Are Hokies in big time, or under big top?
Virginia Tech's ACC plans lauded, disdained

Supporters see it as another boon for a burgeoning university. Critics see it as another sign of all that's wrong with college athletics.

By KEVIN MILLER
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   BLACKSBURG - When Sean Harvey chose to attend Virginia Tech this fall, the 17-year-old's primary interest was the university's Top 15 engineering program, not its similarly ranked football team.

    Although a major sports fan, Harvey said the quality of Tech academics - not athletics - came first in his mind. The great sports program was merely a welcome bonus. But had the choice been between Tech and an equally respected engineering school, the Hokies' fierce reputation on the national gridiron circuit would likely break the tie, he said.

    "It gives you something to do if you have a good athletics program," said Harvey, already anticipating his first home football game. "Tech's got a lot more to offer, and one thing is the athletics program."

    Judging by the events of this past week, big-time sports has come to stay in Blacksburg.

    Whether students and faculty like it or not, Virginia Tech has in recent years muscled its way into the ranks of the nation's illustrious - and sometimes infamous - "football schools." Tech's decision last week to defect from the Big East conference - arguably its gateway into the world of big-time college sports - for the Atlantic Coast Conference could solidify that reputation. Or at least that's what the administrators and athletic department officials hope.

    But what do the reputed benefits of ACC membership - more television contracts and bowl possibilities plus Duke Blue Devils basketball games in Blacksburg, to name a few - mean for the university's heart and soul, the academic programs?

    That depends on whom you ask.

    Whenever tempers flare over athletics on campus, university administrators are quick to say that Tech's athletic program is entirely self-supporting, or "auxiliary" in state budget lingo. Thanks to ticket sales and donations, not a penny of Virginia taxpayer money goes toward Tech sports, at least not directly.

    In fact, Tech's immensely profitable football program subsidizes the 20 other varsity sports at the university, all of which run in the red financially. Academics and athletics are two separate beasts, Tech officials conclude.

    But one needs only witness a few minutes of the carnival-like scene that Blacksburg becomes during every home football game (including the ones on school nights) to see that sports is more than simply an "auxiliary" on campus.

    While Harvey and many other students view athletics as a tiebreaker or something less important when it comes to choosing a college, big-time sporting programs are a powerful draw for many graduating high school seniors. In the months after Tech appeared in the national championship football game with Florida State following the 1999 season, Tech's freshm an applicant pool swelled by more than 2,200, or 14 percent.

    Other factors likely helped boost applications, but university officials admit that Tech's success on the field scored major points in the minds of many college-bound seniors. As a result of the additional applications, Tech was able to be more selective and therefore recruit academically stronger students. And the average SAT score and grade point average continue to rise as the applications continue to flood in.

    Tech officials now hope Tech's inclusion in the ACC - home of several top-ranked academic colleges - will rub off on the Hokies' scholastic reputation as well.

    "It helps with overall image," said Tech spokesman Larry Hincker. "Those are excellent schools to be partnered with. We couldn't be happier to be competing with the likes of Georgia Tech, Duke, North Carolina, UVa, etc."

    Hincker noted that Tech already partners with many of their ACC cohorts on academic initiatives, such as NASA's National Institute of Aerospace, which is jointly run by Tech and four of the nine ACC institutions. The hope is the academic collaborations will grow in number, he said.

    "We'd be hard-pressed to find anything like that with Big East schools," Hincker said.

    Of course, not everybody thinks Tech's move up on the playing field will trickle down into the classroom.

    Jack Cranford, an associate professor and assistant head of the 1,200-student biology department, is skeptical that national recognition on the football field automatically leads to better students. For all of the talk of smarter freshmen at Tech, Cranford said he has yet to see it documented in his classes.

    "They are not any better than they were years ago," said Cranford, who has taught at Tech more than two decades. "In fact, they've done more poorly."

    If true, that would not surprise Murray Sperber.

