The ACC should have as good of a fan following as any conference and monetary package that is one of if not the best. It makes zero sense that such a rich region, rich cities, rich states, richly populated and a rich history of competition does not garner more enthusiasm.

Right now one of the problems for the ACC has been indigestion. More turned out to be less.

Raiding the Big East was a mistake in hindsight. The Big East did not want to be an all-sports conference, which is odd because now it is. Strange times. Both the ACC and Big East had institutions that were more at home in football and basketball. What would have been better is if the football schools could have formed a new conference and left the basketball brethren behind to form a smaller conference.

Just what schools would have fallen into what camp is up for debate, but ACC raiding the Big East was an act of fear. Miami wanted and all sports conference since joining the Big East and there were rumbling in FSU that the ACC was 1 football school and 8 midgets. The ACC felt it had to raid the Big East before events over took it and the ACC got raided or worse had a mutiny. In the process the ACC lured in Miami. BC got in because it played double agent and VT made a deal in the statehouse. After that, the ACC should have been done. BC has been buyers remorse, but they had to take them lest Fredo squealed out the details of the shady raid details.

In my mind 11 was the stop number, but money has been an issue for the ACC. Living in the SEC I suppose it what does it. Rather than being the best ACC they can be, the commissioner has tried to be the SEC mirror and failed every single time. Instead of focusing on the things they can do well, they do nothing right in the end and the conferences just doesn't look that bright to me.

If I were a betting man, I would say the reason the ACC and for that matter the Pac-12 remain together is because of geography and both are more unstable or poorly run than the Big-12.

A lesson could be learned here for the ACC and the teacher is the Big-12. They live in the shadow of the SEC and Big Ten and to an extent the Pac-12 and while the Big-12 is an obvious #3, it is not by much. They do it without much of a market and with a huge area for non-revenue sports to deal with and perhaps worse, they have a prima donna at the helm. But, sin spite of those issues, they have done what the ACC with so much cannot do and this is thrive.

The new media package is - lets be frank - a joke. It has more in kindred with the Pac-12 set up than it does with the SEC and will be no more of a money maker. The media rights package is dull and does not seem to be growing like the Big Ten, Sec or Big-12 does.

The ACC has so many resources it could tap but it has no collective desire to demand more.

This is all old stuff and has been discussed many times, but the ACC needs to get smaller not larger and a lot of schools need to be cut away and few need to be added. I think 11 is the magic number - you pick who they are.

Eleven lets you have 4+4 in football with 2 on rotation for a bit of freshness as well as doing a H/A schedule in basketball of 20 games. The money from a Football Championship game is not all that and we have seen that the points that are supposed to be considered for that 13th game are meaningless. The committee this last year made it clear, it is a beauty contest, nothing more on who is in and who is out. It could even be a 5+5 in football but regardless, the one thing that the ACC needs to do is dump Notre Dame. They bring nothing to the table to offset their special demands. They make the ACC look as weak as they made the Big East look weak. No real conference would make that deal and neither should the ACC.