Coliseum than a UNCG home game. The ACC is struggling with a lack of good teams past the top three or four making anything that happens in the tournament before those teams get on the floor dicey at best.

On the football side, the ACC schedule will move to nine games with Atlantic Dvision hosting five home games in odd years and the Coastal Division doing so in even years. It will be interesting to see how this impacts scheduling. Schools, in general, are not going to give up the lighter portions of their schedule meaning the additional league game has the potential of removing a quality non-conference game from respective teams’ slates.

Apparently FSU is openly entertaining the notion of jumping to the Big 12.

For a primer, check out my thoughts on the ACC-ESPN deal then take a look at Joe Ovies’ piece at WRAL Sports Fan

 So what’s the problem? Money.

Ancient Shaolin philosophers lived by a simple premise: “Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Get the money. Dollar, dollar bill y’all,” they said.

Conference realignment has been fueled by this C.R.E.A.M. mindset ever since the conferences battled the NCAA over television restrictions.

Florida State isn’t interested in the possibility of better competition in the Big 12. The Seminoles want the money. The university is dealing with a $2.4 million budget crisis and simple math dictates that the conference with a better television deal would make it easier for Florida State to dig itself out of a hole. Even if the Big 12 only has a verbally agreed upon contract – which was needed to prevent the conference from imploding in the first place – the prospect of more cash is certainly enticing.

Haggard’s misguided complaints about “Tier III” rights had the unintended (or maybe it was intended) consequences of poking holes in the ACCs reworked deal with ESPN. Once you get past the glowing facade of the press release, which highlighted the big flashy $3.6 billion figure, it turns out the ACC will only get a small increase in the early years of the contract. ESPN back-loaded the agreement and will average out to $17.1 million per school over the life of the deal.

There is a great deal of unhappiness in the FSU fan base to the point the BOT Chairman Andy Haggard raised a ruckus about everything from TV money to Tier III rights and the always reliable “North Carolina schools runs the ACC” canard. Apparently one issue is the TV deal looks a lot less glowing when it was discovered the money on the contract was backloaded, not uncommon with such arrangements. That means schools will only see an increase of around $1 million or so in the first year but be at $24 million per season by year fifteen for a $17 million per year average over the life of the deal. In addition, FSU thinks the money the deal brings in is insufficient on its face when compared to other conferences. And that would not be necessarily wrong but the question is why?

Simple. ACC football has been medicore for quite some time, something Ovies points out. In basketball, UNC and Duke carry the water and keep the league at the top of the TV schedule. Duke has every game they played televised somewhere as does UNC with the exception of an ESPN3 game or two. In football who is carrying the national torch? The answer is it should be some combination of Virginia Tech, FSU, Clemson and Miami but that hasn’t been the case. In that respect some of the “blame” for the lack of kick on the TV contract falls in part on FSU for not being the national power it was in the 1990s.

Despite FSU’s lack of championship potency in football over the past decade, they still operate with a brand which means the ACC will need to do something to address Seminole concerns. Some chatter this morning has John Swofford’s head on a platter as a possible demand which may or may not get support from other schools. The only thing that is certain is there is a huge emotional element at work here. The Seminole fan base is up in arms and those concerns real or not are being piped into the mainstream by a member of the board of trustees. The FSU president, Eric Barron, is saying the right things in public but anyone who has paidattention to college athletics for at least 90 seconds knows fan base noise carries a lot of weight.

At any rate, those ACC meetings we normally pay little to no attention to could be ground zero for some big news over the coming days. Stay tuned.

Via ESPN’s Ivan Masiel.

The Atlantic Coast Conference membership last month came up one vote short of fining North Carolina $100,000 for the NCAA violations committed during the tenure of former coach Butch Davis.

Instead, the league’s Infractions and Penalties Committee issued a public reprimand of the university.

The vote of 7-4 in favor of the fine (North Carolina did not vote) fell one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to approve the penalty, according to two sources within the league. However, the failed vote indicates that a significant majority of North Carolina’s fellow members took a dimmer view of the school’s behavior than the issuing of a reprimand would indicate.