    A professor of English and American Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Sperber is one of the nation's most vocal and well-respected critics of the commercialized world of collegiate sports. Through numerous books and commentaries, Sperber has accused college officials of blindly pursuing sports profits to the detriment of universities' core mission: educating students.

    In his most recent book, "Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education," Sperber claims that the "Big-time U's" - mainly large research institutions - have abandoned offering quality undergraduate education for research and graduate education. To placate undergrads and keep applications coming in, colleges dump money into athletics, creating the "circus" atmosphere of a sports-crazed campus, Sperber argues.

    Beer flows naturally amid the circus, fostering binge drinking and encouraging a perception that the purpose of college is to have fun, not to receive an education. Virginia Tech, Sperber said, appears to be falling into that trap.

    "Over the years, I've seen Virginia Tech grow and grow and the bars around town grow and grow ... to a full-fledged 'Beer and Circus' town," said Sperber, who began visiting friends in Blacksburg in the mid-1980s. "And obviously, the move to the ACC is just going to ramp that up even more," particularly if Tech basketball becomes more popular.

    Not surprisingly, Tech's administration disagrees with Sperber's assessments of college athletics.

    Binge-drinking and partying existed on Tech's campus long before the Hokies became well-known nationally, Hincker said. And strong athletics programs help create a sense of community, he said.

    "It [sports] also fosters camaraderie and fosters linkages" with alumni, Hincker said. "If it weren't for sports, many people would have no connection with their alma mater."

    Jim Shaver, director of development communications in Tech's fund-raising office, said it is tough to predict whether success in the ACC would help raise money for the university's academic program. Donations to both academics and athletics have risen steadily for about a decade, Shaver said.

    Recently, however, donations to athletics programs surpassed the donations to all individual academic programs. In fiscal year 2002, donations to athletics increased 32 percent to $14 million.

    "A high-profile athletics program - and certainly a high-profile football program - doesn't hurt a university's image and gives it an identity beyond the campus," Shaver said.

    But members of Tech's Faculty Senate have complained that the fund-raising situation is creating a two-tiered world on campus: a wealthy athletics department with a newly expanded stadium and posh new workout rooms; and increasingly cash-strapped academic programs wracked by layoffs, course eliminations and aging labs.

    Cranford, a member of the Senate, said the swift, high-level political involvement in the Big East-ACC battle underscored his belief that education is "burgeoning on dead-pan last" on the state's priority list.

    "You don't hear them raising Cain about that [budget cuts]," Cranford said. "And then this football thing comes along and they just go berserk."

    Students, meanwhile, show no signs of losing interest in their sports teams. And many seem excited about their new ACC rivals.

    During a break from studying for summer exams Friday, three Tech juniors, all from Virginia - Natasha Freeman, Nathan Fleming and Samuel Fitzgerald III - said they believe Tech's move to the ACC was a positive one.

    Television coverage helps with name recognition nationwide, resulting in more applicants. School pride rises as the team succeeds. And alumni open their wallets, they said.

    "It brings more money to our school, and money is always good," Fleming said.

    You can bet that Sperber and others will be watching closely to see how much of the money goes toward academics.

Winners, losers in ACC expansion
By ED MILLER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE

The game is not yet over - not officially, anyway - and already winners and losers are emerging in the nation's newest hit reality series.
Call it "Survivor: ACC Expansion." Whether or not Miami accepts a bid to join the conference, dealing a potentially lethal blow to the Big East, new realities have emerged. Hard-won reputations have been torched. Careers possibly made or unmade.

LOSER: The ACC's good name.

For decades, the conference has enjoyed a reputation as a courtly Southern consortium of like-minded academic institutions - who happened to play a mean brand of basketball.

In a matter of six weeks, that carefully burnished image may be gone forever.

"Obviously, we haven't distinguished ourselves in how we've gone about this," Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said last week in understating the obvious.

The league is taking hits from coast to coast. Columnists and commentators have vilified the ACC as a corporate raider willing to strip mine a neighboring conference, with no concern for the mess left behind.

