(07-22-2016 10:54 PM)UHRedcat96 Wrote: I really like the AAC. If it could ever keep from being poached...which it cannot, real rivalries would develop over time. I love the big city idea.
I sometimes think the poaching is so the networks don't have to pay each team as much.
It's easier to cough up $25 million for one add to the big XII than it is to pay each AAC team $10MM. But I'm cynical.
As much as I was happy to move on to the Big East and then the ACC and for as much isht as I gave some of our rivals as we went out the door both times, I do wish that they could be reunited with us.
Like most fans of college sports my fandom came from community, a familial relationship to the institution and eventually my education there. Some of my earliest memories are of Freedom Hall or old Cardinal Stadium with my dad. I still have a foam finger with the dunking Cardinal bird and a metro conference logo on it from the 1980 tournament at the Hall. I was 5 years old then.
There is something to be said for relationships like we had with Memphis and UC and the new relationships that were just accumulating enough history to really care about them in both CUSA and the NBE. In football programs like ECU, USF and WVU come to mind. For the better part of the 80s through the mid-90s USM was the standard we aimed for in football. I was heartbroken by Brett Favre when he bounced a Hail Mary off a couple of helmets for a last second win in old CS. In basketball UC/UM/UL never really fit in with our conference mates. No one else consistently approached our level of passion and if they did on occasion they weren't culturally familiar, see Marquette or DePaul.
But it's the memorable moments and the slowly building nostalgia that make college athletics special. Seasons are part of a tapestry and we share those in common.
The new look ACC has by chance reunited some of these programs from my childhood under their umbrella in addition to several of our Big East peers. FSU, Georigia Tech, Virginia Tech were all metro members back then but the longest partnerships we had were with UC and Memphis. Off and on for my entire life and predating it these programs would form the core of athletic conferences and the heart of our seasons.
Who knows where this all ends, if it ever does, but with the signing of the ACC GOR the music has stopped for us and it is sad to me that we'll probably not share a conference with those two again. At least in my lifetime.