Winners, losers in the ACC battle
BOB LIPPER
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST Jun 30, 2003
Contact Bob Lipper at (804) 649-6555 or e-mail blipper@timesdispatch.com

We're picking up lots of static and weird vibes from our ACC expansion listening post. Donna Shalala is receiving suitors and enticements in Miami. John Swofford is skimming the help-wanted classifieds in Greensboro. The stat sheet could be amended any nanosecond, but for now here are the winners and losers . . .

Winner: Virginia Tech. The Hokies finally get the ACC membership card they've always coveted.

Loser: Boston College. If Miami stays in the Big East, it's still the 2,000-pound gorilla. BC comes off as just another monkey.

Winners: Mark Warner and Jerry Kilgore. Our guv and A.G. might not get engraved invitations to the next U.Va. booster-club soiree, but they went to the mat (and the courthouse) for Tech, and their efforts paid off. Warner's next campaign slogan: He filled the potholes and kept Lane Stadium remodeling alive.

Loser: Swofford. If it's Job 1 for a floor manager to count the votes, Lyndon Johnson this guy ain't. He lost control of the process early, got shot down on his Miami-BC-Syracuse trifecta and segued in the public eye from sinister corporate raider to rank bumbler. Now he might even let the'Canes wiggle off the hook. Sheesh.

Winner: John Casteen. Yeah, he ticked off some Virginia hardheads by hanging in there for the Hokies, but his diplomat's gaze swept way above the yard markers in protecting a school with which U.Va. does far more business than battle. (Still wish he'd deep-sixed expansion on the opening vote, though.)

Loser: Shalala. She can't always get what she wants. If she tangos to the ACC, it's without preferred dance partners Syracuse and BC. If she stays in the Big East, it's not where she wants to be.

Winners: Dave Hart and Dave Braine. The somewhat beleaguered ADs at Florida State and Georgia Tech were the primary lobbyists for beefing up ACC football. Assuming Miami joins Tech, they get the upgrade they desired.

Losers: James Moeser and Nan Keohane. The honchos from UNC and Duke attempted to stake out the moral high ground. Instead, what they mostly did was antagonize their fellow CEOs.

Winner: Notre Dame. If it's possible, the Irish have never looked more desirable.

Loser: Mike Tranghese. His throw-a-guilt-trip-at-Shalala rant did nothing but harden her position to bail on the Big East. At best, he'll forfeit one of his league's two marquee names in football.

Winner: ACC football. Tech alone is a boost. Tech and Miami are a bonanza.

Loser: ACC basketball. A Miami-Tech addition results in a lumpy conference tournament and the end to home-and-home bliss.

Winner: Jake Crouthamel. Syracuse's AD and a founding father of the Big East, he was a reluctant add-on to the ACC's original expansion plan and won't have trouble being welcomed back to the club.

Loser: ACC harmony. Good thing the presidents caucused via teleconference. Spit doesn't travel on phone lines.

Winner: Lew Perkins. He's the guy who - as UConn's AD - pushed the notion that football mattered enough for the state to sink $90 million into a new stadium in Hartford. He skedaddled to Kansas a few weeks ago. Now the program is someone else's problem.

Loser: Terry Holland. U.Va.'s former basketball coach and AD went public with the pronouncement that Tech would never get in the ACC and parroted a visceral C'ville mentality by saying, " . . . anything that hurts them helps us." Guess he won't be wheeling the welcome wagon to Blacksburg.

Winner: Jim Boeheim. The champeen basketball coach called the proposed move of snow-belt residents Syracuse and BC to a southern league "insane."

Loser: Charles Steger. Tech's president will have to mow Casteen's lawn for the next 20 years to repay this debt.

 

ACC waits on Miami's decision
By Dave Johnson
Daily Press
Published June 29, 2003

During a weekend of uncertainty that will make or break its expansion agenda, the Atlantic Coast Conference can be sure of only this: Virginia Tech is coming aboard. That, quite frankly, doesn't have league officials high-fiving in the hallways.

