Casteen happy with ACC decision
By Kate Andrews / Daily Progress staff writer
July 12, 2003

SPRING GROVE — The recent decision to expand the Atlantic Coast Conference was “not a pretty process,” but the University of Virginia should be satisfied with the result, President John T. Casteen III told the school’s Board of Visitors on Saturday.
He said the surprise decision to invite Virginia Tech, a move Casteen had long pushed for, was influenced by a report by Leonard W. Sandridge Jr., UVa’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.
After Sandridge’s report to the nine ACC college presidents, “the whole argument against Virginia Tech was gone,” Casteen said.
Even so, he added, “we still need a 12th member.” But the ACC college presidents likely will take their time in inviting one more school, in part because of media criticism.
“There was a tremendous amount of misguided reporting in the newspapers,” Casteen said. “There was all that chatter about greedy presidents and greedy institutions.”
Casteen acknowledged that there were some disputes among the universities, but maintained that reports of acrimony among the presidents were “simply untrue.”
He also lambasted the news media for “a meanness that doesn’t belong in this conversation,” citing a journalist’s characterization of the ACC commissioner as “potbellied John Swofford.”
The University of Miami and Virginia Tech accepted invitations to enter the ACC in, respectively, July and June. Despite being wooed earlier by the conference, Boston College and Syracuse University were shunned.
Casteen added that the University of North Carolina’s and Duke University’s opposition to expansion stemmed not from the universities’ presidents but from faculty and other employees. “They’ve simply got some cultural issues to work out.”
Board members cheered Casteen’s and Sandridge’s work.
“This was a very stressful experience for you, and you are to be commended for your effort,” said Rector Gordon F. Rainey Jr., who called the expansion negotiations a “psychodrama.”
Member Don R. Pippin thanked Sandridge, joking that “you may get a parking lot named after you in Blacksburg.”
In a wide-ranging discussion of faculty compensation, the board asked Casteen and Sandridge to present a report at the October board meeting on competitive packages.
Although some board members expressed doubt that faculty members were in dire financial straits, Casteen said there is “bitterness” stemming from the devaluation of faculty members’ annuities, which account for much of their retirement money.
In addition to stocks’ decline in the past two years, the state decreased the amount of salary faculty members could pay into their annuities because the yield was higher than expected, Casteen said. “They feel like they’ve been cheated twice.”
But board member William H. Goodwin Jr. noted that at many companies, an employee who contributes 8 percent or 9 percent of his income for 20 years can receive an amount equal to his salary for 20 years after retirement.
Because UVa faculty members’ 10.4 percent contribution yields only 40 percent to 45 percent of their previous salary, Goodwin said, “somebody’s not investing money wisely.”
The board agreed that it must focus only on faculty members who receive little or no “soft money,” such as research grants. Also to be left out of the study are faculty members at the law school and Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, which receive less state money.
Few votes were taken at the two-day retreat at the Upper Brandon plantation in rural Prince George County, but the board members tapped Barton Myers Associates Inc. of Los Angeles to design the forthcoming $47 million performing arts center.
A Norfolk native, Myers was briefly a lecturer at UVa’s architecture school and specializes in performance halls. His firm has a team of experts in acoustics, one of the reasons the board was attracted by Myers’ bid, spokeswoman Carol Wood said.
In other business, it’s back to the drawing board for the diversity committee’s mission statement. Wood said she expects a final draft to be completed by next week.


 

New math complicates ACC hoops schedule

7-11-03

By LARRY KEECH, Staff Writer
News & Record

GREENSBORO -- The ACC's recent expansion from nine to 11 members confronted the league's coaches and fans with a lesson in basic arithmetic: 11 into 16 won't go.

The inclusion of Miami and Virginia Tech turned the traditional home-and-home round robin basketball schedule into a dinosaur. Now it's up to ACC coaches, athletics directors and associate commissioner Fred Barakat to devise a reasonable alternative.

