The power play that was the grant of rights solidified the conference, but what did Swofford do with this new-found clout? Absolutely nothing. The wake-up call ended there, since the ACC squandered the opportunity to pick off a few great schools and teams that would have added competitive balance to the conference where it was needed: football (See SEC and Texas A&M).
In hindsight, it looks like the only successful byproduct of conference realignment for the ACC was to secure another decade of the soft and pathetic leadership that is John Swofford and the NC brigade of athletic bureaucrats.
Sadly, no public outreach was made to schools in Texas or Oklahoma. The Aggies moved to the SEC and further enhanced their profile and funding, strengthening both the school’s posture and that of the SEC’s. The media analysts at the ACC made an enormous miscalculation, targeting the Northeast market – a strong NFL market, and decidedly NOT a college football market. The strategy was, effectively, to grow in a large media market where nobody consumes the product and add some great legacy basketball schools. This was not what the ACC needed.