But what about Miami, long an object of the ACC's affection? The Hurricanes have an invitation but are taking the weekend to consider a counter-proposal from the Big East, which hopes to persuade its flagship football program to remain. Miami president Donna Shalala is scheduled to announce the decision on Monday, the deadline for leaving the Big East without its exit fee doubling to $2 million in order to join the ACC for 2004-05.

Shalala said she is "deeply disappointed" the ACC will not be adding Boston College and Syracuse, which, along with Miami, were the conference's original targets. And she's said to be particularly frustrated with how it went down.

Here's how: As the presidents voted Tuesday night, Virginia Tech and Miami passed by a 7-2 decision. Duke's Nan Keohane and North Carolina's James Moeser, as expected, opposed. But when Boston College was brought up, N.C. State chancellor Marye Anne Fox unexpectedly joined the opposition and the Eagles received only six votes, one short of what was needed.

Fox's connections to Notre Dame - she's a member of the school's trustees and her son is an alumnus - have raised eyebrows. Many conferences want to add the Irish, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel quoted an anonymous ACC president saying the vote sent "a clear signal to Notre Dame." Though the Irish remain financially strong as a football independent, that could change when the Bowl Championship Series contract, and the school's television deal with NBC, expire after the 2005 season.

Fox issued a statement saying she would not discuss her vote. Boston College was bitter.

"Never in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference have conference officials made a site visit and then not extended an offer to join the conference," BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo said. "After the ACC announced it had voted to begin formal discussions ... we were told by some the site visit was merely a formality.

"Upon conclusion of the site visit, we were told Boston College was a perfect fit for the Atlantic Coast Conference."

Will the BC fallout affect Miami's decision?

"We didn't like the way the ACC handled this, and we're upset at how Boston College and Syracuse were treated," a Hurricanes source told the Sun-Sentinel. "We want to make sure this isn't how we'll be treated for the next 15 years because our contribution is significant."

Miami officials also must examine dollars and cents. Shalala said that because the Tech/Miami scenario had never been discussed, the school needs time to examine some dollar figures. Before its latest proposal, the Big East had promised Miami $45 million over the next five years. That's close to the $9.7 million the ACC annually shells out to each of its nine members.

But an 11-team ACC would have to generate $19.4 million more to maintain that average. Miami has concerns about losing as much as $1 million a year.

The league stands to gain another $10 million with a championship football game, but under current NCAA rules needs 12 members to stage one. ACC commissioner John Swofford said the conference will petition to have that rule changed. He must do so by July 15 to have a shot at playing a title game in December 2004.

All Virginia Tech can do is wait. ACC associate commissioner Mike Finn said the Hokies' invitation is not conditioned on Miami accepting, meaning what has been a dream in Blacksburg for a half-century will become reality next week.
 

Miami Announces Today Whether It Will Join ACC
By Josh Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 30, 2003; Page D08

The Atlantic Coast Conference's protracted expansion process should come to an end a little after 4 p.m. today, when Miami is scheduled to announce whether it will accept an invitation to join the league.

Virginia Tech, the other school to receive an invitation after a stunning twist in the process, already has accepted.

The ACC has scheduled a news conference for Tuesday night to introduce its new configuration, which is expected to take effect for the 2004-05 school year.

After today, the Big East Conference exit fee to withdraw for the 2004-05 school year doubles to $2 million, and that alone should bring an end to the expansion process, which has met unexpected obstacles at nearly every step.

ACC and Big East representatives have spent the past few days trying to court Miami leaders. Last month, the Big East guaranteed Miami at least $9 million in revenues for each of the next five years and it is believed that offer -- or perhaps one that is slightly more lucrative -- remains on the table.

The ACC, meantime, is banking that Miami will see long-term security in its conference, with the possibility to add a 12th team -- and a potentially lucrative conference championship football game.

