Tuesday, November 8, 2016
UK to ACC in 1990s?
http://gridironnow.com/kentucky-invited-into-acc-early-1990s/
Jim Host played baseball at UK in the late 1950s. He graduated from UK and went on to become a magnificently successful businessman in that state and beyond, founding Host Communications, which at one point handled the broadcast, marketing and promotional rights of numerous top college athletic departments nationally. IMG purchased Host Communications in 2007 for more than $73 million.
Oscar Combs has been covering Kentucky athletics since the 1960s. He was a member of the Wildcats’ radio network broadcasts until this season.
In short, these guys know what they’re talking about when it comes to UK athletics.
Combs hosts a podcast and interviewed Host for an upcoming episode. What the two discussed could shed light on an angle of conference expansion and realignment previously unknown.
I am incredibly well-read on conference expansion history and never have heard that before. The notion of the ACC inviting Kentucky to leave the SEC — and Kentucky possibly being interested — and join it is not as absurd as it sounds in 2016.
RELATED: Developments in Big 12 could draw SEC back into expansion mode
In the early 1990s, college sports was experiencing a seismic shift of realignment, much like it has gone through the past several years. Penn State, Miami and Florida State gave up independent status to join conferences. The Big East added football and teams. The SEC expanded to add South Carolina and Arkansas. The Big 8 and Southwest Conference merged. Conference USA was created. The SEC was not the economic powerhouse it is today. Before the BCS, college basketball was the primary driver of revenue from national broadcast rights for college athletic departments.
As such, the ACC was generating greater dollars for its member institutions than the SEC was. It wasn’t a huge difference, and the figures pale in comparison to today’s dollars, but the ACC then was financially stronger — and a more nationally prominent — than the SEC, and its academics were far superior.
Kentucky being open to leaving the SEC for the ACC at that time wouldn’t have been absurd to consider.
While that story is fresh, this one has been told before.
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Never heard of a potential UK to the acc. That's interesting I guess. I'm assuming they (UK) weren't actually that interested since NOBODY ever mentions it.
ReplyDeleteBut I am a bit tired of this "Bobby Bowen/FSU was afraid of the sec" narrative. We looked for decades to be invited and we're always rejected. We weren't "scared" then. As the article clearly states, conference revenues were far different, the acc was actually making more money via basketball, and the academics were FAR superior.
Amen to that.
DeleteAnd let's be real, by the early 90s we were every bit as good as Alabama, Tennessee and auburn. Bobby owned spurrier. The Mississippi schools and ark weren't great. Scar, vandy, UK were nobody's. Lsu and Georgia were huge underachievers.
DeleteWe regularly played auburn in the 60s through 1990, Lsu in the 80s through 1991, and obviously UF annually since whenever.
So scary.