Barakat already has devised two prospective models of 11-team, 16-game schedules, one of which is likely to be adopted by ACC athletics directors in the coming weeks to debut when the two new members begin competing in the 2004-05 season.

"I was a great fan of the double round robin," said Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser. "It was one reason why I came to Wake (from Xavier) two years ago. The new schedule might be less than ideal. But it's coming, so let's play it."

In Barakat's two scheduling models, each ACC team is paired with "permanent partners" it would play on a home-and-home basis every year. Model A proposes two permanent partners; Model B proposes four.

Under Model A, the four ACC teams in North Carolina could not play home-and-home series' against all three of the others every year. Discounting the two permanent partners, each team would play four of the remaining eight teams twice and four once each year. The groups of four would rotate every year.

Under Model B, each team would play its four permanent partners plus two other home-and-home series every year. The two home-and-home teams would be grouped with the other four in a three-year rotation.

Model A insures every team will play every other team at least three times in two seasons. Model B insures every team will play every league opponent at least four times in three seasons.

Resigned to losing the home-and-home round robin, most ACC coaches and other schedule-makers are trying to focus on the benefits of the new formats. All covet the scheduling flexibility they derive from limiting conference games to 16.

Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt looks forward to the end of a schedule which he perceived as a factor in the long-time domination of the league by the four teams in North Carolina.

"All the programs in North Carolina are used to playing three road games every season after which they can still get a good night's sleep in their own beds," Hewitt said. "I'm all for anything that will equalize the travel burdens and perhaps level the playing field a little bit more."

Most coaches subscribe to the establishment of permanent partners as a means of preserving existing rivalries. The permanent partners plan represents a departure from the Big Ten Conference's 11-team schedule that places all opponents in an equal rotation. Two Big Ten in-state rivals, Indiana and Purdue, played a non-conference game against each other during the past season.

"I'd love to see the Big Four stay together, but the new schedule isn't going to be what everybody finds most comfortable," Prosser said. "Everybody has to give a little."

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's perennially strong team figures to be one of the most coveted permanent partners, partly because most Duke games are attractive to TV networks.

North Carolina, N.C. State, Wake Forest, Maryland and Virginia all would welcome permanent partnerships with Duke. No more than four of those five and perhaps as few as two can be accommodated.

"The challenge (of a new ACC scheduling format) will be to assign compatible partners," said Mike Cragg, Duke's assistant AD who assists Krzyzewski in assembling the Blue Devils' schedules.

"We'd certainly want to protect our rivalries, or at least our rivalry (North Carolina). So the four-partner plan might work better from our standpoint."

Two new ACC coaches, Clemson's Oliver Purnell and Seth Greenberg of Virginia Tech, were quick to cite the advantages posed by a new conference alignment.

"When I was on the outside looking in, I didn't think the ACC was getting credit in NCAA tournament selections for the Murderer's Row they had to go through every year," Purnell said. "It seemed like there was almost an anti-ACC bias.

"Preserving the rivalries was my biggest concern about losing the round robin. My preferences for partners probably would be based on geography. Georgia Tech is just down the road, and our football rivalry with Florida State could spill over to basketball."

Greenberg, like most of his colleagues at Virginia Tech, is glad his program now is in a conference that his more compatible geographically.

"We're now in a conference where we belong," Greenberg said. "I talked to two former Tech coaches, Bill Foster and Charlie Moir. Both said we have to recruit the two-state Virginia-North Carolina area to be successful. ACC membership will give us a higher profile nearby as well as outside the area."

Larry Gallo, a senior associate AD who's involved with basketball scheduling, expressed confidence in Barakat's ability to formulate an 11-team schedule with minimal difficulty.

"If anybody can make this thing work, Fred can," Gallo said. "He'll be pulled a lot of different ways, but he's a consummate juggler, a master of the television package, and you can be sure he's done his homework."