“We do not comment on actions not taken by the committee,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said in an email Wednesday night.

Part of me actually wishes the fine had been approved just to shut up rival fans but then I remember that nothing short of dropping a World War II-era nuke on Chapel Hill will appease those people so it is probably better to simply watch them be pissed.

The fine required eight votes, it got seven with UNC’s representative on the committee, Bubba Cunningham, abstaining. So who were the four who voted against the fine? No one knows but we can certainly speculate. Miami probably voted against considering the Hurricanes are facing their own NCAA violations and wouldn’t want UNC to cast a vote against them when the time comes. Believe it or not, Duke probably voted against the fine. While UNC and Duke may be rivals, they also share a common goals and areas of focus such as basketball. The two schools can be, at times, strange bedfellows.

Outside of those two, it is hard to say but as Doc noted on Twitter, it would be hilarious if we found out NC State and Clemson voted against the fine.

With the future addition of Syracuse and Pittsburgh to the ACC, the league exercised its right to re-negotiate the 2010 TV deal with ESPN which has produced a new 15-year, $3.6 billion contract. That number almost doubles what the deal two years ago brought in. ACC member schools will receive $17 million per year under the new pact, an increase of $5 million per school annually. Per the ACC release here is a rundown of what can be expected from the new contract which goes into effect on July 1st.

ACC on ESPN

ESPN has been televising ACC content since 1979 and has exclusive rights to every conference-controlled football and men’s basketball game, plus women’s basketball and Olympic sports matchups, and all ACC championship events. ACC content is distributed on the widest array of multi-media platforms in the sports industry. ACC on ESPN highlights:

• Football on national TV: Extensive regular-season action on Saturday afternoon and nights, primetime Thursdays, three Fridays including Thanksgiving Friday, Labor Day Monday and the ACC Football Championship Game;

• Men’s basketball on national TV: The most comprehensive coverage of regular-season games and the entire conference tournament produced and distributed via ESPN; regular-season matchups of the storied Duke-North Carolina rivalry each year; full national telecasts on all games televised on an ESPN platform; a weekly ACC Sunday Night Basketball franchise on ESPNU;

• Women’s basketball: Numerous women’s regular-season basketball games and the entire conference tournament;

• Olympic sports: An extensive commitment to the league’s soon to be 23-sponsored Olympic sports with regular-season and championship telecasts, highlighted by baseball, softball, lacrosse, and men’s and women’s soccer;

• Digital media: Exclusive ACC football, men’s and women’s basketball, and Olympic sports games as well as simulcasts on ESPN3. Live ACC games, including football and basketball, on ESPN Mobile TV;

• ESPN 3D: Select live ACC action on ESPN 3D;

• Additional outlets: Select ACC action on ESPN International, ESPN GamePlan, ESPN FULL COURT, ESPN Classic and ESPN Deportes; and extensive content rights for ESPN.com.

The one notable change is the ACC will now have three Friday night football games, much like the Big East has done for several years. That probably won’t sit well with high school coaches in the ACC footprint since it will conflict with prep football games. One of the Friday games will be the day after Thanksgiving which will be interesting. As with the old deal, the ACC will continue to have teams playing on Thursday night.

Overall reaction to the deal has ranged from satisfaction that ACC Commissioner John Swofford secured more money for the league to some complaints from league football schools saying there should have been a better deal given how much cash is being thrown at college football. The problem there is the ACC has not exactly been tearing it up on the national stage in football with much of the blame for that resting at the feet of the very schools whose fans are complaining about the deal. The ACC is 2-13 in BCS bowl games. Virginia Tech has won a number of ACC titles since joining the league but not performed well at the Orange Bowl nor did the Hokies beat Michigan at the Sugar Bowl with the ACC’s first ever at-large BCS bowl bid. Florida State continues to be the program everyone claims is back in September but has yet to pan out. Clemson gave up 70 points(!!) to West Virginia in the Orange Bowl after winning the ACC title game. Toss in the fact Miami is not your Miami of the 1980s and 1990s and Georgia Tech is running the triple option, you begin to see that it is the schools who should be carrying the water in football simply aren’t doing it.

