Shalala, Miami show true colors
School president sells out B.C., Syracuse by jumping from Big East to ACC
COMMENTARY
Ron Borges writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the NFL and boxing for the Boston Globe.

June 30 — The conscience of the Clinton administration came through as expected Monday afternoon. She didn’t show up.

DONNA SHALALA, FORMER SECRETARY of Health and Human Services under Bill Clinton and present president of the University of Miami, announced Monday that the Hurricanes would abandon their partners in the Big East and jump to the Atlantic Coast Conference starting with the 2004-05 season. This came after she previously had promised she would not do so unless her friends at Boston College and Syracuse were also invited.
This is the same Shalala who supposedly scolded Clinton when he finally admitted to his Cabinet members that underneath it, all he did understand what the meaning of the word “is” is, and what it meant at the moment was “We is all in trouble here now.” Perhaps she did scold him in private after learning he did have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, but Shalala wasn’t willing to give up the limo ride to work to scold him in public.
In other words, she sold herself out then, and she sold herself out again Monday. That’s no longer a coincidence or a matter of circumstance. It’s a trend.
The assurances she gave B.C. and Syracuse, which were made on several occasions when this greedy process all began, went up in smoke when the ACC did a dixie on both schools after visiting them and pronouncing each as acceptable. What was apparently not acceptable to a lot of the members of the ACC was the cost of traveling there when they could go more easily to Blacksburg, Va., or Miami and encounter better weather along the way, not to mention better teams.
Miami, B.C. and Syracuse were originally in cahoots to destroy the Big East for the same reason, by the way: big money. The difference is, B.C. and Syracuse never gave any indication remotely hinting that honor was involved. They simply said they were going wherever Miami was because wherever Miami was going was close to a bank.
It was only Shalala who took this publicly to a different level when she promised not to jump without her Northeast partners. Obviously, when Shalala first made that statement, she was under the mistaken belief that the ACC was going to add the other two schools as promised. That would allow the conference to have enough teams to stage a championship game that could be sold for huge money to TV, thus guaranteeing everyone in the ACC an additional big payoff.
Conversely, what B.C. and Syracuse realized is what they still know: Without Miami, the Big East conference is on life support. Now it is even worse off without Virginia Tech because the teams that have won nine of the past 10 Big East football titles are abandoning ship.
Once upon a time (say, about a week ago) Virginia Tech was adamantly opposed to dismantling the Big East. In fact, it joined in a lawsuit contending it and the remaining Big East schools had spent millions on their football programs on the presumption that its partners, particularly Miami, would not abandon them. The Hokies held adamantly to that position until the very moment the ACC decided to stab B.C. and Syracuse in the back and admit Virginia Tech along with Miami, meaning the only two national football powerhouses in the Big East would both be gone.
Virginia Tech immediately withdrew from the lawsuit that meant so much to them and accepted the ACC’s offer even before Shalala could grab the money for Miami and run to the ACC herself. Why? Because Shalala understood politics.
She understood a weekend of public handwringing would accomplish one of two aims. It would either net Miami an even bigger ransom offer from the Big East to stay than the five-year, $45 million guarantee already on the table, or it would at least give her the appearance of laboring over the difficulties of going on without her friends to the North.
Shalala even went so far as to accept the move to the ACC on Monday in halfhearted fashion, saying, “We are reluctantly accepting” admittance.
Reluctantly? If you’re so reluctant, don’t go. Or if you believe what you said a week ago about not going without B.C. and Syracuse, then tell the ACC you made clear what your university’s position was and you’re going to do a very unpolitically correct thing these days. You’re going to keep your word.
Don’t say you’re “deeply disappointed” that Syracuse and B.C. were left behind. You could have made sure they weren’t left behind simply by
sticking with them like you said you would.
Or, failing that, just say from the start what most people assumed all along. Just say, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” and leave honor and deep disappointment and reluctance and your partners all in the rear-view mirror, where they ended up any way.
“It’s been a bizarre, strange and goofy process,” Shalala said after announcing her school’s shift, “but it has allowed us the opportunity to have the distance to decide who we are, where we are and where we want to go.”
Huh?
They decided they are people who cannot keep their word. They decided they are people who are capable of “reluctantly” screwing their partners over a few million dollars despite already making millions with their football program. They decided they are people who were already challenging for the national championship every season. They decided they are people who said without being asked that they wouldn’t leave without B.C. and Syracuse, then ignored their own words and went where they wanted to go — the direction of the largest pile of money.
Last Friday, Shalala said she was “torn” over the decision she had to ponder over the weekend. Torn over what decision? If you are a person whose word means anything, there was nothing to be torn about. You say, “Thanks, but no thanks. We said all along we’d only go if Syracuse and B.C. came with us. You said that was okay with you. Now we end up with Virginia Tech? Wrong! You end up with Virginia Tech. We end up with the Big East covering our travel expenses and guaranteeing us $45 million over five years. Nice talking to you.”
The reason that didn’t happen is the same reason this entire underhanded deal went down the way it did in the first place. It was always about the money for everyone from the start. The ACC. B.C. Syracuse. Virginia Tech. Most of all Miami. Always.
It was never about loyalty. It was never about partnerships. It was never about honesty. It was never about honor. It was always about the politics of expediency.
Most of all, it was about Miami becoming part of a huge TV contract and an even bigger conference championship game. Of course, that will require that the ACC steal one more team from some other soon-to-become hapless conference or whine until the NCAA changes its rules to allow 11-team conferences to hold title games.
Shalala has wedded her university to that future raiding by turning her back on the people she said she’d never leave without. It’s the direction she wants to take the University of Miami.
Of course, when that raid occurs, Donna Shalala will only be participating reluctantly.
 

Expansion gives league BCS clout

7-1-03

By TIM PEELER, Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO -- The Atlantic Coast Conference held its first meeting around the 18th green at Sedgefield Country Club, where the league made its official break from the cumbersome Southern Conference on May 8, 1953, because of concerns about college football.

