Louisville To Join ACC: Swofford Finally Listens

it only took an extra year, but John Swofford and his cronies on Tobacco Road finally realized the importance of bringing some quality football to the ACC. In a unanimous vote of ACC presidents, the conference formally added the Cardinals during a conference call this morning.

Though details are scarce at this point, the move is likely to coincide with Maryland's exit to the B1G. based on conference bylaws Maryland can't leave until the 2014-2015 academic year, even if the exit fee issue is resolved before then.

I'm guessing DrB will be along later to give his thoughts, but for me this is the best move the ACC could have made. It seems like the vote came down to Uconn and Louisville, and while Uconn does have a rich basketball history, the overall strength of Louisville's athletic department is much bigger benefit to the ACC.

I do think this move is the biggest bit of evidence about Swofford screwing things up last year. Whenever questions were asked about why WVU wasn't added to the conference, claims of academics were thrown around by conference putrists, as well as Swofford and his cronies.

WVU and Louisville have very similar academic rankings, and it seems clear that this move was all about being reactive and not proactive. Had Swofford jumped for WVU and either Pitt or Syracuse, the conference would be in a much better place right now. I'm going to guess Swofford got significant pushback from the "football" schools in the conference and realized he had to do something to keep them happy.

To me though, this shouldn't be enough to keep Clemson happy. With the exception of FSU no one in the conference plays big boy football and it shows every time we go out of conference. When you factor in the additional money we could get by going to the Big 12, I hope someone involved with Clemson is continuing to make calls out to the midwest. Until then we are stuck with this mess. As one of my friends said, it is a problem when you are excited about who your conference didn't invite, rather than who they did invite.