On the basketball side, things are not as great as they could be but the two national powers, UNC and Duke, continue to win consistently and draw solid ratings. The additions of Syracuse and Pitt will be a boost for the ACC in basketball but ultimately the big money is in football. The fact the ACC got what it did given the state of football is impressive within itself. If people want more then one or two of the football powers in the ACC really need to make waves on the national scene.

By action of the ACC Infractions and Penalties Committee, the Atlantic Coast Conference has issued a public reprimand to the University of North Carolina. The reprimand follows the recent announcement of penalties imposed by the NCAA Committee on Infractions on UNC’s football program.

The ACC Infractions and Penalties Committee was formed in 1990, through a vote of the ACC members. The committee consists of one representative from each member institution and includes athletics directors and faculty athletics representatives. The Committee convenes following the NCAA Committee on Infractions announcement and its charge is to review and learn lessons from the case and make a determination relative to potential additional penalties by a vote of the committee members.

In accordance with the charge of the ACC Infractions and Penalties Committee, a thorough review of the University of North Carolina’s major infractions case was heard. As a result of the meeting, the committee acknowledged the institution’s corrective actions and the additional NCAA imposed penalties which included loss of scholarships, a fine, vacation of wins, three-year probationary period as well as a post-season ban that by ACC policy immediately results in the program being ineligible to compete for the 2012 ACC Football Championship.

The reprimand was issued by the committee to the University of North Carolina for its responsibility for the major violations documented in the NCAA infractions report. The committee was particularly concerned with the actions of personnel who committed serious NCAA violations regarding impermissible benefits, academic fraud and impermissible assistance, and/or improper relationships with sports agents. The reprimand also highlighted that the breadth and nature of the violations in this case should serve as a reminder of the importance of due diligence related to the personnel that interact with student-athletes and the importance of academic integrity as an ACC core principle.

UNC was also grounded for two weeks and had its xBox taken away for five days. UNC then rolled its eyes at the ACC, went into its room and slammed the door so hard the “DO NOT ENTER” sign fell off.

First of all, raise your hand if you knew the ACC had such a committee. Secondly, is this the most useless statement ever issued? UNC has been punished by the NCAA so I am unclear why the ACC felt the need to add its own reprimand unless there was some fear people might think the ACC actually condoned what UNC did which is just dumb. I suppose if you go through the trouble of forming a committee for infractions and penalties then said committee probably needs to speak up when rules get broken. UNC’s official response was(in so many words) that the last two years sucked and they hope the school will be stronger in the future as a result.

A breakdown of the future scheduling models include:

Football:

The Atlantic and Coastal divisions will remain the same with Syracuse joining the Atlantic and Pitt joining the Coastal. The current primary crossover partners will remain consistent with Syracuse and Pitt becoming primary crossover partners with each other.

When Pitt and Syracuse join the ACC, the league will play a nine-game conference schedule. The format will consist of each team playing all six in its division each year, plus its primary crossover partner each year and two rotating opponents from the opposite division. This six-year cycle allows each team to play each divisional opponent and its primary crossover partner six times (three home and three away) while also playing each rotating crossover opponent two times (one home and one away).

Men’s and Women’s Basketball:

As previously announced, the ACC will play an 18-game conference schedule beginning in 2012-13.

When Pitt and Syracuse join, each school will have one primary partner (Boston College and Syracuse; Clemson and Georgia Tech; Duke and North Carolina; Florida State and Miami; Maryland and Pitt; NC State and Wake Forest; Virginia and Virginia Tech).

The scheduling model will be based on a three-year cycle during which teams will play every league opponent at least once with the primary partners playing home and away annually while the other 12 rotate in groups of four: one year both home and away; one year at home only; and one year away only. Over the course of the three-year cycle primary partners play a total of six times and all other conference opponents play four times.

