(10-09-2013 04:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  No doubt, 2 of the better ACC additions were Va Tech and later Louisville.

The author refers to some of the actions in the past as back-stabbing. I lived through all of this, and honestly I never felt "betrayed". Frustrated, yes! I kept wondering "what does VT have to do to get invited to join the ACC?" (the league I always wanted the Hokies to join). The fact that we were voted out of the Metro... meh. By then it was only a shadow of its former self anyway.

Metro football could have been:

Cincinnati
Florida State
Georgia Tech
Louisville
Memphis
South Carolina
South Florida
Southern Miss
Tulane
Virginia Tech

(10-08-2013 06:56 PM)omniorange Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 11:46 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 10:59 AM)omniorange Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 10:06 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  Wow, that is spectacular. What a fantastic read, thanks for that. I can't believe in all the reading I've done about expansion, I never came across that. I'd read a lot of the sources, but never that piece.

And right on with this:

"The one thing about the whole ACC expansion process that makes me shiver like I’m walking past a graveyard is how ignorant the ACC presidents appeared to be of Virginia Tech, dismissing the Hokies early in the process without knowing much about VT’s athletic finances, academic support, and fan support. With the exception of John Casteen, the ACC presidents were quick to dismiss the Hokies in favor of BC and Syracuse early in the process, without doing their homework. Why? Because Shalala gave those terms to the ACC athletic directors and John Swofford, and they passed them on to the presidents. It’s a good thing for Virginia Tech that Casteen forced the ACC presidents into taking a closer look at VT."

The ACC has made a lot of dumb moves over the years, which I could easily list. But the biggest mistake of all was one that they were saved from despite themselves.

I keep telling myself that this is a new ACC that finally "gets it." I think the moves of the last couple years strongly support that view. But I shudder to think if that hadn't broken the way it did and they didn't add VT.

To this day, many still do not understand what was truly happening back in 2003. It wasn't that the ACC wasn't aware of VT's football prowess, it was assumed that they were always going to be there for the taking if needed.

And of course, BC and SU were not going to give the ACC what they claimed either, the conference of the entire East Coast. Which is why it made no sense to the everyday sports fan when Swofford used that to justify the expansion.

Just as in 2010, the BiG's real targets were ND, Texas, and either A&M or Nebraska, the ACC's endgame was Miami, ND, and quite possibly PSU (remember the BTN wasn't a factor back then), but definitely they wanted BOTH Miami and ND.

But unlike the egotistical Delany who truly believed he could get three of their four targets above thanks to the BTN (but had to settle for only Nebraska), Swofford knew the ACC had no chance of getting all three of Miami, ND, and PSU right then and there. The ACC needed to do it in increments. Miami had already said they wanted both BC and SU. The thinking was ND would want Pitt and BC while PSU would want any two of BC, SU, and Pitt.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2003 expansion and that was ND was showing interest immediately, at least in terms of a partial football membership. And swelled heads like Fox at NC State, Wetherell at FSU, and the Virginia president whose name escapes me for the moment thought they had both Miami (they couldn't go back to the Big East after the stink the jilted BE football schools put up) and ND (believing the Irish had no place to go with the BE falling apart) so they overruled Swofford and told him to secure Miami (which required VT, something the presidents at FSU, GT, and Clemson knew and were probably "in" on it with UVa) and then aggressively pursue ND.

The result was ND couldn't bring themselves to be even a partial with an exclusively southern conference away from their core strength - the Northeast. And even though VT provided way more in terms of football than either SU or BC would have, the truth is the TV money was basically a wash and ACC football still took a dive mostly due to Miami and FSU both taking steps backward.

So no need to "shudder". Swofford knows the prize and has managed to go about trying to secure it in the only way it can be secured (if it can ever be secured), in increments.

Cheers,
Neil

Even if that is 100% true, and I don't agree that it is (we had a pretty good source on that while it was going on) it was still almost a massive mistake.

One, it turns out that it was Syracuse that was available all along, and I think we can safely say BC would have been as well.

Sure both SU and BC would have been available as well. But what NOT taking SU turned out to be was keeping the Big East and a safe haven option for ND alive. It also could have led to ND, SU, Pitt, and MD joining the BiG in 2010 along with Nebraska. Again, Delaney's ego of wanting RU before either SU or Pitt cost him any shot he had at ND and longshot wise could have potentially also cost the league PSU.

Quote:However, does anyone thing VT would have remained outside the clutches of the SEC all these years? Maybe that's the way it looked in 2004 to Swofford, but it was absurdly wrong.

It was all over by 2004. The decisions were made in 2002 and acted upon in 2003. And yes, VT would have been an attractive eastern option for the SEC when A&M became available in 2011.

But, would the ACC have cared if they had already pulled off Miami and ND (not to mention the unthinkable, getting PSU as well)? That was the thinking. Not saying it was right or wrong for the conference overall. Just stating where the vision was heading.

Quote:And it's not like hindsight is 20/20, many of us at the time felt that what the ACC desparately needed was football success and high profile matchups, and not some 30 year plan to maybe, sorta, if things go right, some day have some kind of sweet relationship with Notre Dame.