Making matter worse, to some, is the bumbling manner in which the ACC has conducted its heartless business. They've watched the ACC operate in a ham-handed manner, hacking at the Big East with a dull knife, attempting to sever at first three, then four, and now two teams from its rival conference. The discarded pieces - Syracuse, Boston College - are left to be clumsily reattached.

If the ACC had done its work quickly, surgically, it wouldn't have been blasted so severely.

"The last conference you would have expected to handle something this poorly was the ACC," Marc Ganis, president of a Chicago sports consulting firm, told The Washington Post. "It makes the ACC a laughingstock around the country. The irony is, they go from the pinnacle - the Tiffany of all conferences in the way they were perceived - and now they're being laughed at for the way they bungled this thing."

WINNER: Virginia Tech.

No matter what Miami decides, the Hokies are in. Should the Hurricanes turn the invitation down, the ultimate irony will be that it took six weeks of plot twists and turns for the ACC to add just one school.

One they could have had at "hello." Tech has long pined for ACC membership. The Hokies' association with the Big East was strictly a marriage of convenience, a business partnership.

With the ACC, it's true love.

Tech's football program will benefit from its association with the ACC, particularly if Miami comes, too. But the biggest winner may be men's basketball coach Seth Greenberg.

This time last year, he was coaching a middling team, South Florida, in a second-tier league, Conference USA.

In coming to Tech, he landed a Big East job in ACC country. Now, he's an ACC coach, in an area where ACC basketball is king.

LOSER: ACC commissioner John Swofford.

Swofford's reputation as a smooth, competent CEO and college sports visionary has taken a pounding. In trying to position his conference as a player in the coming realignment of the college landscape, Swofford has come off as the new face of everything that's wrong with big-time college sports.

Of course, Swofford would also have been criticized had the ACC been the one being raided. Fans may not like the process, but they don't want their schools being left behind, either.

Swofford's biggest mistake may have been failing to anticipate the political pressure placed on the University of Virginia by Gov. Mark Warner and others. In fairness, it's doubtful many people anticipated elected officials getting involved.

"This illustrates just how intertwined politics and sports really are," said Wood Selig, a former assistant athletic director at Virginia and now the director of athletics at Western Kentucky. "That's probably the one lesson I've learned from this, more than anything."

It's a lesson Swofford may have learned too late.

WINNER: Virginia Gov. Mark Warner.

By placing pressure on University of Virginia President John Casteen, a swing voter in the expansion process, Warner can take credit for helping Virginia Tech land in the conference of its dreams.

Casteen was unwilling to support an expansion scenario that didn't include Virginia Tech, resulting in the Hokies inclusion.

Warner will undoubtedly remind voters in Southwest Virginia - and Tech fans all over the state - of his role in the process, perhaps in a race for the U.S. Senate in 2006.

LOSER: Casteen. Many UVa fans are upset that their president caved to political pressure and helped the hated Hokies. Perhaps they didn't realize that Casteen, who isn't from a sports background, doesn't share their antipathy for all things Tech.

WINNER: ACC football interests over basketball interests.

Football - and only football - is driving the expansion move. Expanding would give the ACC access to several additional sources of football-related revenue: from a possible conference title game, from a more lucrative TV deal, and from landing a second team in the Bowl Championship series.

The most powerful football conferences will also be in the strongest bargaining position when the new Bowl Championship Series arrangement is drawn up - a process that could cause a shifting of conference alignments nationwide.

"I'm saying it's in their best interest to become more of a football conference than they have been in the past in order to maintain a position of authority in the collegiate world," ACC consultant Dean Bonham told the New York Times.

Selig agreed, saying that, as hard as it is for people to believe, the expansion move was not solely about money.

"Do you want to be dictating policy or do you want to be in position of being dictated to?" Selig said. "This was never a move of finance; it was more a move of power."

And basketball never factored into that power equation.