Random thoughts from wide world of sports and beyond
VIC DORR JR.
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST Jul 13, 2003

Isn't it fair to characterize the Atlantic Coast Conference's expansion effort - even though it appears to have turned out well for Virginia Tech - as the most comically clumsy burglary attempt since Watergate?
Don't our elected officials - the governor of Virginia and the attorneys general of Virginia, Connecticut and Florida among them - have more important things to worry about than the makeup of this or that college sports conference? Like, say, public safety, education and the out-of-control cost of health care?
Does anyone know - or care - that Virginia Tech instructors and students in the agricultural sciences harvested more than $68.6 million in research and development funding in 2001 (a figure that ranked No. 9 in the nation)? Does anyone not know that Tech is in the process of changing its conference address?
Authentic English accents are music to the ear. But isn't the guy who flaunts his sophistication by saying "Jag-ewe-ahhh" on those automobile commercials on radio carrying it a bit too far?
What was U.Va.'s football program thinking when it scheduled Troy State - Troy State! - as this season's homecoming opponent? That paying customers would perhaps confuse Troy State with Southern Cal's Men of Troy?
Why is the "ching" created by the collision of an aluminum bat with a pitched baseball such an enormously unappealing sound?
Has anyone ever vanished from the spotlight faster than Mark McGwire?
Are there two sets of Dixie Chicks? Or are the entertainers who were so dismayed by U.S. preparations for a war with Saddam Hussein the same individuals who recorded "Goodbye Earl" - a song that pays homage to two women who plan, carry out and conceal the murder of an abusive spouse/boyfriend?
Now that a collective bargaining agreement has been reached and a strike averted, shouldn't the next priority of the WNBA Players Association be to find a remedy for those all-too-frequent (and oh-so-gruesome) games in which neither team scores in the 60s?
By fortnight's end, doesn't Centre Court at Wimbledon look more like the scuffed and tattered earth beneath a schoolyard swing set and less like the most hallowed patch of ground in all of tennis?
When and how did the word "take," a perfectly good verb, become synonymous with "opinion," a perfectly good noun, in sports conversation? As in: "Here's my take on ACC expansion."
And speaking of Wimbledon - why do so many people insist in pronouncing the name of the tournament with a "t"? As in: "I watched the Wimbleton final on TV yesterday."
Does Martha Burk understand that her Augusta National-related bluster created, in essence, a paradise for male golf fans: Masters telecasts that were all but commercial-free?
Didn't Dick Vitale seem to be presenting an unintentional parody of Dick Vitale during ESPN's 2002-03 men's basketball telecasts?
Which is more seriously flawed? Mike Price's judgment? Or his taste?
Does any athlete anywhere embody the concept of elegance more completely than LPGA golfer Grace Park?
Did Virginia Commonwealth University fans realize at the time exactly how good they had it in 1985? That season's men's basketball staff included, in addition to head coach J.D. Barnett, these assistants: Tubby Smith (subsequent head coach at Tulsa and Georgia; current head coach at Kentucky), Dave Hobbs (subsequent head coach at Alabama; current assistant coach at Kentucky), Kevin Eastman (subsequent head coach at UNC Wilmington and Washington State and athletic director at Randolph-Macon; current instructional guru for Nike) and Ron Jirsa (subsequent head coach at Georgia; current head coach at Marshall).
How far (and how fast) would our nation's collective IQ climb if the concept of reality television was declared unconstitutional tomorrow?
Doesn't this seem an appropriate moment to bow our heads and silently mourn the disappearance of ethics, dignity and honor from major college athletics?

Hearn: Survival requires additions
"When I became aware of how much the landscape was changing and had been changing, it was hard to resist" expansion, Wake Forest President Thomas Hearn says.

By DOUG DOUGHTY
THE ROANOKE TIMES

As he reflected on the changing composition of the ACC Presidents' Council, 20-year Wake Forest President Thomas Hearn speculated that he might have been the only person to cast a vote in each of the ACC's past two expansions.
Upon closer examination, it seems that current Virginia president John Casteen had been on the job for one month when the ACC voted Sept.13, 1990, to extend an invitation to Florida State, but Hearn's seniority is not to be questioned.