Miami officials have expressed financial and scheduling concerns with an 11-team ACC and are disappointed that Syracuse and Boston College did not receive invitations after going through the courtship process. However, the ability to play in the ACC could provide Miami with a much-needed influx of revenue from its basketball program -- including the possibility of increasing the value for naming rights to its new arena.

While a 10-team ACC without Miami would allow the conference to continue its present round-robin scheduling formats in football and basketball, that would change in an 11-team format.

Under that scenario, it is expected the league would go to formats similar to what it planned to do in a 12-team conference, with teams ensured of playing their top rivals every year.

"There are plusses and minuses" to an 11-team conference, ACC Commissioner John Swofford said. "The Big Ten operates very effectively with 11."
 

All eyes on Hurricanes
Miami to unveil affiliation today
By Joe Burris, Globe Staff, 6/30/2003

The University of Miami is expected to decide at 4 this afternoon whether to remain with the Big East or accept an offer to join the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Phone talks continued yesterday between officials at Miami and the Big East, which is hoping the Hurricanes accept its counterproposal and spurn the ACC's offer. Both conferences, as well as much of intercollegiate athletics, anxiously await today's decision.

''I certainly hope their decision will be to remain in the Big East Conference,'' said Boston College athletic director Gene DeFilippo.

Today is the last day that Miami can buy its way out of the Big East by paying $1 million. After today, the school could face a $2 million buyout.

BC was part of the ACC's original plan, along with Miami and Syracuse, but that plan went awry when ACC presidents could not get enough votes for approval.

Amid talk of inviting as many as four Big East teams, the ACC then surprisingly voted to ask only Miami and Virginia Tech, leaving out the Eagles and Orangemen, teams Miami wanted to accompany it into the ACC. Syracuse and BC then led the Big East counterproposal to Miami, and the Hurricanes said they would examine the proposal and decide today.

Virginia Tech has accepted the ACC's invitation.

If Miami remains in the Big East, a lawsuit filed by Big East members Connecticut, West Virginia, Rutgers, and Pittsburgh is expected to be dropped. At a Thursday press conference, Miami president Donna Shalala said the lawsuit would not factor into the school's decision.
 

ACC jumble lamented
Messy expansion fight leaves bruises, might spur reform
By NED BARNETT, Staff Writer

UNC System President Molly Broad considered her job description and thought it was clear she shouldn't be involved in a decision on expanding the Atlantic Coast Conference.
That, she thought, was reserved for the heads of each ACC university, including the two she oversees, N.C. State and UNC-Chapel Hill.

But six weeks into the inter-conference food fight known as the expansion debate, Broad's respect for proper channels seems quaint, if not unique.

Since the expansion effort became public in May, all sorts of actors have claimed roles. The Virginia governor, state legislators, state attorneys general, U.S. senators, boosters, business people and faculty members have all jumped in. Last week, East Carolina University supporters began a political lobbying effort to be admitted to the ACC.

"There are a lot of aspects about this that are very troubling because they reflect intrusions and involvement by heavy hitters of all sorts into what really ought to be a university decision," Broad said in an interview Friday.

But as Broad and anyone else following the debate has seen, it did not involve the traditional mission of universities to educate students and search for knowledge.

It was about TV markets, about getting another conference football team into a lucrative Bowl Championship Series game. It was about money.

That's why after 18 months of secret planning, the ACC went after three Big East schools -- Miami, Boston College and Syracuse -- that offered a mix of strong football and new TV markets. Five Big East football schools fought back with a lawsuit. Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and state legislators successfully pressured the University of Virginia to tie its ACC vote on expansion to admission of a school the wider ACC didn't want, Virginia Tech.

After six weeks of tedious negotiations and stunning votes, it has come to this: Virginia Tech is coming in, Boston College and Syracuse are red-faced after welcoming the ACC's courtship and then being spurned, and Miami is waiting until Monday to announce whether it will join the ACC or stay in the Big East.