The format allows each program to see opponents with more regularity and creates an increase in competitive balance throughout the teams. It was determined that all 14 league members will continue to compete in the ACC Men’s and Women’s Tournaments and a decision on the Tournament formats will be announced at a later date.

In football the ACC will go to a nine game conference schedule. Syracuse will go to the Atlantic division with Pitt ending up in the Coastal. The current permanent crossover opponents will remain the same meaning UNC and NC State will continue to play their annual game versus each other. A nine game schedule also means teams will have seasons where they play five roads games and only four home games in ACC play.

In basketball the schedule will move to 18 games and everyone will be reduced to one permanent partner instead of two. That means UNC and NC State will no longer have yearly played each other twice a year. UNC’s permanent partner will be Duke and NC State will be attached to Wake Forest. All non-permanent partner games are setup on a three year cycle with teams playing once in the first two years then twice in the third year.

This change will obviously generated the most controversy among those of us who are ACC traditionalists and have long been irritated over what expansion has done to dilute the basketball product. Let me be clear, I am not necessarily knocking expansion because it is what it is in today’s college athletics landscape. However the lack of a round robin in basketball bugs me to no end but because UNC still had home-away games with both Duke and NC State I could live with it. Now we have a situation where the ACC it taking away something that, regardless of how it has gone over the past twenty years, is still two games that generate some passionate feelings among the fan bases. Not only that but the last time UNC and NCSU did not play twice a year was 1919! That is a long history of games now being pushed aside and right when it appears NC State might be close to finally getting their act together.

Unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about it. With the rash of conference expansion the ACC moved to keep itself viable in whatever future is ultimately carved out. There money coming from ESPN is far more important the preserving the traditions of ACC basketball which ultimately put the conference on the map in the first place. The N&O’s Joe Giglio best summed it up on Twitter:

Today’s news in short and stop me if you’ve heard this before: good for football, bad for basketball

This is what expansion has wrought. Welcome to the new ACC.

DEFENSIVE BACK – Tim Scott, North Carolina, CB, Fr., 5-11, 180, Fredericksburg, Va. Cornerback Tim Scott tied for the team lead with nine tackles and intercepted a pass in the East Carolina red zone and broke up another pass in North Carolina’s 35-20 win at East Carolina. After the interception, the Tar Heels scored two plays later to take an early 7-0 lead.

ROOKIE – Giovani Bernard, North Carolina, TB, Fr., 5-10, 205, Davie, Fla. Redshirt freshman tailback Giovani Bernard rushed for 146 yards on a career-high 24 carries and scored a touchdown in Carolina’s 35-20 win over ECU. He became the first UNC player to rush for 100 yards in three straight games since Natrone Means in 1992. Bernard had 102 vs. Virginia (Sept. 17) and 155 at Georgia Tech (Sept. 24). Bernard, the leading freshman rusher in the nation, is averaging 109.6 rushing yards and has 548 yards on 78 carries. Bernard had 113 of his 146 yards in the first half as Carolina built a 28-3 halftime lead. Bernard now has seven rushing touchdowns, which equals the total of last year’s leading rusher Johnny White.

I think the ACC figured they better toss Gio Bernard some kind of weekly award considering his body of work over the past three weeks. Bernard was named rookie of the week and may have a hard time breaking through the “offensive back” category considering that also includes quarterbacks. Tim Scott was named defensive back of the week becoming the second member(the other was Matt Merletti) of the Tar Heel’s rather woeful defensive backfield to be tabbed in the weekly honors. That is either ironic or a perfect illustration of how useless INTs and tackles are as a standard for this reward. The Scott INT was important but it should be noted that his tackle total was higher because UNC allowed receivers to catch the ball in the first place.