"I did vote for Florida State," said Hearn in a phone interview Thursday. "If John was around for that vote, I would think he was the only other one of the current group."

That was the last time the ACC expanded before July 2, when Miami and Virginia Tech were introduced as the ACC's 10th and 11th members.

Hearn was one of seven ACC presidents who voted for the Hurricanes and Hokies, just as he had supported virtually every other expansion scenario. He voted for Miami by itself; in an earlier vote, he voted for Tech by itself, and he also voted for the three-team package of Miami, Tech and Boston College.

"I would say, at the beginning of the process two years ago, that I would have been in the 'You have to show me' category," Hearn said. "When I became aware of how much the landscape was changing and had been changing, it was hard to resist.

"What I mainly didn't want to see was a time when the ACC would wake up and some of its members would be prize targets of other conferences. In 10 years, we didn't want to have strong and expansionist rivals all around us, without desirable merger partners.

"The question was not 'If,' but 'When?'"

As evidence of the changing landscape, Hearn pointed to an expansion movement that started when the old Pac-8 Conference added Arizona and Arizona State and included restructuring of the Southeastern Conference, Big 8 and Big Ten, which became 11 with the addition of Penn State.

"A great many people believe the time will come when Notre Dame will join that conference," Hearn said.

The Irish also have been mentioned as an ACC target.

"All I know is where Notre Dame is situated geographically," Hearn said. "I think we're ready to take a break and let things settle down. I would be surprised if there would be an immediate move to try and find another merger partner."

It took five teleconferences, spanning an estimated 13 1/2 hours, to come up with an arrangement that had not been discussed until the final call June 24. Even commissioner John Swofford has talked about the disadvantages of not meeting face-to-face.

"I believe it would have been preferable for these meetings to occur in person," Hearn said. "I think we could have read each other's body language and eliminated any possible misunderstanding.

"That may be something we will want to address. Now that we've got 11 members, we'll have to change our by-laws in a number of ways. We should think carefully about what our process is. On the telephone, there's so much you can't get."

The decision to add two schools was met with disbelief among conference and school officials who were not on the call. An 11-team configuration involving Miami and Tech had not even been a topic of speculation.

"We talked about everything all the way up to - and including - 14," Hearn said. "I was not surprised by the outcome, but I wouldn't have predicted it. I don't think anybody could have anticipated what was going to happen.

"Our process did not unfold according to what our expectations were. When you're in this sort of procedural limbo, you can expect to be criticized for it."

Much has been made of the pressure exerted on Casteen by Virginia politicians, but Casteen's support of Virginia Tech was no secret to the ACC's inner circle.

"That is correct," Hearn said. "This goes way back, not even as part of this process. Somebody told me, in jest, that they were going to build a monument to John Casteen on the Virginia Tech campus. But, John was very candid about where his views were and what he hoped to come out of this process."

Not as well-documented has been the relationship between Wake Forest and Virginia Tech, former Southern Conference colleagues who are separated by 125 miles and have joined forces in the School of Biomedical Engineering & Sciences. Classes will be taught on both campuses.

"We don't have engineering; they don't have medicine," Hearn said, "so, it was a perfect marriage. One of the leaders of the biomedical school came to see me recently to say we would need a full-time person to coordinate our academic relationships with Virginia Tech."

Hearn said his sense is that "once this war is done, it's over," and that the ACC will be able to repair its image fairly quickly. He credited basketball commentator and Wake alumnus Billy Packer for enunciating an opinion they share.

"He said, 'Look, this is where the world is going,'" Hearn said. "We're so parochial. Everybody down here in North Carolina is worrying about 'What's going to happen to our basketball?' It's as if the ACC exists for us, which it does not.

"We have to look at these things from a global point of view and recognize that what is good for the ACC as a common enterprise is going to be good for our institutions, even if changes have to be made in our competitive alliances. That's a view that John Q. Fan does not want to tolerate."

 

 
Tulane stirring wave of protest against BCS
Published July 13, 2003
Mike Bianchi

Finally, there is someone who has had enough and is willing to do something about it.