The balloon pops

If Miami rejects the ACC invitation, it will be a closing pie-in-the-face for a once distinguished, 50-year-old league that has been widely criticized for making a clumsy grab for cash.

If Miami does join, the ACC will be stronger in football but short of the 12-school goal it sought to meet requirements of the National Collegiate Athletic Association for a conference football championship game.

Whatever the outcome, almost everyone involved -- except Virginia Tech and the Virginia politicians who backed its ACC candidacy -- is unhappy with the expansion balloon that popped.

State Sen. Tony Rand, a Fayetteville Democrat and a graduate and athletics booster of UNC-Chapel Hill, stayed on the sidelines while politicians elsewhere got involved. He said the expansion process has been a loss for North Carolina and the ACC. "It's just been an unseemly spectacle, and I just wish it had been handled a whole lot differently," Rand said. "No matter how it turns out, we haven't looked very good."

Even some Virginia politicians were turned off by the weeks of haggling by university presidents and the accusations of bad faith.

Bill Howell, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said it shows "how corrupt and greedy college football has become. I say, 'a pox on all their houses.' I'm going to go watch high school football."

Others say much of the ill feeling will be forgotten once college football season starts.

"All this stuff goes away on Saturday," said Gregory P. Barber, a Boston College alumnus and trustee who gave $2.5 million to endow BC's head football coaching job. He said athletics administrators have to explore new ways to make more money as costs keep rising.

"We have to deal with the real world," he said. "We can't make it the way it was in the '40s with everybody wearing letter sweaters."

But if the college game cannot go back, its costs must stop spiraling upward, Broad said. She sees the ACC-Big East feud as the latest example of colleges caught up in an athletics arms race.

"Each new major decision reveals a new low," she said. "It's quite understandable that people see intercollegiate athletics as out of control."

Others who study the role of college sports said the ACC expansion was a low point in the effort to keep college athletics focused on what's best for students and universities.

"It saddens me to see it," said Brenda Light Bredemeier, co-director of the Mendelson Center for Sports, Character and Community at Notre Dame. "It makes concrete so many of the intuitions people have about the influence of money on the commercialization of college sports."

Some see the involvement of politicians and the courts in the ACC's expansion as a evidence that the government may step in if the NCAA cannot control athletics spending, much of it by public universities.

Paul Haagen, a law professor and co-director of Duke's Center for Sports Law and Policy, said, "We saw a level of political involvement this time that I believe is close to unprecedented." He said that "could signal the beginning of some greater level of regulation" for big-time college sports.

A boost to reform?

The dismay of ACC and Big East fans who have seen their conferences changed in ways they don't like and the irritation of faculty members who think education was left out of the debate could give momentum to those who favor reform.

"What this should do," said Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, "is give a bolt of energy to the reform movement. If we have any hope of bringing it back to what college sports was all about, the time is now."

College sports reform groups are preparing to press their cases. The Knight Commission will reconvene this fall. Meanwhile, the faculties of 59 of the 62 schools in the six conferences affiliated with the Bowl Championship Series organized in May as the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics. They issued a statement opposed to the ACC expansion.

Bob Eno, an Indiana University professor who serves as co-chairman of the COIA, said his group wants conferences to be frameworks for cooperation on academic issues. He said the ACC's bid to link TV markets from Miami to Syracuse and Boston was the opposite of that goal.

"When people overreach in the direction of your criticism, it's helpful to reform, I guess," Eno said. "But the immediate effect is quite damaging." Eno said one hazard of overt commercialism could be more pressure to pay college athletes, a cost he said would cripple college athletics.

"If you make the market model too prominent, the entire premise of unpaid athletes is going to fall apart," he said. "We're going to have the professionalization of college sports. That's not what our group or any of the reformers aim to accomplish."