The move paid off later that year, when Maryland won a mythical national football title.

Barely 50 years later, after nearly a lifetime of living on its basketball success, the ACC has positioned itself to be a dominant football conference.

By adding Virginia Tech and Miami, which formally accepted an invitation Monday afternoon, the league has two of the most powerful programs in college football to go with Florida State's recent dynasty and the rising programs at N.C. State, Maryland and Virginia.

Miami brings with it five national championships, which is as many as the ACC has won collectively in its first 50 years. With Miami, Virginia Tech and Florida State, the ACC has six participants in the past five national championship games. And a quick look at last season's final Associated Press poll shows the new ACC has six of the top 22 teams.

"Obviously, it gives us a strength in the sport of football that this league has never had in its 50-year history," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said Monday. "To get anywhere close to this you have to go back a long, long way to maybe the first decade of the conference.

"I think it certainly puts us on a par football-wise with any conference in the country."

It's not such a good thing for the Big East Conference, which loses its two most prominent football schools.

"It leaves the remaining football schools in a precarious situation," said Syracuse's Jake Crouthamel, athletics director at one of the two schools the ACC courted then jilted in the final weeks of the expansion process. "We are clearly weakened by this."

And it may not be such a good thing for ACC basketball, the league's most prestigious brand. That's because the league will welcome a pair of programs that finished last season with losing records and RPIs worse than 188, some 80 spots behind Clemson's ACC-low 107.

Other than Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who last week blasted the league's dilution of its basketball product, the basketball coaches are trying to put a positive face on the league's new look. They'll at least try to resolve how an 11-team ACC will handle a schedule that won't have a full round-robin, and they will find a way to make the new schools feel at home.

That's why N.C. State coach Herb Sendek tried to be as diplomatic as possible Monday.

"'I prefer not to draw any lines about specific sports," Sendek said. "'We're the ACC now. We are participating against each other in all sports."

But some residual effects from this expansion will be felt for years to come, as administrators and league officials figure out the logistics of making Miami and Virginia Tech full members in just over a year.

North Carolina and Duke, the two schools that were against expansion from the start, are even less happy about an 11-team ACC than a 10-team league.

North Carolina Chancellor James Moeser, for one, still doesn't believe the financial projections made by the league's consultant. Moeser is concerned the ACC may not be able to send each league school as big a payout as it has in the past. Last year, that payout was $9.7 million.

"Our main concern has always been about the numbers projected to us, and the efficacy of those numbers," Moeser said Monday afternoon. "I think they are still arguable. It remains to be seen if an 11-team conference will generate as much revenue as 10- or 12-team conference."

There are certainly relationships in need of repair, inside and outside the league. The ACC is being sued by four of the football-playing schools that remain in the Big East. Those schools -- Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and West Virginia -- seek damages for what they call secret and illegal negotiations in this 18-month process.

"I certainly think we need to do some fence-mending within the conference and with the institutions in the Big East," Moeser said.

What the ACC ends up with is a more powerful league, one that will immediately wield its power to lobby the NCAA to change it rule requiring 12 teams for a potentially lucrative conference football championship game. The ACC is likely to seek a 10-team minimum.

To be sure, that influence will be used on many other matters, from academic reform to a new format for the Bowl Championship Series, the coalition designed to produce a football national champion. The current BCS agreement runs through the 2005 season.

But the ACC is a different animal now, far different from the one that spent the last year remembering its great athletes and achievements of the past five decades.

"We just finished celebrating the 50th-year anniversary of the league," Sendek said. "Now, as we begin the next 50 years, it's obviously going to be a very different landscape."

Virginia stresses positives of Tech
Littlepage likes both I-A schools in same conference
By Dave Johnson
Daily Press

Published July 1, 2003

Of the five Division I-A football schools in North Carolina, four are members of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Tar Heel State, to be sure, is ACC country.

So the University of Virginia, one of the league's charter institutions, is welcoming reinforcement. Virginia Tech's admission to the ACC, along with Miami, ensures that both of the state's I-A programs will be in the same conference starting with the 2004-05 season. And University of Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage says that is a plus.

"The inclusion of Virginia Tech gives us a stronghold in terms of the ACC having a dominant position in intercollegiate athletics," he said Monday afternoon. "If you look at the state of North Carolina, you can see just how significant that sort of situation might be.

"Being in the same league, I think that does send a pretty positive and strong message in terms of the ACC in the state of Virginia. Looking at it from an athletic director's standpoint and maybe a coaching standpoint, in some of our sports it will put an added meaning into the competition between the two schools."

Virginia president John Casteen was unavailable for comment but released a statement:

"This expansion will strengthen the ACC within its existing geographical footprint," he said. "It provides opportunities for significant academic collaborations among member institutions with generally similar programs. It also leaves open the possibility at some future time of another step that we favor - addition of a 12th member."

Casteen, who reportedly was forced by Gov. Mark Warner to vote against any expansion plan that didn't include Virginia Tech, added, "Virginia Tech's inclusion is especially good news for all of us in Virginia."

Warner would not discuss his involvement but was pleased with Monday's result.

"I think there's a lot of value for Tech to be in the ACC - not only the U.Va.-Virginia Tech rivalry, but I think you'll see other regional rivalries develop," he told reporters at the Capitol on Monday afternoon. "I think some of these North Carolina schools will be surprised when they see 30,000 Hokies come into their community on a football weekend. That's going to add an additional economic benefit to those communities."

As for having 11 members, at least for now, Littlepage acknowledges it isn't the ideal number. But he says it's manageable.

"The more natural number would be 12 because you can divide up into two divisions and you qualify for a postseason championship (football) game," he said. "But we'll be able to work through things. The Big Ten has been able to figure this out and have success with it. We'll come up with something that works."

Dave Johnson can be reached at 247-4649 or by e-mail at djohnson@dailypress.com

Littlepage: It's 11 for now

UVa's leaders would prefer to have 12 schools in the ACC, but they are content to play with 11 for the foreseeable future.

