Clan-Members » ed him to play his best football all season,

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Lets rewind five years, shall we? Conference realignment destabilized the college football foundation we had come to know. Talk about 16-team superconferences started dominating the discussion, and soon, survival-of-the-fittest scenarios began unfolding.The ACC? Many thought the future looked bleak, especially after Florida State and the Big 12 became publicly tangled in a public relations mess that dominated spring meetings in 2012. A few months later, Maryland decided to join the Big Ten and left the ACC reeling.What is a commissioner to do? If you are John Swofford, you swat away any doomsday talk and make your league stronger. Since 2012, he has gotten Notre Dame to join in all sports but football, but secured an annual five-game football scheduling agreement and included the Irish in future bowl partnerships; he swapped Maryland for Louisville, a huge upgrade across the board; he got league schools to raise the exit fee to $50 million; and he got them all to sign a grant-of-rights agreement.But wait. Theres more.On the opening day of ACC Kickoff on Thursday, Swofford and ESPN announced a long-awaited deal with ESPN for an ACC linear and digital network, along with a grant-of-rights extension through 2036 -- essentially stabilizing and securing the conference for the foreseeable future. John Swofford made all the right moves, Duke athletic director Kevin White said. In my behind-the-barn expression, the dart board is no longer jumping. We know where the dart board is. Were pretty frozen.The ACC has made a remarkable shift over a very short time. Swofford has secured his leagues future for the next 20 years, all while completely outmaneuvering the Big 12 -- a conference whose future appears murkiest. The Big 12 spent all summer discussing future expansion and wondering about the prospects for its own television network.Now the conference is talking about expansion again, Oklahoma president David Boren said as a direct result of the ACCs network news. But any thought about trying to poach an ACC team is not based in reality.If Florida State or any other team considers leaving over the next 20 years, it would have to pay the ACC a $50 million exit fee plus leave behind its television rights until the grant of rights expires. Thats a whole lot of cash to leave on the table to join a league that looks the most unstable and least secure among the Power 5 conferences.The future ACC Network, years in the making, finally puts the ACC on par with the SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12, which all have their own networks. Having more television exposure is nice, but this is about the money a television network brings in -- money the ACC hopes will allow for even more substantial upgrades to its football product.We could debate which makes the ACC stronger -- a network or the grant-of-rights extension. They are both big, but the grant of rights should be considered the biggest news to emerge out of this week. With the Big 12 still hemming and hawing about whether to add more teams, extending the grant of rights basically locks ACC schools into place -- and that is the type of stability the league didnt have five years ago.Given all these developments, the natural expectation should be for the ACC to now make the necessary steps to be more than just a top-heavy football league. After the conference went 13 years between championship game appearances, two ACC schools have played for a title in two of the past three years. Florida State and Clemson continue to carry the flag, but programs like Miami, Louisville, North Carolina and Virginia Tech -- just to name four -- have a responsibility to the league to prove they are top-25 teams capable of contending for championships.These are exciting times for the ACC. Playing as a stable, unified conference with a network on the way should be only just the beginning. They also provide quite a legacy for the man who has engineered it all.I feel great about where it is because were where we should be, Swofford said. It feels good to be there. The last 10 to 15 years in college athletics theres been a lot of instability, theres been a lot of rumors, a lot of people who were saying things without any basis about who might be where and why this would happen, and there were all kinds of reasons why a lot of those things would not have happened.But I think what this does is totally take the ACC out of any kind of conversation of that nature, and thats a huge plus for the league and for the individual institutions and a huge plus for our ability to truly reach our potential as a league. I think thats already started.Wholesale China Jerseys . Rob Manfred, baseballs chief operating officer, testified last week during the grievance filed by the players union to overturn Rodriguezs 211-game suspension. A person familiar with the hearing, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Manfred testified the sport wasnt concerned whether Bosch distributed performance-enhancing drugs to minors because MLBs interest was his relationship with players under investigation. Cheap Adidas NHL Jerseys . Only three players drafted by NHL clubs were included on the Czech selection camp roster on Wednesday. Those players were Dallas Stars 2012 first-rounder Radek Faksa, Winnipeg Jets 2013 fourth-rounder Jan Kostalek and Phoenix Coyotes 2012 seventh-rounder Marek Langhamer. http://www.wholesalejerseysnfl.net/ . After Martin Skrtel put the Reds in front from close range at Stamford Bridge after only four minutes, Hazard hit back in the 17th with a superb strike. Etoo gave Jose Mourinhos team a decisive lead from Oscars back pass in the 34th. Wholesale Adidas Hockey Jerseys . Their 38th instalment is arguably their biggest fight card to date, including three-title fights and a main event which was selected by the fans. The promotion boasts 14-straight years of business and is operated by MFC president Mark Pavelich, who is often overlooked in this country for the foundation hes established for MMA in Canada. Cheap Jerseys From China . -- Vincent Lecavalier got everything but the desired result in his return to Tampa Bay. SAN DIEGO -- Manti Teo is one of four draft picks whove signed contracts with the San Diego Chargers. Teo, the linebacker from Notre Dame, was picked by the Chargers in the second round after slipping out of the opening round in part because of a poor performance in the national championship game against Alabama. Teo also was part of a girlfriend hoax that drew national headlines. But the Chargers new brain trust, general manager Tom Telesco and coach Mike McCoy, said they werent bothered by the scrutiny Teo has been under the last four months. The Chargers even traded up in the second round to pick the linebacker. Also signing four-year deals Thursday were third-round pick Keenan Allen, a wide receiver from California; sixth-rounder Tourek Williams, an outside linebacker from Florida International; and quarterback Brad Sorensen, a seventh-rounder from Southern Utah. First-round pick D.J. Fluker, a tackle from Alabama, and fifth-rounder Steve Williams, a cornerback from Cal, remain unsigned. Teo became the butt of national jokes after it was revealed he was dduped into an Internet romance with a girlfriend he never met.dddddddddddd The too-good-to-be-true story began with Teos incredible performances after learning his grandmother and what he believed was his girlfriend had died within hours of one another in September. Teo said it inspired him to play his best football all season, and it was so compelling that it helped turn Teo into a Heisman Trophy contender as he was leading the Fighting Irish to an undefeated regular season and into the national title game. On Dec. 26, Teo notified Notre Dame officials that he had received a call from his supposedly dead girlfriends phone three weeks earlier. The school investigated and -- after Deadspin.com broke the story of the fake girlfriend -- athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced at a news conference that Teo had been duped. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, 22, later said he created the online persona of Lennay Kekua, a nonexistent woman who Teo said he fell in love with despite never meeting her in person. A Chargers rookie minicamp runs Friday through Sunday. ' ' '