Lastly, we have the ACC. The numbers are significantly lower than the other conferences, even with Clemson in the playoffs. This is the opposite of what you’d expect, especially from our recent discussion of the Pac 12. However, this is the ACC’s lowest payout year because the Orange Bowl, which pays the ACC around $27.5 million on average, is used as a Playoff Bowl.
In those years, no conference receives revenue from their contract bowl, which was the case last year when the Sugar and Rose were playoff bowls. What is very noticeable, when looking at the difference between last year and this year above, is that the ACC is significantly behind the other four Power Five conferences in terms of revenue from the Playoff system, due to two factors:
– The Orange Bowl, while better than nothing, is 31% less valuable than the Rose/Sugar. The decision for the SEC to partner with the Big 12 instead of the ACC will amount to more than $100 million that the Big 12 will earn, as a conference, over the ACC within the next decade.
– They simply have too many teams. Last year was the lowest payout year the Big 12 would have had throughout the entire contract with no team represented in the playoff and no Sugar Bowl. Even with that it matched the ACC’s per team payout when the ACC had all of its revenue streams paying out with a team in the Playoff and the contract game with the Orange.
Less value divided by more people has the ACC at a disadvantage.
You can also see from this list the value the Orange truly has, keeping the Big Ten and SEC fairly even financially. The SEC played in the Orange last year with the contract between them, the Big Ten and the ACC. In a year without the Sugar, and with three teams in the New Year’s Six, they only made $10 million less than this year, with the Sugar and two teams represented.
We say Power Five a lot, but when you look at the numbers, it is actually the Power Four, plus one.
"unless Boren is hell-bent on a 12-team Big 12, which he is, and his efforts are stonewalled. At that point, I think Boren actively begins shopping his school to another conference.
I believe Boren would favor membership in the Big Ten because of the league’s greater academic reputation. This is a common opinion. You can rest assured, though, that the SEC wouldn’t idly watch an athletic powerhouse at a state flagship university contiguous to the existing conference footprint join the Big Ten.
The SEC and the Big Ten are the two most powerful forces in college sports – more powerful than the NCAA, more powerful than even ESPN. With one of college athletics’ crown jewels potentially up for grabs, you can bet your last dollar both leagues would pull out all the stops in recruiting OU to join their side.
If Oklahoma hits the conference realignment market, the tug-of-war over the Sooners behind-the-scenes between the SEC and Big Ten could be ferocious. The winner would tip the balance of power decidedly in its favor and need to add another school for scheduling balance. The loser would not stand pat and likely raid the Big 12 or ACC for two more members to keep pace.
The trickle-down effect would be reminiscent of the massive upheaval experienced during the first half of this decade, which saw the Big East die, the SEC, ACC and Big Ten expand to 14 teams, the Pac-10 become the Pac-12 and the Big 12 shrink to 10.
If these scenarios intrigue you the way they do me, keep your eye on Boren. If he has his way, we might see a 12-team Big 12 as soon as 2017. If he doesn’t get his way, the fallout again may shake the very foundation of college athletics"
But for thousands of freshmen students like myself in 1969, they were our first home away from home. They were the first place we could call “mine.”
So for those of us who spent one of the most important years of our lives in that dorm, for those of us who gaze upon Kellum every time we drive down West Tennessee Street, the demolition evokes sadness.
Or not.
“Kellum had a good run,” said an unsentimental Mike Scheiner, Operations Manager for Tallahassee’s Public Works Department, who has been my good friend since we met as Kellum Hall residents in 1969-70. “Things change, life moves on.” Better dorms, room to expand
Kellum and Smith are coming down because today’s freshmen don’t want to live in tiny rooms and share communal bathrooms. Today’s college freshman wants his or her college residence hall to have large, well-furnished rooms, with individual bathrooms, WiFi, kitchens, study rooms and comfortable lounges.
FSU gives students those kind of accommodations when it builds new residence halls today. Last year, two other 1950s-era dorms, Deviney and Dorman, were replaced with adjacent new edifices featuring two-bedroom suites, lounges, kitchens, etc. The old Dorman and Deviney halls were demolished and on their site two modern residence halls are under construction and due to open by August 2017.
Kellum and Smith each held about 500 students,. The two new dorms under construction on West Jefferson Street, named Magnolia (479 residents) and Live Oak (433), will provide nearly the same occupancy.
“Our new construction since 2003 has been either apartment style or suite style,” said FSU Director of Housing Dave Sagaser. “It’s been very popular with our incoming students and their parents.”
FSU has to build better residence halls to compete with the private market, where lavish apartment communities have proliferated, with striking examples now rising on Gaines Street and College Avenue. Freshmen are no longer required to live on campus, but FSU wants them there.
FSU provides housing for 6,387 students in 18 residence halls. More than three quarters of on-campus residents (76 percent) are freshmen.
“It’s the key to retention and graduation rates,” said Mark Bertolami, FSU’s director of planning. “Studies show that 90 percent of those who make it through their freshman year remain in school. So you put a kid in a dorm, he plays intramurals, he joins the Spanish club. If you can capture that freshman in his first year and make college vital and attractive and welcoming, he will stay.”
Actually, demolishing Kellum and Smith is a two-fer for FSU, which has the smallest main campus (451.6 acres) of Florida’s 12 state universities. Removing Kellum and Smith, plus eventually nearby residence halls Rogers (built in 1969) and McCollum (1975), opens up what Bertolami calls FSU’s “Great Northwest.”