By DOUG DOUGHTY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   So, who will the ACC pursue as a 12th team now that Virginia Tech and Miami have accepted invitations?

    Maybe there won't be one.

    "At least as it stands right now, 11 is not the stopping-off point on the way to 12," Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage said Monday.

    Littlepage envisions the ACC looking closely at the model established by the Big Ten, an 11-member conference that has one division.

    "The Big Ten has been successful at it," said Littlepage shortly after it was announced that Miami had rejected an 11th-hour appeal to stay in the Big East. "We'll find a way to make it work."

    One criticism of the Big Ten format is that it failed to determine a clear-cut football champion this past season, when Ohio State did not play Iowa and went to the Fiesta Bowl because it had a higher rating than Iowa.

    UVa president John Casteen said in a prepared statement that he favored the addition of a 12th team and "from my standpoint, 12 is a better number than 11," Littlepage said.

    "It gives you two divisions of six and six, with a football championship game, but you have some of the same problems with 12 that you have with 11."

    No matter the arrangement, the ACC has lost its round-robin football schedules and the double round-robin basketball schedules.

    Casteen refused to support any proposal that did not include Virginia Tech and said the addition of the Hokies "is especially good news for all of us in Virginia."

    Littlepage, no doubt aware that some UVa supporters disagree with Casteen, put a new spin on the past.

    "In the past, you would sometimes hear that the Virginia Tech-Virginia rivalry was more meaningful for Virginia Tech than Virginia," Littlepage said. "For anybody who felt that way, I think this adds to the importance."

    Littlepage expected Miami to accept the ACC's offer "because Miami has seemed to approach this with enthusiasm from the start," he said. Tech athletic director Jim Weaver said he had not spoken to Miami counterpart Paul Dee since the Big East meetings ended May 20.

    "I've learned that nothing is done till it's done," said Weaver, paraphrasing baseball pundit Yogi Berra. "I really wasn't in a position to be surprised [by Miami's decision] because we hadn't talked to anybody.

    "Miami was the institution the ACC wanted from the time it decided to move to strengthen its football. We're just delighted to be involved. We don't have a problem if they go to 12. We don't have a problem if they stay at 11."

    Littlepage said he was not aware of an ACC appeal to have the 12-team requirement for a football playoff to be waived by the NCAA. The earliest that would become an issue is the 2004 season.

    "It's not over," Littlepage said, "but, it's good to have this phase of the process over. We got what we wanted, a prominent role in college football now and in the future."

COMMENTARY ED HARDIN
Time will reveal if it was worth it

By ED HARDIN LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE

   GREENSBORO, N.C. - So was it worth it ... all the angst, all the squabbling, all the hissing and moaning?

    Only time will tell.

    Did the ACC sell its soul? Did Miami? Did Virginia Tech?

    Probably, but souls are overrated when it comes to athletics these days. The important thing is the ACC had a soul once, and now it has two more potential BCS teams in the fold. You do the math.

    This was never about saving lives, and despite what many would have you believe, it was never about religion. This was never that big. Football's not that big, and basketball's not that big. Money, however, is every bit that big when it comes to living and dying in the world of college athletics.

    The ACC will live now. The Big East might, and it might not. The ACC can always get religion and it can always buy back its soul from the flesh-peddlers still out there walking the streets of big-time college athletics.

    The survival of the biggest is not a new idea. It comes from the new book of college athletics, Chapter One, Verse One.

    John Swofford knew this when he put his conference and his reputation out on a thin limb, knowing he might be out there on his own. His conference left him there, and only by plucking Miami out of thin air was he able to scramble back.

    The ACC presidents owe him gratitude and apologies, particularly some of the presidents in North Carolina. They pushed him out there, then refused to support him, then left him to wither as withering insults and judgments flew all around.

    The ACC was almost dragged down by all this. There are those who said its image was tainted, but those are people who assumed the conference was bigger than it ever really was. There are those who say the ACC will not recover from all this, but those are people who privately wanted this to fail.

    Had it failed, the ACC might not have recovered. Had it failed, the league's image might have been tainted. As it turned out, the process was just a bit balky and quite a bit confusing and even a bit dirty, but change is never clean.

    Not when it comes to money and politics and athletics. That three-headed monster had never been seen around here before. We're likely to see it again now that it knows where we live.

    So the ACC was changed by this. The landscape of college athletics was changed by this, and an entire new episode will begin now that the Big East is fighting for its life without its two football factories.

    Conferences die all the time, and sometimes that death is only exaggerated. The ACC itself was formed from the overblown Southern Conference, which lived long enough to provide teams for several leagues before reforming itself and surviving.

    The old Southwest Conference succumbed to its own excesses, and the old Metro Conference imploded and re-emerged as something different and stronger. The Big Eight became the Big 12, and the Big Ten will look to grow to 12 while pretending to still be 10, and the entire conference structure will continue to fight the three-headed monster while pretending it's all about the students and the college experience and the pomp and the circumstance.

    It was never about all that. It was always about winning and losing, and that meant there would always be winners and losers.

    There are those who say the ACC won this recent game, and there are those who will say it lost. You can make an argument for either, depending on who's keeping score. The bottom line is the ACC played one way for 50 years and will play another way for the next 50. There's a saying in college athletics that you either go up or you go down. You never stay the same.

    Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose, and sometimes you put your heart and soul on the line, and sometimes that comes with a price. If the ACC sold its soul, then it got a good price for it.

    Now the league can go about finding its religion again, and us old folks can argue about basketball and football till the sacred cows come home. Miami and Virginia Tech will join the 50-year-old ACC today after a fight that some say took about 50 days to complete but others know took about 50 years.

    Swofford can finally relax and enjoy some pomp without dealing with all the circumstances he went through along the way. Was it worth it all?

    Only time will tell.

