Recently the Orlando Sentinel examined the fallout from the frantic conference realignment period in college sports.  Driven largely by football revenue, there are currently 3 conferences that have the 12 teams required for a conference Championship Game - the SEC, the Big 12 and the ACC.  The Big 10 has 11 teams, the Pac 10 is comprised of 10 schools, while the Big East is a 16 team conference but only 8 of the schools participate in football.  Conference USA is also comprised of 12 teams but it isn’t a BCS conference.  BCS conferences are the most prestigious football conferences who participate in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) at the end of each football season.  These schools are locked into the biggest and best bowls (Orange, Fiesta, Sugar and Rose) through common agreement.
 
The last 12 team mega-conference (not to confuse the theoretical 16 team SUPERCONFERENCES that have been speculated about for years) formed was the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) back in 2003.  At this time the 9 team ACC, a basketball conference dominated by the lone football power at the time FSU, expanded by stealing three teams from the Big East Conference (Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College).  This expansion had nothing to do with geographic proximity or expanding internal competition, it was simply about football revenue and positioning to become a major football conference.  The clear leader when it comes to football is the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and the ACC began to covet what their neighbor had. 
 
The SEC generates the most revenue, has the richest history, is generally regarded as having the best teams and players in the country of any conference, has the most passionate fans and gets the highest TV ratings.  The SEC also occupies the same relative geographic position as the ACC.  Both conferences have conference members in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.  However the ACC is limited to states near the east coast while the SEC extends all the way west to Louisiana and Arkansas. 
 
North Carolina would seem to be another state that could be shared by both conferences but history and culture have kept that from happening.  North Carolina is traditionally a “basketball state” (much like Kentucky) and since the ACC originated in that region, all of the Universities that could effectively participate in a major conference are locked up by the ACC.  If anything, the recent expansion created a power shift in the league by creating a situation where 2/3rds of the conference schools are now located OUTSIDE the state of North Carolina.  Prior to the addition of FSU in 1991, any conference vote would be determined by the Tarheel state which was home to HALF of the leagues schools (UNC, NCSU, Wake Forest and Duke). 
 
In the new ACC landscape football has a much greater voice in running the league.  Half of the league is comprised of football first schools (where football is the premier program on campus) - Clemson, FSU, Miami, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Virginia.  But in selling its soul for football cache . . . has the ACC really improved its national position???  How does the ACC compare to the other conferences?
 
Conference Revenue (based on information collected by the Birmingham News for the 2006 school year)
ACC - $130.2 million or $12.4 to 8.4 million per school.
SEC - $122.2 million or $10.1 million per school.
Big 10 - $117.8 million or $10.7 million per school.
Big 12 - $90.1 million or $9.7 to 6.5 million per school (The Big 12 does not have equal revenue sharing within the conference. Part of the television revenue is based on TV appearances.).
Pac 10 - 71.2 million or $10 to 7.2 million per school.
Big East - $62.8 million or $4 million per school.
 
TV Revenue increases every year.  Currently the Big 10 has the highest paying television contract ($70.4 million) with the SEC second ($66.8 million), although the SEC football contracts expire in 2008 and will likely be renewed for a record setting amount.  Never has a conference been in a better position to renegotiate a sports contract than the SEC.  The conference can claim 2 of the last three champions in football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball - the 3 largest televised collegiate sports.  Expect a financial windfall from either CBS or Fox very soon and even a possible SEC TV Network to follow in the footsteps of the Big 10 Network should conference officials decide to go in that direction.
 
No conference generates a bigger percentage of its revenue from football than the SEC (57% compared to 49% for the Big 10 the next closest conference).  In contrast the ACC generates nearly three times the television revenue from basketball ($33 million) than the SEC ($13 million) but $16 million less in football ($51 to $35 million).  The football championship game the ACC is able to throw with its expanded 12 team league gained an extra $5.7 million in revenue but far below the SECCG revenue of $13.7 million or the Big 12’s $11.4 million.  The ACC has benefited financially from expansion but not as much as it had anticipated.  And even the gains have come at what cost?
 