Ramogi Huma, chairman and co-founder of the Collegiate Athlete Coalition, a California group that serves athletes in the Pacific-10 Conference, said he thinks the interests of athletes were overlooked in the ACC-Big East squabble.

"I'm sure a lot of players in the Big East are upset that their conference is now weaker," he said. "The quality of their athletic career may be reduced as a result."

But some qualities of the ACC now appear reduced as well. Broad said it will need to restore its reputation as a conference that balances academics and athletics and respects its fellow institutions in higher education.

"Its image is tarnished," she said. "Whether that will be enduring remains to be seen."


 

ACC awaits money call
By CAULTON TUDOR, Staff Writer

In what has boiled down to a two-league chase for the University of Miami football sweepstakes, the ACC is in the unexpected -- and thoroughly uncomfortable -- position of having to hope that up-front money doesn't dictate the Hurricanes' decision.

After more than two months of constant ups, downs and downright bizarre developments, it's probably going to be more profitable in the short term for Miami to keep the same seat it has had all along -- the one at the Big East table.

In a bid first made more than a month ago and reiterated Thursday, the Big East is dangling a $45 million, five-year offer to keep the Canes from following Virginia Tech to the ACC.

By comparison, the ACC projects its annual payoff per team at $8.5 million with nine members. But counting Virginia Tech, the shares will go lower. And at 11 teams -- should Miami pick the ACC on Monday -- the projected checks would slip to about $7 million per team, based on current income.

Additionally, Miami would face a $3 million initiation fee for joining the ACC. Like Virginia Tech, Miami would not have to pay immediately. The money would be withheld from the annual team check and spaced over a period of at least three or four years. The ACC has made it clear that the initiation fee would not be dropped, nor would Miami be offered any unusual financial incentives to join.

Among the original motives for possibly jumping to the ACC -- as cited several weeks ago by Miami president Donna Shalala and athletics director Paul Dee -- was the opportunity to make more money. For now, the ACC has lost that advantage.

Long-term, the revenue picture looks better should Miami make the move. With the Hurricanes, ACC football almost certainly would be worth significantly more money to the television networks and bowl games. The league's current annual TV football contract is worth just over $24 million, but the current pacts end after the 2005 season.

Still, as Shalala and her advisers mull Monday's landmark decision, the ACC isn't without certain positives.

For one thing, the ACC's annual TV contract of $28 million is certain to improve Miami's income in basketball. For the 2001-02 season, Miami's basketball check from the 14-team Big East was just under $335,000. That same season, each ACC team received roughly $3 million in basketball revenue from the conference. And whereas the $9 million Big East offer is limited to five years, the ACC's basketball TV contract runs through the 2009-10 season.

On the proximity front, the ACC clearly has the edge.

With the pending exit of Virginia Tech, Miami's closest Big East neighbor would be West Virginia. And while Miami wanted Boston College and Syracuse in the ACC mix, the Hurricanes would be adding a valuable state conference rival in Florida State.

Easier, more affordable team travel has been a point of emphasis by ACC since last week's vote excluded BC and Syracuse but included the Hokies. As an ACC member, the Hurricanes' longest conference trip would be to Maryland.

The ACC also is attempting to sell its traditional academic legacy. When Florida State entered the league in 1991, the school's faculty aggressively supported joining a conference that included Duke and several other top-flight academic institutions. But FSU at that time was an independent. In the Big East, Miami is grouped with a number of highly regarded schools, including Notre Dame in sports other than football.

Privately, ACC officials are nervous but still cautiously optimistic. Some saw it as a positive sign for the ACC when Miami delayed a making announcement Thursday -- the thinking being that if Shalala was completely miffed by the ACC vote, she would have immediately bolted back to the Big East and basically told the ACC to buzz off on the spot. The same theory holds that by delaying an announcement until Monday afternoon, she going the final yard in being polite to the Big East and giving league leaders the last closing argument.