Warner: Expansion 'big' for Tech, U.Va.
BY JOHN MARKON
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jul 01, 2003

Reaction to the expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference was decidedly unmixed in the Virginia Governor's office, where Gov. Mark R. Warner called the ACC's addition of Virginia Tech and Miami "a big win" for both the University of Virginia, an ACC member since 1953, and Tech.

Warner was an unexpected participant in the process, having taken a strong stance against any ACC expansion that would have left Tech in a depleted Big East Conference.

"It meets my original goal, to make sure both Virginia schools end up in a major conference," Warner said. "I think there is a lot of value for Tech to be in the ACC . . . not only the U.Va.-Tech rivalry, but other regional rivalries. Some of these North Carolina schools will be surprised when they see 30,000 Hokies coming during football weekends."

Warner also commented on reports and assumptions that his office needed to exert pressure on Virginia President John Casteen to make U.Va.'s pro-expansion vote contingent on membership for Tech.

Warner said he and Casteen were always in agreement on the issue of Tech's inclusion.

"A lot of the credit goes to President Casteen," Warner said. "He argued very eloquently for the Virginia Tech conclusion. I think there were some people in the U.Va. administration who helped fill in the financial pieces, in terms of showing Tech would be a valuable addition."

Asked if financial pressures were applied to Casteen, Warner said: "This was not a hard case to make that this was in the best interest of all Virginia. The [Virginia board of visitors] very strongly supported it."

Casteen didn't entertain questions, but did release a statement expressing his agreement with the ACC decision and calling Virginia Tech's admission "especially good news for the state of Virginia."

Casteen also said he continues to favor eventual expansion of the conference to 12 schools.

Tech's official comment was limited to a statement from University President Charles Steger, who confirmed that the school was delighted to formally accept the ACC invitation and would officially join the league on July 1, 2004.

Steger and Athletic Director Jim Weaver will represent Tech this evening at a press conference near the ACC's offices in Greensboro. ACC Commissioner John Swofford also said he'd attempt to answer questions concerning the league's future at that time.

Big East Conference Commissioner Mike Tranghese, with his football league officially stripped of its two most prominent members, said the Big East wouldn't rush into finding replacements for "two schools that were pretty darned important."

Tranghese said he's been approached by schools interested in joining the Big East, but that "all of them had been shut down."

In reference to Virginia Tech, Tranghese said: "I know they're taking some shots right now . . . but Virginia Tech's been a great member. They weren't out there trying to get out of the conference, I think we all recognize that. They've done everything we could have asked as a member."

Tranghese said the Big East hasn't taken a position on whether or not teams from Miami and Tech would be eligible for conference titles and NCAA playoff bids during the 2003-04 school year. He said his personal preference would be to allow the Hurricanes and Hokies full participation.

Tranghese's conciliatory remarks apparently won't affect the lawsuit currently being brought against Miami and the ACC by the Connecticut Attorney General's office.

"We will continue vigorously to protect the Big East in the courts of Connecticut," said Jeffrey Mishkin, the lead counsel for the four Big East schools on record as plaintiffs. "The ACC's 50th anniversary will now be marked with depositions and document discovery exposing the ACC's predatory conduct and Miami's conspiratorial actions."

 

A superb addition
By FRANK DASCENZO : The Herald-Sun
fdascenzo@heraldsun.com
Jun 30, 2003 : 11:41 pm ET

What's orange and green and white and is moving quicker than anything the ACC has ever seen?

Donna Shalala's eyes. No, wrong color. Warren Sapp's mouth. Well, once upon a time. Gino Torretta's helmet. Could be. Ken Dorsey's jersey. You're getting close. Willis McGahee and Drew Rosenhaus talking on a cell phone to somebody in Buffalo. Much closer.

Money. Well, naturally. And a Miami Hurricanes screen pass . . . beep, completion . . . beep, run, juke, run, juke and -- whoa! -- another touchdown.

The suspense, finally, ended Monday when Miami president Donna Shalala did the smart thing and accepted a bid to become the 11th member of the ACC. Tonight in Greensboro, ACC commissioner John Swofford gets to explain the ordeal that kept Boston College and Syracuse ?? two Big East confidants the Hurricanes badly wanted to take with them ?? out in the cold.

Some like it hot and the ACC's temperature, especially in football, got hotter than ever. Like it, or not, Swofford has plucked the two best football programs out of the Big East and has a hand at a poker table -- where bidding for television rights is a future must -- that can stack up with rivals in the SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten.

Face it, this is a victory for ACC football. But where's that 12th team? Under NCAA rules, to have a championship game a conference needs 12 teams. And while the basketball gods in the ACC might be shaking their heads in disgust -- 11 is one more than many of them wanted and one fewer than Swofford wanted -- the bottom line is the league grew. Some like it. Some don't.

Miami is a superb football addition for the conference. The Canes give the ACC the most entertaining football team in the nation and a baseball team that's not too bad. Remember what a big deal former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan made about getting Florida State into the conference in 1992, adding a state the league hadn't been to and getting its media attention? Now the ACC has two Florida schools, one more than the SEC.

This is about the one most powerful word employed these days in intercollegiate athletics ?? money. Financial benefits for Miami are better in the ACC than they would be in the Big East. Although the Big East, in an 11th-hour effort to keep the Canes, had assured Miami $9 million in annual revenue, the ACC reportedly distributes about $9.7 million annually to each member. That's strong.

The Hurricanes saved themselves a million bucks by announcing their choice Monday. Had they delayed, they'd have had to pay $2 million to leave the Big East.

By the time everyone inhales all the fumes from the six-plus weeks of expansion explosion in the ACC, there will be varied conclusions. The ACC's integrity has been attacked for raiding a Big East Conference and trying to get better in a corporate world full of surprises.

Whether Swofford, and his support team, ever really made a complete analysis on what an ACC could look like with 11 teams -- and Virginia Tech being one of them -- is unknown at the moment. What is obvious is Swofford's aim to improve the image and strength of football.