ACC football had become synonymous as the FSU exhibition tour in the 1990s as the Seminoles easily dominated the league in football winning 12 ACC Championships after joining the league in 1991 to include 9 straight times from 1992 to 2000.  At the time the league was not highly regarded in football and remained a “basketball conference” in national perception.  The addition of 3 football powers was an attempt to change that and to tap into the growing wealth of college football.  By stealing the top football programs of the Big East to add to FSU and a number of other programs that seemed to be on the upswing the ACC attempted to usurp the dominance of the SEC in football - or at least reach a level of comparison to the prestigious and established Southeastern Conference.
 
Instead the years since the expansion have seen FSU and Miami go from national powers to  the butt of national jokes.  Virginia Tech has proven that while it is a perennial football power, it cannot recruit the kind of athletes to move from a consistent top 25 program to a consistent top 10 program.  The closest the Hokies have come to true football glory was on the back of phenomenal quarterback Michael Vick who despite one of the greatest individual performances in a championship game could not keep his team from losing by 17 points to FSU in 2000.  Boston College is a program that is solid but strives to reach the level of Virginia Tech while Clemson has never achieved more than the occasional glimpse of greatness under Tommy Bowden.
 
In a football sense the ACC has made up very little, if any, ground in its national perception of a “weak” football league.  Yet the real damage might have been to its basketball program.  The South was comprised of two geographically similar yet polar opposite conferences.  The SEC was a traditional football power and arguably the finest football conference in the nation.  Only one of its members, Kentucky, preferred the sport of basketball to football.  The ACC on the other hand was, arguably, the nations finest basketball conference.  The tradition of Duke, North Carolina, and North Carolina State are well known to all basketball fans while only a lone league member, Clemson, cared more about football than basketball.
 
ACC Basketball was known for its tremendous rivalries, round robin regular season and fantastic ACC Tournament.  Since the league sold its soul for football many of those quaint traditions are lost.  Additionally the league has bent over backwards for the Florida schools by placing its football championship to Jacksonville and even moving it’s BASKETBALL tournament to Tampa, Florida for a year.  The relative close spacing of these rivals in the southeast United States has become an arduous trek extending from the very tip of Florida (Miami) north to the coast of Massachusetts (Boston College).  No longer is an ACC game something just about any fan base can reasonably travel to, not anymore.
 
Not only has the ACC lost much of its basketball charm but it seems to have also lost ground in its domination of basketball recruiting.  And the worst of all insults is the benefactor of much of this shift in power . . . has been the long envied SEC.  For much of its history the SEC was dominated year in and year out by Kentucky.  Unlike Alabama, the dominant power in football, most SEC schools conceded to the Wildcats superiority on the hardwood and put their resources into their football programs instead.  This is no longer the case.
 
Since the SEC expanded to 12 teams in 1992, five different teams have made a dozen total appearances to the Final Four while 4 ACC teams have made 14 appearances in the Final Four in that time.  The SEC has put 8 teams in the Championship game, winning 5, while the ACC has placed 7 teams in the title game and won 4 titles.  In the past 12 years the numbers are 6 appearances and 4 titles for the SEC and 5 trips with 3 titles for the ACC.  When it comes to performance in March the SEC and ACC are relatively on par in basketball while the gap in football is wider than ever.
 
To the ACC’s credit, the league invested much of its reputation into Florida State and Miami.  With both of those teams mired in mediocrity it blemishes the conferences overall image.  Should either of those teams return to anything close to their former glory it will help considerably in national respect.  The ACC does not have the passionate fanbase nor rivalries to approach the SEC as the leader on the gridiron but the ACC has a great deal of room for improvement.  The ACC does not have to CLOSE the gap with the SEC but simply edge closer in the product it places on the field. 
 
Fiscally the expansion to 12 teams has proved feasible and there exists room for improvement.  The gamble the league made is in alienating its original fan base by emphasizing a sport other than the one the conference was built upon.  If football revenue increases at the expense of basketball revenue then expansion could end up as a colossal blunder.  If profits improve while football quality remains stagnant and basketball prestige falters the league ultimately loses.  Ending up a footnote in future history books as a conference that won the battle (financially) but ended up losing the war (as a successful mega-conference).  If the movement to 16 team regional superconferences eventually happens, the ACC, as a struggling mega-conference, would be ripe for raiding by other stronger conferences (namely the SEC) in the formation that followed.