But never before have ACC officials had to suffer through a weekend in more anxiety than now.

If Miami ends the ordeal Monday by staying in the Big East, the ACC would be left as the laughingstock of the year in all of college athletics. Moreover, it would set a dubious tone for any future expansion plans for the ACC. Having gone shopping for Miami, BC and Syracuse, the ACC would have wound up with a fourth choice -- Virginia Tech -- that didn't extend its television footprint but did weaken its basketball inventory.

As a conference, it could take years for the ACC to regain its former attractiveness to high-profile schools looking to find a new home.



 

UM leans toward an ACC move
By Craig Barnes | Hurricanes Correspondent
Posted June 30, 2003

IF UM GOES


It will have to pay a $1 million penalty for leaving the Big East.

It will have to deal with a lawsuit filed by Big East schools seeking millions.

It could begin playing in the ACC as soon as the 2004-05 academic year.

The ACC would have 11 members, 1 short of the required 12 for a football championship game.

IF UM STAYS
It will receive a $45 million, 5-year revenue guarantee from the Big East.

The Big East's lawsuit against UM will likely be dropped.

There were indications Sunday that Miami will join the Atlantic Coast Conference when the Hurricanes announce their conference preference today at 4 p.m., but the decision wasn't final, sources said.

President Donna Shalala and Athletic Director Paul Dee spent the weekend working with university financial officers, checking the numbers of a two-team expansion that includes Virginia Tech and validating the Big East's offer of more than $9 million for five years.

The Hurricanes have reviewed with conference officials from both sides the possibility of having a championship game with or without 12 teams. The ACC has assured Miami that it will pursue one other team for a total of 12, and it has also said the league would support an NCAA legislative change allowing conferences with less than 12 teams to hold a championship game.

In the end, Miami has problems with both conferences, but it has fewer differences with the ACC.

Miami doesn't like the Big East business model. On one end, schools such as Rutgers and West Virginia are having to dip into their bottom line to help finance Miami. On the other end, Miami could still lose money in years it doesn't have successful seasons.

In the ACC, every school gets an even share. It has led to each school getting an estimated $9.7 million per year over the past two seasons.

In a season when Miami played in a Bowl Championship Series game, the Hurricanes were collecting $9 million. In other years, they were collecting only $7.3 million.

Two years ago, the Hurricanes won the national championship in football and the men's and women's basketball teams played in the NCAA Tournament, but the athletic department lost more than $1 million. A deficit with that kind of success is a red flag.

Miami school officials have been upset for some time at the public attacks of Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal regarding the Hurricanes' possible switch to the ACC.

The Hurricanes were just as upset when the ACC presidents voted to invite them and Virginia Tech, leaving out Boston College and Syracuse. For different reasons, Miami felt passionate about its loyalties to its two Big East partners.

For the immediate future, the Hurricanes could include Boston College, Syracuse and perhaps Connecticut in its non-conference scheduling plans so a Northeast connection does exist.

With the money relatively even in the short term and better in the ACC for the future, the emotional differences are hard to divide. Miami has no loyalties except to Boston College and Syracuse, and the possibility of the three being the foundation for a new conference shouldn't be ignored.

Beyond the money, emotions and loyalties, an association with Duke, North Carolina, Virginia, Wake Forest and Georgia Tech in the ACC would enhance Miami's academic reputation.

Basketball will be in a conference that requires improvement within the program, but logistics will allow it to happen for less money and with the promise of a better home schedule.

Its baseball program, consistently among the nation's best, will play a solid conference schedule against some of the nation's better teams, Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech and NC State among them.

In the non-revenue sports, there will be an opportunity for better competition at less cost. The travel costs to the Carolinas and Virginia is much less than what it is to New England, New York and Pittsburgh for sports such as tennis, volleyball, track and golf.

While most of the conversation has been about football, the big-money producer, today's decision will be driven by academics and the ability to improve non-revenue sports.