On those several dozen acres between Tennessee and Call streets, FSU intends to build a complex of classroom/research buildings and residence halls. FSU will also use the demolition of Kellum and Smith as an opportunity to straighten out Chieftan Way from Academic Way to Call Street; the street currently snakes in front of Kellum Hall then around Smith Hall.
Under former president Eric Barron, an oceanographer, the plan was to turn the Great Northwest into primarily a science compound. But Bertolami says many ideas are being considered now, as officials prepare to formalize a new 10-year master plan in 2017.
“Our challenge is to find funding and space (for new buildings),” Bertolami said. “The beauty of (demolishing old residence halls) is we can put students into more comfortable (new residence halls) and free up untapped acreage.” Living quarters a bit Spartan
DeGraff Hall, then a two-story, L-shaped building on Tennessee Street, was built in 1950 as FSU’s first on-campus residence hall for men – three years after FSU converted from a women’s college. DeGraff (replaced by a larger residence hall in 2007) wasn’t enough.
Smith Hall was built in 1952 and Kellum Hall in 1959, both as men’s residence halls; it would be the 1970s before almost all FSU residence halls became co-ed, with alternating floors of men and women.
Kellum and Smith both were built with federal bond money, which covered the cost only of construction not furniture. That’s why beds in Kellum and Smith – each with one top and one bottom bunk —were built into the walls.
Each room has two closets, a sink and a small refrigerator. There were no individual bathrooms, only cramped communal showers and toilets, one per wing. There was no air-conditioning in Kellum or Smith until the 1990s.
Yet for baby boomer-aged men, many of them from middle class families of modest means, Kellum and Smith were nice enough.
“Kellum was more modern than Smith,” said Tallahassee attorney Jon Whitney, who lived in Smith as freshman and Kellum as a sophomore. “I thought both of them were decent living conditions.”
Granted, nobody loved the communal bathrooms.
“The gang showers were tough to get used to; guys snapping towels and that kind of stuff,” Scheiner said. “The gang showers were always a source of humor and sometimes embarrassment.”
In recent years, Kellum residents complained regularly about the building’s aging conditions. In 2011, the student newspaper, FSView, wrote a story about students who claimed to have gotten sick because of mold in the building. Sagaser said – and demolition officials confirm – Kellum did not have mold.
But Sagaser and Bertolami said it would be prohibitively expensive to renovate Kellum Hall to modern standards. Instead, FSU will spend $1.8 million to demolish it (and presumably the same amount to demolish Smith in 2017). They are spending $59.5 million to build the two new residence halls under construction on West Jefferson Street.
Granted, Kellum and Smith have been the low-cost, on-campus housing alternative: Students paid $2,300 per semester for housing in Kellum and Smith, compared to $3,500 per semester for FSU’s newest dorms. But Bertolami said FSU plans to renovate Salley Hall (built in 1964 as FSU’s first suites-style residence hall) and make it the low-cost option.
@DavidTeelatDP
#ACC football w/3 among final AP top 15 in back-to-back years for first time. Clemson, FSU, UNC this season, FSU, GaTech, Clemson last yr.
Yep, let that sink in.
This is the best this conference has ever been.
Which is both encouraging and sad.
But it's a process. Having a non-FSU team contend for a national title is a huge step.
2012 - Two in the top 11
2013 - Two in the top 8 (national champ)
2014 - Two in the top 8, three in the top 15
2015 - Three in the top 15 (runner up)
The ACC has never been more relevant in football over a multi-year stretch. That's 10 top-15 teams in the past four seasons.
Before that, it had taken the ACC from 2001 to 2011 to have 10 top 15 teams. ELEVEN years to have as many top 15 teams as the
ACC has had in the last FOUR.
In those 11 years, we'd only had one team finish in the top 8 (VT at #7). In the past four years we've had FIVE teams finish in the top 8.
Now, there are some stretches a little better than those 11 years, mainly due to FSU's crazy run, but no stretch that compares to the past four years.
I feel like it's important to make this point continuously for both positive and negative reasons...
a. It is very important to recognize that this conference, while not having experienced a major PR inflation nationally, has absolutely upgraded it's football significantly. That's important just to ward off some of the football frustration some of us have, but also as an important proof that yes, upgrading football is possible in this conference. It will never be the SEC, but the ACC does not have to be consigned to the dustbin of college football. There is potential there, and the efforts that have been made have indeed produced results in many places.
b. It is very important to point out just how bad the ACC has been, to keep focused on just how tenuous our position of "average" is right now. We are literally at the high water mark of ACC football, and you'd be hard pressed to find many that rate the ACC higher than fourth or fifth. We've got the worst TV contract to show for that reputation (among other things). This is not cyclical, which is my most hated expression when it comes to the ACC...historically the ACC cycles between below average and horrible in football. There is no waiting for it to cycle up from here...this is a historically anomalous up period RIGHT NOW.
In other words, is anyone totally satisfied with ACC football as it stands today? If it never got any better? Because if we don't keep focused and keep pressing, there is no reason to think this would be any more than a freak 5-year blip in a 50 year period. History shows the ACC will be WORSE than it is today if we just let the cycle run it's course.
We need to keep on it. We'll likely have two preseason top five teams next year, which has the potential to put unprecedented attention on the ACC from day one. Coaching hires were extremely impressive. Facilities continue to be improved. This conference can not afford to take one step back.
