large undertaking that was basically a shot in the dark. The conference and the schools took a big gamble that it would work, and a lot of those schools had the means to support the gamble. Once the network became operational and started making money, then other conferences looked at setting up one. ESPN was the only one the ACC could rely on because the ACC sold its rights to them, basically because it was the best deal it could find. And, ESPN was not going to do the ACCN until it did the SECN first. The success of the SECN spurred ESPN to go for the ACCN. Swofford and the ACC members really had no choice unless they went alone which, in hindsight, would probably not been a prudent decision to make.

The decisions were not made in a vacuum. There were a lot of decisions to be made. We fans just don’t have all the inside info, and we may not know for years, if then.