Miami, 28-0 in the Big East in the last four seasons, will do that. Miami and Virginia Tech, just 7-7 in the Big East over the last two seasons, might not be the original plan but from a football-only perspective, it's as good as Swofford could have imagined.

If there's a 12th team where is it? Notre Dame is the most coveted school by all conferences. But the Irish, with reserved seats in any league they'd like to be in, aren't likely to move from their independent perch that includes an exclusive NBC package for their football games. There's been a suggestion of Louisville, assuming the Cardinals don't bolt Conference USA and head to the Big East.

Now, John Swofford, go and get that 12th team. Get a playoff game. Make six to eight million bucks on it, maybe more.

Miami's decision to accept the invitation to join the ACC made it a good day for a conference knowing that the future is just as important as its proud past.


 

Hostile takeovers may just be starting
PAUL WOODY
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST Jul 01, 2003
Call Paul Woody at (804) 649-6444 or e-mail him at pwoody@timesdispatch.com

The Atlantic Coast Conference has, at long last, placed its "footprint" in South Florida and Southwest Virginia.

With that done, will the ACC be able to pull its collective foot out of its collective mouth with more speed and dexterity than it did in adding Miami and Virginia Tech to its membership rolls?

Probably not.

No one likes anything about the way all this has transpired. And the raiding and realignment of conferences is far from over.

In many ways, this is just the beginning. The question concerning the mysterious 12th member of the ACC will be raised immediately.

Twelve is the magic number needed to hold a conference championship game in football, and that's where the money is.

Who becomes that 12th member?

South Carolina? East Carolina? Boston College or Syracuse (after an appropriate "cooling off" period, of course)? Louisville? Wofford? Davidson? Hampden-Sydney?

Or, will the NCAA make life easy on the ACC by mandating that simply having two divisions of at least five teams each will be enough to conduct a championship game?

There is no reason for the NCAA to do such a favor for the ACC, except for this. The Big Ten, currently with 11 members, would be happy about that as well. And the ACC and Big Ten are fairly powerful players in the NCAA.

The Big East is not going to wave farewell to the Hurricanes and Hokies and then sit idle. At least two schools with major-college football programs will be needed, and the Big East is expected to extend invitations to Louisville and Cincinnati from Conference USA.

Speculation is rampant that Marquette, with no football but with a top-rated basketball program, also will bolt CUSA for the Big East.

If all that happens, effectively raiding Conference USA of its three biggest names, is that significantly different than what the ACC has done to the Big East?

Will, "The ACC made us do it?" be an adequate defense?

Hardly. But that's life in big-time college athletics these days.

And what if you're a member of the Big West, the Mountain West or Mid-America Conference and are on the outside looking in at college football's Bowl Championship Series? Having seen what elected officials did to get Virginia Tech into the ACC, wouldn't that give you ideas?

Wouldn't you be tempted to ask your governors and members of Congress for help in either expanding the BCS membership list or eliminating the BCS altogether?

You don't think Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) would command a bit of attention if he began talking about the abject unfairness of the BCS and that perhaps Congress should take a look at the billion-dollar business of college athletics?

All of this has been a bit of a mess, and there is potential for things to get even messier. Any number of conferences still could disintegrate.

We should thank the ACC and the Big East, though, for putting to rest one of the grandest myths of college athletics today. The idea that Division I-A football and big-time college basketball are even remotely related to amateur athletics should be considered obsolete.

The ACC wants to expand to become richer and more powerful. The Big East tried to keep Miami by offering it a minimum of $9 million per year for the next five years.

The athletes at these schools might want to examine what they get in return for all the money they generate for their universities and conferences.

And the taxpayers in the states where the ACC and Big East teams play might want to consider this. For the past month, in the midst of budget cuts, staff reductions and tuition increases, one of the primary concerns of a number of college presidents has been where their football teams will play in the 2004-05 season.

Isn't that just a few clicks away from having their priorities in order?

 

Four Big East Schools Sue Miami, ACC
By MATT APUZZO : Associated Press Writer
Jul 1, 2003 : 12:24 am ET

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Less than an hour after Miami officially accepted an invitation to join the ACC, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Big East schools would seek to recover not only losses in ticket sales and broadcasting fees, but also the cash value of diminished recruiting power and scarred relationships with donors.

Four Big East football schools are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in a lawsuit against the Atlantic Coast Conference and Miami, Blumenthal said Monday.

"Certainly for the Big East as a whole, the damages could well be in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Blumenthal said.

The lawsuit, filed in Vernon Superior Court, contends that Miami and the ACC participated in a conspiracy to weaken the Big East.

Blumenthal and the other parties in the lawsuit got official word Monday that a motion to speed up the case had been rejected. Blumenthal had asked the judge to order several key players, including Miami president Donna Shalala, to give depositions or sworn testimony as early as Tuesday. Instead, the judge began a two-week vacation.

"We will continue vigorously to protect the Big East in the courts of Connecticut," said Jeffrey Mishkin, the lead counsel for the Big East plaintiffs. "The ACC's 50th anniversary will now be marked with depositions and document discovery exposing the ACC's predatory conduct and Miami's conspiratorial actions."

Steven Errante, the ACC's attorney in New Haven, said Blumenthal's comments mean nothing.

"I can't speak for Miami, but the ACC will never pay a penny," he said.

Errante said Blumenthal's damage estimates are based on speculation and will not hold up in court.

The amount of damages sought in the case will be affected by which teams the Big East invites to replace Miami and Virginia Tech, which last week accepted an invitation to join the ACC, Blumenthal said.

If two high-profile schools with big draws at the ticket office join the Big East, it would be harder for conference lawyers to argue that member schools had suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

The parties will be back in court July 14 to discuss scheduling of the case and to address Miami's motion to dismiss the matter, Blumenthal said.

Virginia Tech, one of the original schools that brought the suit, is not a party to the case, and Blumenthal said he does not believe officials there were part of the alleged conspiracy.

