There was an interview with John Swofford posted on Florida St's page today. It covered several topics, but I was most interested in the comments on the division alignment. Swofford was asked about the rumor of 3 divisions, and the progress of the deregulation petition. He said:
Number one, I don't know where the three-division thing came from. I'm not sure, because that's not even something we've discussed in recent years. Years ago it came up very briefly and didn't get any legs at all. So let me clarify that right off the bat. In our most recent conversations about divisions, the majority of our schools continue to prefer having divisions and having the divisions as they currently exist.
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A lot of people have taken our support of that to mean we would change what we are doing now, and while I guess that's a reasonable first interpretation of our support of it, that's really not accurate.
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But right now, regardless of whether that comes about or doesn't, the majority of our athletic directors continue to prefer divisions.
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The one thing we do continue to look at is the crossover scheduling in the rotation of teams that you play outside of your division, and whether there's a better way to do that so that our teams that are in separate divisions are playing each other more often beyond the one school that they play every year - the way Florida State plays Miami every year. Because there is a desire to see the other schools more frequently, and that's the goal of those discussions. But there are some rivalry games and traditional games that need to be maintained, such as Florida State and Miami and N.C. State and North Carolina. So we continue to look at that and discuss that for the future, with the assumption at least at this point in time that we would remain with two divisions, and those divisions being as they currently exist. Which as I said, is the preference of the majority of our athletic directors.
The key takeaway is that the majority of the conference supports the divisions, and the underlying motive behind deregulation has been about scheduling, not the CCG.
Link
Number one, I don't know where the three-division thing came from. I'm not sure, because that's not even something we've discussed in recent years. Years ago it came up very briefly and didn't get any legs at all. So let me clarify that right off the bat. In our most recent conversations about divisions, the majority of our schools continue to prefer having divisions and having the divisions as they currently exist.
...............
A lot of people have taken our support of that to mean we would change what we are doing now, and while I guess that's a reasonable first interpretation of our support of it, that's really not accurate.
...............
But right now, regardless of whether that comes about or doesn't, the majority of our athletic directors continue to prefer divisions.
...............
The one thing we do continue to look at is the crossover scheduling in the rotation of teams that you play outside of your division, and whether there's a better way to do that so that our teams that are in separate divisions are playing each other more often beyond the one school that they play every year - the way Florida State plays Miami every year. Because there is a desire to see the other schools more frequently, and that's the goal of those discussions. But there are some rivalry games and traditional games that need to be maintained, such as Florida State and Miami and N.C. State and North Carolina. So we continue to look at that and discuss that for the future, with the assumption at least at this point in time that we would remain with two divisions, and those divisions being as they currently exist. Which as I said, is the preference of the majority of our athletic directors.
The key takeaway is that the majority of the conference supports the divisions, and the underlying motive behind deregulation has been about scheduling, not the CCG.
Link