Yes, I am probably coming off a tad negative talking about a Tar Heel winning a weekly award. Obviously Scott compared better to other DBs in the ACC hence the award. Still, I think we would rather UNC players being named defensive back of week following an solid performance by the secondary as a whole.

• Safety Matt Merletti was named ACC Defensive Back of the Week for his two INT performance against Virginia on Saturday. Merletti also had seven tackles. These awards are interesting because I think the general consensus on Merletti’s performance at safety has not necessarily been a good one much like the opinion of the secondary as a whole. However two INTs in one game is nothing to sneeze at so there you go.
• Casey Barth is likely out of this week’s game versus Georgia Tech nursing a groin pull. Barth was already dealing with a quadriceps strain which kept him from kickoff duty. According to interim coach Everett Withers the thinking is to sit Barth now and get him healthy for a return later in the season.
• UNC has decided to change the center court logo in the Dean Smith Center to the one from years prior to last season. Last season the logo was changed and there were a fair amount of complaints that it looked off centered. Those complaints were taken into consideration and the old logo is back. This is one of those situations that seemingly only comes up in college sports where long traditions really matter and changing something like the center court logo bugs people.
• NFL news: Da’Norris Searcy snagged the game winning INT for Buffalo on Sunday. Hakeem Nicks was making ridiculous catches last night on Monday Night Football for the New York Giants. In that same game Robert Quinn crushed Giants QB Eli Manning on a sack. Quinn came off the end unmolested and wrapped Manning up.

On Saturday rumors began flying that the ACC had been in talk with Syracuse and Pittsburgh regarding a jump to the ACC from the Big East. Those rumors quickly gelled into “holy crap there is something to this” last night as SU and Pitt’s applications to enter the ACC had apparently been tendered. The ACC then announced a press conference for Sunday morning and it wasn’t to announce the football players of the week. This morning the ACC has announced that Pitt and Syracuse have been accepted into the ACC. Unlike the last expansion the vote was unanimous.

It should be noted that this is not something the ACC did on a whim. UNC AD Dick Baddour said on Saturday prior to the UNC game that the ACC had been working on realignment issues for quite some time.  ACC commissioner John Swofford  formed a committee to look at realignment over a year ago disabusing us of the notion that Swofford was just sitting back. The committee included four ADs, four school presidents and four faculty reps with Baddour representing UNC.

Clearly this is not a move designed with ACC football as the first consideration, an interesting given conference realignment is being driven largely the pursuit of gridiron money. With everyone else operating their realignment plans with an eye squarely on football, the ACC is looking to basketball, at least for the expansion to 14 teams. Assuming the ACC goes to 16(which seems likely) could it be the ACC addresses football needs with those teams? Texas has already been linked with the ACC but there are signs this move for Pitt and SU may have cooled that relationship. In fact, according to Chip Brown at Orangebloods, the move for Pitt and SU speaks to the ACC desire to remain an east coast conference.

Another Big 12 administrator told Orangebloods.com the ACC appears as if it is moving on without Texas in its plans.

That Big 12 administrator said the ACC is reluctant to bring in Texas for three reasons: 1) how the Longhorn Network would be worked into its revenue sharing; 2) that the ACC sees itself as an east coast conference and wants to protect that by not reaching into the southwest (no matter how much TV money adding Texas would mean); and 3) Texas indicated to the ACC it would need to bring Texas Tech with them to the ACC, and the ACC members were not excited about that because of Texas Tech’s academic standing (No. 160 in latest U.S. News and World Report).

If the ACC’s east coast bias holds true then rumors of UConn and Rutgers being next on the list would appear to have legs. If this move means Texas does not come to the ACC I imagine there will be a few people upset with Swofford for not landing the biggest fish out there. However this is about grabbing new markets and with SU, Swofford gets the school he wanted eight years ago before Virginia dictated otherwise. Pitt gets the ACC into western PA and it also ensure Maryland and Boston College stay happy though the new $20 million exit fee will do more to keep current schools from getting antsy than anything else.

More on this as it becomes official including some analysis on how this will impact ACC basketball.