He would not say whether he hopes the lawsuit would result in Miami remaining in the Big East.

Boston College was originally named in the suit but was dropped when the ACC chose not to invite it. Officials there have called the suit a waste of time and money. Blumenthal said nobody was pressuring BC to join the suit.

"I don't think we need to invite them," he said. "They're aware of it."


 

Suddenly, U.Va.’s prez stands tall in Hokie nation
The Virginian-Pilot
© July 1, 2003

Granted, Jim McDonald’s suggestion for what to do to John Casteen, the University of Virginia president who is under fire for greasing Virginia Tech’s path into the ACC, is extreme.

But people as passionate about their school as McDonald is can be that way. In the strongest terms, McDonald insists generations of college students and sports fans need to be reminded just what kind of man Casteen is. They should know exactly what Casteen has done, and the lengths he went to do the unthinkable.

Oh, yes, McDonald says. For his central role in the tumultuous episode that will change college athletics in the commonwealth, Casteen should get exactly what is coming to him.

“Somebody said put a statue of Casteen on campus,’’ says McDonald, a Virginia Tech graduate from Phoenix, Ariz. “Heck, I think they should name Lane Stadium after him.’’

Feel as if you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, where dogs play with cats and Hokies worship Wahoos? It’s been that kind of week.

“I don’t think any Hokie should ever forget what John Casteen did,’’ says McDonald, 48, a public-relations director with a baseball-playing son at Tech. “There is no question that Casteen had to stand resolute for this to happen.’’

Whether by political conscription or personal conviction, Casteen blocked the ACC’s original plan to expand by adding Miami, Boston College and Syracuse from the Big East.

That would have left Virginia Tech right where legions of Cavalier boosters would wish it to be: forever under Virginia’s feet in athletic affiliation, potential and prestige.

The gap would have been clear and decisive. But Casteen, leaned on by Gov. Mark R. Warner and other state officials to protect Virginia Tech’s interests and U.Va.’s public funding, dug in.

Casteen voted for expansion only when Tech was included. It was a strategy that bore fruit late last week when ACC commissioner John Swofford proposed and Tech leapt into his arms.

U.Va. loyalists erupted with a flood of incredulous postings in the town square of the 21st century — the Internet message board. Meanwhile, cyberspace crackled with the delirium of rightfully gracious Hokies who promise to not forget.

McDonald, for instance, e-mailed to confirm a recent supposition in this space: that Hokie animus for U.Va. may never again be so pitched.

“I know Virginia Tech people can be a handful — like, oh my God, not more Hokies — but people affiliated with U.Va. truly seemed to believe they were better,’’ says McDonald, a Lynchburg native who, as a former sports writer, covered Cavalier sports.

“Now, my whole perception has changed. U.Va. can be as pompous as it wants to be and I won’t care. I’ll support U.Va. I wouldn’t hesitate to send my own child there, and I wouldn’t have done that before.’’

That’s because McDonald shares the belief of many Hokies that Casteen went to bat for Tech of his own accord, Warner’s influence notwithstanding. McDonald’s friend, Craig Nesbit of Chicago, is among them.

“If Casteen had wanted to vote 'no’ on Tech, he could’ve found a way to do that,’’ says Nesbit, 48. “I think he genuinely wanted to see Virginia Tech in the ACC. Why would he put himself through all of this criticism from his constituents if he didn’t think it was the right thing to do?’’

It will be proven, Nesbit says, that Casteen saved the Tech-U.Va. relationship from spiraling into “vitriol and nastiness.”

“Casteen’s actions raised this to a congenial kind of rivalry,’’ he says. “I’m never going to forget that.’’

It’s curious down the rabbit hole — and only getting curioser.

 

Mini-expansion doesn't elevate ACC
E-mail Mark Bradley

The ACC had a chance to get really big really fast. Instead it grew incrementally. Rather than extend its base from South Beach to New England, the league still stops just north of Washington. As opposed to morphing into a mega-conference, the ACC has become just a slightly larger version of itself.

Had it added Miami, Boston College and Syracuse, the ACC could have billed itself as the nation's third-best conference. The SEC is No. 1 because the SEC plays the best football -- remember, football counts disproportionately -- and draws the most TV money and is really good in all the other sports besides. The Big Ten is No. 2 because it has tradition and those major Midwestern cities as TV outlets. The identity of No. 3 is a matter of some debate.

The Pac-10 can lay claim to the Western time zone and includes the Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle markets; still, the Pac-10 barely registers east of the Rockies. The Big 12 is huge in Texas but includes a slew of isolated outposts. The annexation of the originally proposed threesome would have bumped the ACC above the Big 12 and positioned it alongside the Pac-10. The arrival of Miami and Virginia Tech leaves the ACC shoulder-to-shoulder with the Big 12 and a notch below the Pac-10. In sum, tied for fourth.

Expanding only by two -- especially with Virginia Tech being one of the two -- was scarcely worth the aggravation. The ACC has been exposed as a conference unprepared to back its vision with the requisite follow-through. The last six weeks have proved what everyone believed all along -- that the conference functions at the pleasure of Durham and Chapel Hill. If you're daring enough to plan a major raid on the Big East but too scared of Mike Krzyzewski and James Moeser to pull it off, you've blown your claim to being a Major Collegiate Player.

And here's the worst part: The objections from Duke and North Carolina hurt the league not just in football but also in basketball, which was supposed to be the commodity the two schools were trying to protect. Having only 11 members means the ACC isn't guaranteed a football championship game, and not adding the 2003 NCAA men's champion means the famed hoops bastion has incorporated two schools that care about basketball the same way Duke cares about football. When you settle for half-measures, you wind up half-baked.