LOSER: Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese.

Chief executives, whether of corporations or college conferences, are paid to anticipate what conditions will be a few years down the road and position themselves accordingly. After all, the ACC had approached Miami before, so the expansion efforts couldn't have been a complete surprise.

If Miami remains in the Big East, Tranghese and the Big East will have dodged a roundhouse punch. If not, history will record that the Big East was raided on Tranghese's watch.

 

Swofford, ACC never in tune with expansion
By DOUG DOUGHTY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

At the end of a phone interview concerning ACC expansion, ex-Virginia athletic director Jim Copeland had an unusual request.
"Let me ask you a question," said Copeland, who has been the Southern Methodist AD since 1995. "How did Virginia Tech orchestrate this?"

Orchestration? Are you kidding? There were no instruments involved in this. No conductor, either.

At various times during the past 50 years, Virginia Tech would have done almost anything to get in the ACC. When it finally happened, the Hokies didn't have to do anything.

Three months ago, Tech had no chance of getting into the ACC. Now, there is a serious possibility that the Hokies will be entering by themselves.

Commissioner John Swofford admitted as much in conversations with close associates after ACC presidents voted Tuesday night to extend invitations to Tech and Miami.

Miami said all along that it wanted to join the ACC with Syracuse and Boston College, schools in areas where Miami has alumni bases. Yet, from all indications, the ACC never voted on such an arrangement.

The presidents did vote once in favor of entering formal discussions with those three schools, but, by their fifth and last teleconference Tuesday, it was obvious that a Miami-Syracuse-BC parlay wouldn't get the required seven votes.

The biggest surprise was that a Miami-only vote was rejected, despite the support of one-time holdouts Duke and North Carolina. Apparently, it wasn't close in what many are calling a backlash against the notion that Duke and UNC might get their way.

A second vote was for a 12-team configuration, with Tech replacing Syracuse and joining Miami and Boston College. That was a concession to Virginia President John Casteen, who said he would support no expansion that didn't involve the Hokies.

It was expected that Duke and Carolina would vote against that proposal, but the measure would have passed if not for a switch by North Carolina State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, who was calling from Switzerland at approximately 2 in the morning.

Casteen was said to be in Ireland, although some UVa fans swear he was in La-La Land.

Reports have started to circulate to the effect that ACC athletic directors are furious with their CEOs, not necessarily for their support of Virginia Tech but for endorsing a plan that won't bring the ACC any more money.

The ACC didn't get the 12 teams it needs for a football playoff, there will be no TV windfall if Miami doesn't come along and the ACC won't be getting the New York and Boston markets.

(Casteen and friends can still eat at the Boston Market at Charlottesville's Barracks Road Shopping Center. We could use one in Roanoke.)

Let's say Miami elects to stay in the Big East. The argument against Tech has always been that the Hokies don't bring enough to the table. Well, if Tech comes alone and doesn't generate any extra revenue, the rest of the teams could lose money.

Take the $87.3 million that the ACC distributed this year ($9.7 million for each of nine teams) and divide it 10 ways, and that's $8.7 million per team.

It's a great deal for Tech, which this year will receive an estimated $5.5 million from the Big East. Already, attention has been diverted from Tech and its lack of sincerity. The foils of the moment are Swofford and the bumbling ACC presidents.

There has been some speculation that N.C. State's Fox, a member of the Notre Dame board of trustees, thinks she can get the Irish to join the ACC. The way this situation has been misjudged and mishandled, what school in its right mind would entrust its future to Swofford and Co.?

Before the ACC starts thinking about a 12th team, it better hope that Miami doesn't bail. With all the twists this story has taken, that might be the most appropriate ending.

 

Dascenzo: Noted
By FRANK DASCENZO : The Herald-Sun
fdascenzo@heraldsun.com
Jun 28, 2003 : 10:31 pm ET

Some things worth thinking about in the sports world . . .

