What does it do to grow their respective field and realistically.... what does it do for the individal's or team's professional reputation.

I'm sure a bunch of ACC schools are teaming with Tech, but so are other universities in 48 other states. The percentage of ACC schools collaborating with Tech is probably about the same as it was before 2004. On the flip side, teaming with universities within the Commonwealth of Virginia has become stronger over the past 20 years.

The Forestry department, for example, probably deals with a few ACC land grant schools, but they deal with Oregon State and schools like them as well. Civil Engineering may have more ties with Berkeley and Illinois these days.

Tech's academic involvement with other ACC schools has not changed because of us joining the ACC. The change has evolved as the school becomes more popular on a National level.

And I'm not saying athletics doesn't improve a university's exposure, it could lure young kids to go there just from a popularity respective. That said, Michael Vick may be more responsible for Tech's surge in popularity in 1999 and 2000 and a few years beyond. But MV1, CFB or joining the ACC didn't sway our growth in research and academics much as a university. That had a lot to do with Steger's vision for our university. Steger didn't do it alone and previous presidents helped build this thing too. And yes, Steger was a major orchaestrator for us getting into the ACC... but that has nothing to do with our improved academic and reasearch standing.

The closest thing to a tie between athletic conference affiliation and academia are the Ivy League and recently the B1G's CIC, which s hardly Ivy League, but it's a fairly recognized and successful consortium. Other conferences have consortiums like the CIC, but are not as far along as they'd like to be.