He's heard the Bogus Cartel Syndicate (BCS) emitting that sickening sucking sound and vacuuming every crumb of bowl and television revenue from college football. He's seen his school finish unbeaten and never even get a whiff of a major bowl bid. And, most recently, he watched as his athletic program nearly shut down because the BCS boys are devouring the little schools and regurgitating any notion of a fair and equitable system.

"The Bowl Championship Series has to be terminated," said Tulane University President Scott Cowen in a telephone interview earlier this week. "It's deplorable how we have let this system go on as long as we have."

I love this man.

In fact, there are a growing number of people in college sports who love this man. Cowen has written an op-ed column in the New York Times calling for the destruction of the BCS. He's written a letter to BCS presidents protesting the system. He has organized a teleconference of the non-BCS presidents for July 22, and the response has been resounding.

"I'd thought I'd get about 10 presidents on the teleconference," Cowen said excitedly. "We're up to 35 and counting."

And why not? You know what they say: When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.

"Every sport in the NCAA except football is built on the idea of inclusion," says UCF Athletic Director Steve Orsini, whose boss, President John Hitt, will participate in Cowen's teleconference. "Football has been exclusionary. I think all anybody wants here is a fair shot."

And a fair share. Which is exactly what the BCS boys don't want. We've heard for years that the reason there isn't a college football playoff is because college presidents are concerned about "academics." This, of course, is the biggest running joke in intercollegiate athletics since Beano Cook. These are the same presidents whose football and basketball teams are filled up with players whose heads are so empty you can hear the ocean if you stand near them.

Everybody knows why the big schools don't want a playoff: Because they want all the excitement and exposure, all the TV and bowl money for themselves. Why would they want a new system that is fair and equitable when they have total control of the old corrupt, crooked one?

Since the six major conferences (Southeastern, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Pac-10, Big 12 and Big East) plus Notre Dame formed the BCS in 1998, not a single school outside those leagues ever has advanced into one of the four lucrative BCS bowls (Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar).

According to the latest figures, the BCS generated $114 million last year, and nearly $110 million of that went to the 63 BCS schools. Even a Mississippi State football player can do the math on this one and tell you that the 53 non-BCS schools were left with nothing but floor sweepings and Motor City Bowl refrigerator magnets.

As a result, Tulane, UCF and other non-BCS schools are stuck in a perpetual state of poverty. After all, isn't the BCS in the business of keeping the little man down? Five years ago, Tulane finished 11-0 and never even had a chance at playing in a BCS bowl. Instead of a $10 million payout, the Green Wave received a paltry $750,000 for playing in the Liberty Bowl.

"That was my first year as president," Cowen remembers. "If I had known then what I know now, I would have filed a lawsuit against the BCS."

It's no wonder Tulane's athletic program lost $7 million last year and the university board strongly considered disbanding the program a few weeks ago. Fortunately, board members decided Tulane, which has one of the highest graduation rates in all of Division I-A (82 percent), has a program worth saving.

The most troubling part about this issue is that the BCS schools don't care about the good of the sport or the mission of the university. They only care about gorging themselves on more and more money so they can afford bigger stadiums, ritzier sky boxes and better tutors. They've become so gluttonous that they're even cannibalizing themselves, evidenced by the Atlantic Coast Conference's raid on the Big East last month.

"I'm hoping we can effect some positive change short of going to court," Cowen says, "but I don't think there's any question that the BCS is an illegal cartel, and there are some legitimate antitrust issues here."

It's about time somebody stood up to these corporate huns who are systematically killing off the soul and mission of college football. Buried deep inside their BCS war chests, underneath the bowl bullion, are the carcasses of education and equity.

"Yes, I've heard from a third party that some of the BCS presidents wish I would lower the decibel level," Cowen says. "They're saying things like, 'Would you tell Scott to turn down the volume?' Well, let me tell you something: I have no intention of turning down the volume."

That's right.

Turn it up, Scotty.

Turn it up to 10, and let that sucker blast.