(03-31-2013 09:41 PM)WakeForestRanger Wrote: It took three votes to block expansion. Duke and UNC were against any expansion. So any one school could then join them to block expansion.
Thank you for conceding my point above that everyone was a swing vote, not just Wake Forest.
Quote:Virginia's governor took advantage of the situation and strong armed UVa into using their vote to expand only if VT was included. It had nothing to do with "anti-northern" sentiment.
Virginia was powerless if either Duke or UNC or both came on board. Go back and read the hundreds of articles written back in 2003 and you will find those that made clear that a major part of UNC's objections by then president Moeser was the fact he didn't like expansion into the northeast.
Quote:NC State wanted to take a run at Notre Dame and indicated they would vote against BC. So the ACC pursued that until became clear that Notre Dame would only join as a partial. NC State then removed their block on BC.
They were already making a run at ND. The Irish were approached in March of 2003 and were rebuffed. When the ACC went ahead with the Miami, BC, and SU announcement, ND was approached again at the end of May before the ACC even sent their teams to visit the three Big East targets.
And even as those discussions continued, the ACC was offering a 7 year deal as a partial member with a full commitment to follow. In other words, when the vote came in late June, the ACC already knew ND wasn't going to join fully until at least seven years later.
Do you honestly think the ACC leaders (outside of FSU's Wetherell) were stupid enough to believe the Irish were going to give up independence in football and decide to join a fully southern league right there and then in 2003? Of course not.
Look what it took to get the Irish on board with a 5-game scheduling arrangement. Do you honestly believe that was going to happen without BC, Pitt, and to a lesser extent SU being part of that equation?
Cheers,
Neil