Miami is a prize, just as it seemed when all this began, but the Hurricanes' decision to join shouldn't touch off any celebrations. Miami had no choice. The Big East is never going to thrive as a football league, and after such a publicized flirtation the Hurricanes couldn't have spurned the ACC and then, two years on, nuzzled up to the SEC. The Big East's frenzied blandishments notwithstanding, the ACC offered the best deal Miami was going to get. It just wasn't nearly the deal it seemed six weeks ago.

Virginia Tech barely registered in the national consciousness before Mike Vick ran through Florida State in the Sugar Bowl, and Vick has no eligibility remaining. (His brother Marcus does, but how many once-in-a-generation players is a family apt to produce?) Virginia Tech owes its presence in the ACC not to its status as a sporting citadel but as the lever necessary to make even this watered-down expansion happen. By rights, Virginia Tech should carry an asterisk.

By rights, the whole "goofy process" -- Miami president Donna Shalala's characterization -- should. The ACC sought to make a great leap forward and wound up taking something approximating a baby step. The league was daring enough to try something but not forceful enough to make it happen. The ACC had a chance to reconfigure itself into something that will resonate for the next 50 years, to own the Eastern Seaboard. It succeeded only in reducing a windfall to a molehill. This isn't the nation's new flagship conference. It's merely a light cruiser, same as before.

 

Mike Bianchi
Miami's addition is just punch line to ACC joke
Published July 1, 2003

Thanks, ACC.

Thanks for keeping us entertained.

Thanks for making us laugh.

Thanks for being the biggest bunch of bumbling, buffoonish boobs we've seen in these parts since the Devil Rays last took infield.

What a sad day it is in sports. Regrettably, the ACC (Atlantic Coast Clowns) has finished its pie-in-the-face, slip-on-a-banana-peel slapstick routine better known as conference expansion. In short, it has been the most comedic college carnival act since Bob Minnix's internal investigation at Florida State or the Gators' last attempt at getting off a punt.

In that deathly dismal month of June, the ACC did sports fans a monumental favor.

It gave us something to divert our attention from the drab reality of interleague play, the Grant Hill injury update and which 7-foot Serbian was drafted by the Pistons.

The ACC's punch line came Monday, 11 weeks, many broken promises, a mountain of ill will and a multimillion-dollar lawsuit after it all began. And here's the funniest part of all: This all started with Miami -- along with Boston College and Syracuse -- being bamboozled by the ACC into thinking it was joining a 12-team super league, complete with a lucrative conference championship game, the market cornered on the Northeast TV ratings and millions of extra dollars in the league's treasure chest.

It ends with Miami joining an 11-team league along with . . . Virginia Tech. (What, East Carolina was unavailable?) There is no conference championship game. There is no Northeastern TV presence. There will not be millions of extra dollars in Miami's coffers.

In fact, there are those at UM who fear that the Hurricanes may make less money in the ACC and will be playing in a tougher league. Hmmm. Less money; more competition to get into a major bowl. And this actually is being sold as a good business move by UM and ACC officials?

With no conference championship game, there is no assurance of added revenue. And to think we've always perceived the ACC as a league that prided itself on academics. How, then, can the league brain trust come to the mathematical conclusion that it is better to split up the conference kitty 11 ways instead of nine?

This fiasco affirms everything we've always suspected about big-time college athletics. It is filled with a bunch of back-stabbing (Atlantic Coast Corporation), money-hungry (Miami) liars (Virginia Tech) who care nothing about the good of college sports but only about what's good for their own slice of the Bowl Championship Series pie.

The ACC has cannibalized the Big East, ruined it as a major player in college football. No conference has been so callous in regard to one of its brethren. Say what you will about the Southeastern Conference, but even as cutthroat and money-hungry as that league is, the SEC didn't destroy another league when it expanded in the early 1990s.

And no matter what the Little East says, it no longer is a viable football league and should have its automatic berth to a BCS bowl revoked immediately. If the Little East deserves a BCS bid with such formidable football powers as Boston College, Syracuse, Rutgers and Pittsburgh, then so does Conference USA with Louisville, Southern Miss, East Carolina and TCU.

In a statement, the presidents and chancellors of the six remaining Little East football schools actually had the audacity to say their conference would become "even stronger" now.

"The Big East remains a strong, elite conference," they said.

And in a related news release, the Jacksons, after the defections of Janet and Michael, said, "We remain a talented and marketable entertainment family."

Then again, we shouldn't be surprised at anything that has come out of anybody's mouth during this festival of snakes. Virginia Tech started out suing the ACC for breaking up the Big East and ends up leaving the Big East to join the ACC. From now on, Tech is not the Hokies; it is the Hypocrites. And here's their new battle cry: Hokie, Hokie, Hokie Hi! Waffle, Weasel, Deceive and Lie!

Nobody in this whole sordid mess has any pride or ethics left. Certainly not Virginia Tech and especially not ACC Commissioner John Swofford. When it became clear that he wasn't going to be able to get seven of nine member schools to approve Miami, Boston College and Syracuse, you know what Swofford did? He tried to have the ACC bylaws redone so that only six votes were needed for approval. When that plan failed, he dumped BC and Syracuse like a load of garbage.

"Obviously we haven't distinguished ourselves in how we've gone about this," Duke basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski admitted the other day. "That's sad. We have to be sensitive to our brethren in other conferences. This isn't about big business swooping in and getting another company.

"I hope we mend fences because we've obviously gone into another person's yard with our tractor-trailer and knocked down a few trees."

Thanks, ACC.

Thanks for entertaining us.

Thanks for making us laugh.

Thanks for making us cry.

Thanks a lot.
 

Sweet Sigh of Relief
ACC finally gets sugar from 'Canes after bizarre, convoluted courtship
By Lenox Rawlings
JOURNAL COLUMNIST

Donna Shalala's hair looked windblown, a natural consequence of having two sporting suitors blow wind in her direction for months, and her eyes reflected the relief of the happily hyperactive politician.