* This just in from Virginia Tech: The Hokies have been to 10 consecutive bowl games but you need a microscope to find their basketball team in March.

* Thought you'd like to know that when former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan opted to lure Florida State into the ACC, two schools objected. If you guessed Duke and North Carolina, go to the head of the class.

* If they held a popularity contest in the ACC, who'd win? A. John Swofford. B. Marye Anne Fox. C. James Moeser and Nannerl O. Keohane or D. none of the above.

* This just in from Virginia Tech: Bruce Smith once sacked Duke quarterback Ben Bennett. When the Blue Devils quarterback, wobbly and wounded, got up and headed for the wrong bench, Smith turned him around and pointed him in the right direction and said, "Hey man, I've hit you enough. You're all right with me."

* First-year East Carolina football coach John Thompson had to be delighted at the press release that reported his Pirates' game with Miami, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. in the Orange Bowl, will be nationally televised on ESPN2. By the way, ECU might be 2-8 vs. the Canes, but the Pirates have won the last two.

* If Miami says "no" to the ACC, and remains in the Big East, John Swofford might want to go and find Vitali Klitschko's cut man.

* Ohio State athletics director Andy Geiger is like most of us. He has opinions. "I think the idea of the ACC expanding is crazy. Absolutely crazy," Geiger said. "The thing that separates college football from the pros is the regular season means everything and to add three teams just to hold a conference championship game, particularly the way the ACC has gone about it, is shameful and puzzling."

* You read it here first: Julius Peppers, who sheds blockers as well as anyone in the NFL, had 12 sacks in 12 games last season as a Panthers rookie but he'll have even more in 2003.

* Ted Roof should get plenty of media attention between Oct. 25 and Nov. 1. The Duke defensive coordinator gets the luxury of preparing for N.C. State's Philip Rivers and Tennessee's Casey Clausen on those dates. Both quarterbacks are preseason Heisman Trophy candidates. The last time Rivers showed up in Wallace Wade Stadium, Nov. 3, 2001, he threw four touchdown passes and no interceptions and the Wolfpack, leading 49-0 with 6:31 remaining in the second quarter, prevailed 55-31. The last time Duke played in Neyland Stadium, Oct. 2, 1993, the Blue Devils lost to the then-No. 11 Volunteers 52-19.

* ACC football coaches will be delighted to know that the Miami Hurricanes had four players chosen in the first round of this year's NFL draft and had 13 first-round picks over the last three seasons -- more than any school in any three-year period.

* This just in from Virginia Tech: No matter what anybody says, the Hokies believe they belong in the ACC and not in the Big East. Virginia Tech was 8-0 in football a year ago before finishing 3-4 in the Big East.

* Steve Spurrier missed the NFL playoffs in his rookie season in 2002 with the Redskins because his team finished 2-6 on the road and some of those games were not memorable for Washington fans -- 30-9 at Green Bay; 26-7 at Jacksonville and 34-21 at Philadelphia. The league didn't do Spurrier any favors this season, either. He gets the Falcons, and Michael Vick, in Atlanta on Sept. 14 and has to play at Miami on Nov. 23. The Falcons were 5-3 at home last season; the Dolphins were 7-1 at home.

* Some people have it, some don't. Bill Parcells is 11-6 in eight postseason appearances with the Giants, Patriots and Jets, including 2-1 in the Super Bowl. Marty Schottenheimer is 5-11 in 11 appearances with the Browns and Chiefs.

* This just in from Virginia Tech: The Hokies hold the Big East record for the most touchdowns in a game with eight. It happened Oct. 14, 1995, in an epic with Akron. Actually, the Hokies are tied for the record. Syracuse rolled an eight against Rutgers on Sept. 19, 1998.

 

Weak presidents, political intrigue spell messy future

6-29-03

News & Record

GREENSBORO -- This is not over, you know. This is a long way from being over.

