Louisville football: 5 schools ACC should add through expansion
Five potential ACC expansion teams that Louisville football fans would love.
It’s mid-July, which, in a good year means that the average sports fan is dying for literally anything college football-related to discuss. However, this is no average year. For Louisville football and basketball fans, it has been months with virtually no news around your favorite program.
There’s only so much Bryson DeChambeau and Bubba Wallace one can take during this quarantine madness. That means that everyone and their friggin mom is giving some hot take, once again, on potential conference realignment.
I’ve read everything this week from Texas moving to the ACC to Clemson to the SEC and every far-fetched fantasy-filled time filler in between.
God, we need sports in this country.
Until then, we figured, why not take a stab at this conference realignment game, only with a twist. What teams would make the most sense in the ACC, and who would be the best conference foes from a Louisville fan’s perspective?
West Virginia
Current conference: Big 12
In a post COVID-19 world athletic departments are going to be doing everything they can to cut costs for the considerable future- Or at least until things get close enough back to normal. Part of that is going to be travel, and while an important decision such as schools changing in major conferences shouldn’t be made hastily, maybe we should start considering what a world with true regional conferences would look like.
Given its location, West Virginia is the perfect candidate for conference realignment. The Mountaineers are currently in an odd position as the furthest east Big XII school by a long shot. The majority of ACC and SEC country is closer to West Virginia than any Big XII school.
Louisville fans are very familiar with West Virginia after a rivalry was stirred up during the mid-2000s following several of the most entertaining football games in Big East history. The Mountaineers also cut ties with bitter rivals, Pitt, when they moved conferences, as well as former Big East foes Syracuse and Miami.
The underrated aspect of this move is non-revenue sports travel. Sending West Virginia’s swim team or golf teams 1,500 miles to Texas, Baylor, and Texas Tech on a yearly basis is costly and makes no sense.
In a time where schools are cutting back on budgets and the future of the health and safety of student-athletes is in question, a team like West Virginia makes so much more sense in the ACC.
Plus, let’s not forget the crux of the situation, too. This is college football, where the rich get richer, and everyone else can get out the way. In this instance, the Big XII is the lowly power five conference struggling to keep teams on board and happy with their conference situation.
How many more years is the Big XII- who actually only has 10 teams- going to continue to put up with Texas monopolizing and mucking up the TV contract situation?
The Big 10, SEC, and ACC are already in the middle of lucrative TV contracts. Meanwhile, Texas, who has done literally nothing in football over the last 15 years, continues to flaunt its Longhorn Network and stiff-arm any contract negotiations with TV networks, thus costing other schools money.
Who’s to say that one school doesn’t jump ship and watch all the realignment dominoes fall from a distance as the Big XII implodes from within?
If that’s the case, West Virginia, who just jumped on board with whatever conference would take them, could be apt to jump ship again. Maybe this time it’s for a school with a lucrative television contract that actually makes sense geographically.
I dunno, maybe I’m using too much common sense now.