Miami's president emerged from the expansion hurricane yesterday afternoon and declared newfound allegiance to the ACC, which she called the AC. The conference's guardians didn't care how many letters Shalala used as long as she avoided writing a rejection letter. The decision ended dire storm warnings from College Park to Tallahassee while nominating the Big East as a candidate for disaster aid.

The ACC exhaled, its reputation still battered but its football fantasies rescued from the cliff. Years ago, the conference started romancing Miami, which eventually added Boston College and Syracuse to the party card. When the formal invitations finally came back, however, the flighty ACC had dumped the requested partners in favor of Virginia Tech, a midnight mystery date sequestered behind Door No. 4.
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ACC Timeline...
May 8, 1953: Seven charter members - Clemson, Duke, Maryland, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina and Wake Forest - draw up the conference by-laws.
June 14, 1953: Bylaws are adopted and the name of the league officially becomes the Atlantic Coast Conference.

December 4, 1953: University of Virginia joins the ACC.

June 30, 1971: University of South Carolina resigns from the ACC.

April 3, 1978: Georgia Tech joins the ACC.

July 1, 1991: The ACC expands to nine schools with the addition of Florida State.

May 16, 2003: The ACC votes to begin negotiations with Miami, Syracuse and Boston College.

June 18, 2003: Sources announce plans to invite Virginia Tech to join the league.

June 25, 2003: Invitations are extended to Miami and Virginia Tech, on June 25, 2003.

Shocked, Miami recoiled and reconsidered the options. ACC leaders, shocked by their own unscripted lurches into the unknown, retreated and gave Miami room to breathe.

And then the bidding resumed, with the Big East promising more than $45 million over five years and the ACC virtually promising to seek a 12th team down the road. No one has disclosed all the gory details yet, but Shalala described the chaotic process.

'Wild,' she said. 'Goofy. Bizarre. Even for those of us that are familiar with higher education. There's a famous political scientist that actually hired me at Columbia who once said, 'The meanest, dirtiest form of politics is the politics of higher education, because the stakes are so low.' And those of us who have spent our career in higher education are well aware that there is a kind of edge to our politics, but this was way beyond even any of our experiences.'

As a former Cabinet secretary, her experiences include standing beside President Clinton during his darkest Monica hours and impeachment. As a former Wisconsin chancellor, her experiences include firing a football coach amid a booster uproar.

She got everything right except the stakes. Because athletics now serves as the front porch and kitchen of college architecture, because university executives bask in sporting spotlights, the stakes reached unprecedented heights.

The new order

Virginia's governor and attorney general leveraged the Virginia Tech candidacy through the University of Virginia's president, John Casteen III. Connecticut's governor and attorney general star as camera-hungry front men for a conspiracy lawsuit against Miami and the ACC. (Boston College, a former defendant, has been excused from explaining its role in a failed conspiracy after slinking back to the Big East.)

From distant corners of the American map, critics rail against the ACC's arrogant power grab and ridicule Virginia Tech's flip-flop. The ACC envisioned a 12-team superconference that would dominate the East Coast and command respect as the country's No. 1 league. When the head count dropped to 10, with Miami undecided, the chest thumping ceased.

Tech, responding to its May rejection, joined the suit against the ACC, and President Charles Steger announced that he wouldn't accept an invitation even if the ACC repackaged the offer. When ACC presidents and chancellors rolled out the Miami-Virginia Tech ticket, Steger's spin doctors suddenly found his comments taken out of context.

Miami's move salvages most of the ACC's objectives, although nothing could fully restore the league's image after such a bold stab for influence and money through TV market shares.

The Hurricanes won the 2001 national title and lost the championship game to Ohio State last season. Virginia Tech played for the championship after the 1999 season, losing to Florida State. Beginning in 1998, the Hokies ranked Nos. 23, 2, 6, 18 and 18 in the final AP poll.

Combined with FSU, which has faded considerably, Miami and Virginia Tech give the ACC three household names before the first official season together (perhaps 2004). With Maryland, N.C. State and Virginia on the rise, the ACC senses a chance to join the upper football tier. The rewards: two possible spots in the Bowl Championship Series (which paid $13 million to each team last season) or two spots in a hypothetical eight-team playoff that could begin once the current TV-BCS contracts expire after the 2005 season.

Shalala and Athletics Director Paul Dee outlined several basic factors behind Miami's decision, including the ACC's stronger lineup of female and nonrevenue sports, the ACC's stability (presumably financial rather than mental), the ACC's academic reputations and the ACC's long-term prospects.

'Well,' Shalala said, 'it wasn't money, because frankly the Big East made us a better financial offer over the next five years.'

Big East blunders

The ACC paid each school $9.7 million last year, but the shares should drop with two new paws raking money off the table under old TV contracts. Miami, a 10-year member of the Big East, got serious about migrating after losing $1.5 million overall during the 2001-02 school year despite the football title.

Shalala also responded to visceral issues. She disliked the ACC's 11th-hour dismissal of BC and Syracuse, schools located in Miami's student recruiting zone. In the end, though, she probably resented the Big East's direct assaults on Miami more. The two major items: the lawsuit, which accuses her of lying to the Big East about Miami's commitment, and Commissioner Mike Tranghese's whining lamentations.

At a press conference, Tranghese put the Big East's viability on Shalala's shoulders, along with a guilt trip. 'If Miami doesn't go, there's not going to be expansion,' Tranghese said. 'So, at the end of the day, President Shalala's going to have to look at the issues that we've talked about ... at the integrity issue, that she's been involved with 13 other presidents, and then she's going to have to factor in the irreparable harm that's going to be caused to the members of my league.'

Tranghese succeeded mainly in alienating Shalala, who burst his bubble and then let him down softly yesterday.

'I have the greatest deal of respect for Mike,' she said. 'I think he lost his cool here, but he is one of the really talented people in collegiate athletics, and I feel bad about what he said and the situation he got himself into.'

Shalala felt so badly that she jumped ship, decimating the football side of the Big East and handing the ACC a face-saving victory, of sorts.