In the next day or so, we should have apparent closure on what a lot of people thought would be a nice little transition from power to superpower. The ACC will announce its latest decision, either the addition of Virginia Tech or the addition of both Tech and Miami, and a lot of people will look back and assess the process and try to determine what it all means.

Here is what it all means: This is not over. This is a long way from being over.

People will long argue over what happened first in this procedure. Did the ACC try to steal Miami from the Big East, or did Miami make the first call? That's important because when this is all said and done, and we're sitting here with the NCAA in ruin or the Division-I football playoffs in motion or an entire college football season in question because the whole sport is under a court injunction, we'll want to know what started it all.

Any and all of that is possible, not because the ACC started us down the road to destruction or because Miami started us down a road to probation or even because Virginia president John T. Casteen III started us down a road to prosecution. It's all possible because the door has now been opened.

Ironically, the first school to recognize this is East Carolina. The Pirates, behind state Sen. Tony P. Moore, sent a letter to Gov. Mike Easley on Friday, trying to persuade him to use his influence in getting the ACC to include ECU in any future expansion plans.

Ludicrous, you say? Welcome to the future.

The open-door policy of college football is upon us. ECU, like its Conference USA brethren, knows the next BCS format has yet to be drawn up. The Pirates know they're not in the current format and aren't likely to be in the next unless they get started now. This is the exact reasoning behind Miami's attempt to leave the Big East and the ACC's attempt to expand before the next BCS formula is invented.

Had the Miami-ACC talks gone smoothly, we might not be sitting here today pondering the unknown. The ACC would have its 12 teams. The lawsuit filed by the remaining Big East members would be little more than a nuisance, and the NCAA would have few storms on its horizon.

But it didn't go smoothly. The lawsuit became its own monster. Syracuse and Boston College, only invited as a favor to Miami to begin with, were left out of the ACC. Virginia Tech slipped in through a worm hole opened by Casteen and a small minority of waffling ACC presidents. And the lasting outcome might be the presence of political leaders who played a role.

Don't think the rest of the politicians didn't notice. They did.

Athletics, particularly college athletics, have long been vulnerable to politicians. Title IX is the most glaring example, but there have been others. ECU's football schedule came with political pressure that forced UNC to travel to Greenville this year. N.C. State's basketball arena was forced through a political conduit of contracts and appropriations.

Professional sports has avoided such interference because of the strength of its sanctioning bodies (NFL, NHL, NBA, NASCAR) or antiquated rulings such as the one that allows major-league baseball to be exempt from ant-trust laws. College sports, ruled by the NCAA, remain open to political influence because of the NCAA's perceived weakness in matters such as conference affiliation, television contracts and the BCS.

Those are the three most important issues facing Division I athletics, and the NCAA's refusal to get involved has allowed the schools themselves to make policy. Thus, we have schools forming their own network deals (Notre Dame and NBC), the formation of super-conferences (Big-12, SEC) and the big-time football monopoly known as the BCS.

Lawyers have been strangely silent during the past few years as the money has increased and the number of schools with access to the money decreased. Which brings us back to the open door. There are those who believe the long-lasting effect of the ACC expansion process will not be a larger ACC or the death of the Big East or a compacted BCS, but the attention it gave to politicians and lawsuits and the opportunity it created for alternate routes to the money.

The ACC was a victim of its own weak presidents. Thus, what should've been a tidy expansion became a spreading mess that has already involved too many people with too many agendas. From here, it gets interesting.

The various leagues around the country that have yet to go to 12 teams (ACC, Pac-10, Conference USA, Big East, etc.) will petition the NCAA for permission to hold lucrative football championships within their own conferences. They will then fight among themselves for permission to be represented in the next BCS.

At which point the NCAA gets involved and will influence the future of the BCS, the conferences and the NCAA itself. Any gaps, we know now, will be filled by governors, state senators, lawyers and judges. Too much is at stake now, too much attention has been given to the process, too many weak people have been exposed and one too many doors have been opened.

Enter the politicians.

This is not over, you know. This is a long way from being over.