And football fans of these institutions should think like that. But none of that changes the fact that having VT did not make the ACC a viable football conference and it certainly didn't it make it a stable one. They simply were not either with both FSU and Miami down. They struggled to look better than the Big East during that time frame.

What has the ACC looking good again in football now is the fact that the 4 best football programs in the league are all doing well this year so far.

But what made the ACC a stable, viable conference again that wasn't in danger of being pulled apart were the additions of SU and Pitt which led to getting ND as a partial member. And that all happened before the ACC doing well in football came about.

That's the reality of it. Plain and simple.

None of what I have said is meant to be a knock on VT and it certainly isn't meant to make SU look like a better pick one on one in comparison with the Hokies. It's said to bring the big picture view to the table that sometimes the one-o-one comparisons just can't.

Cheers,
Neil

Ok, if you are telling me there was a grand plan, and the ACC wasn't just willy nilly choosing expansion candidates by throwing darts at a wall, I'll concede that. No problem.

What I'm saying is, for lack of a better way to put it, that plan was stupid. Looks stupid now, and to a lot of people, looked stupid then.

It was extremely apparent by 2003 that the balance of football was moving south, that the athletes were in the south, and the attention was in the south.

It was apparent that college football was growing by leaps and bounds, networks were getting into it in a big way, and that the NCAA tournament had massively devalued the rest of college basketball.

The idea of landing Notre Dame and Penn State was, I'm sorry, a pipe dream, and has only played out that way. Nobody could possibly rationally claim that if the ACC had taken Syracuse they would have gotten Penn State to leave the Big 10.

Maybe the ACC did have a grand plan, but that plan was clearly, demonstably out of touch with the realities of college sports in 2003. Just like so many of the moves the ACC was making until about two years ago, from which point I think they have been VERY on target.

Maybe in 1993 or 1983 that plan would have seemed practical.

There are decisions that turn out to be wrong, but given the set of circumstances at the time they were made, are defensible and make sense. FSU choosing the ACC over the SEC is like this. You can say now it is dumb if you want, and at times I have, but at the time you could absolutely make a case for it, however it worked out.

But trying to exclude VT in 2003 is absolutely not one of them. That was a bad, bad plan. I don't see how you can say that taking VT and leaving Syracuse kept Big East stable and prevented the ACC from being stable. It proved out which one survived and which one didn't.

The scenario that you describe where we take Syracuse, which pulls Penn State into the ACC, and then ND into the ACC, was pure foolishness if that's what the ACC had in mind.

The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed Eastern football power.

IMO, the ACC can still be a contender, but it won't dominate like it might have done.

(10-09-2013 09:30 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed Eastern football power.

IMO, the ACC can still be a contender, but it won't dominate like it might have done.

I agree with that. They got caught sleeping by that, as did everyone. It's tough to blame them, so I don't know it's a negative, but it isn't a positive as far as being forward thinking.

That said, I've read enough to know that Penn State decision makers had a hard on for the B1G anyway, so it might not have made a difference, but they could have taken a shot.

Would have been an interesting conference. I wonder if the connection to the South if made twenty years earlier would have prevented the extreme withering of Northeastern college football.

(10-08-2013 04:35 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 01:41 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 01:12 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  Swapping VT for SU is easy to arm chair quarterback today because of what happened to Syracuse's football program, but it also probably saved the Big East as a viable entity with a BCS bid.

I think Virginia Tech being in the Big East instead of Syracuse would have kept it too.

I don't think VT had the political clout in the Big East to hold the conference together, whereas the axis of SU-Pitt-WVU did. SU (and ND) were the bridge to the basketball-only schools. Without SU, I believe it would have split along football-basketball lines, which it came within a hair of doing anyway. Why is that important? Administratively, the football schools would have had to form a new NCAA conference, with a new office, a new name, and a new commissioner. Hard to know what happens then. Does the new football conference have a auto BCS bid given to them? Maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't count on it.

You realize that is exactly what has happened now, right, and we have the answer? They kept the bid. I seems to me that from 2003-12, both conferences would have been better during that time period if the ACC had taken Syracuse, which may have lead to what you described, and likely resulted in the ACC having secured a relationship with ND long before and completely removed it from the chopping block. Meanwhile had the Big East retained Virginia Tech, which combined with West Virginia, and sporadic years of success with Louisville and Cincinnati may have saved the BE from it's ultimate fate of being perceived as mediocre and never moving past that despite its success.

Do you know what's funny about this scenario though? Had that happened, and conference armeggedon still lurched like it did, I'd bet that West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Louisville, and Cincinnati would have sold itself as a block to the ACC or Big 12. Maybe even the SEC.

(10-09-2013 04:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The fact that we were voted out of the Metro... meh. By then it was only a shadow of its former self anyway.

On top of that, and granted we were no saints then, I was always under the impression that Virginia Tech was voted out, or not invited to join and procedurally handled as such, because they were never going to leave BE football, and many felt they would be joining the BE very soon anyway, and no one wanted to have a founding member having one foot out of the door. Some of us (fans) actually wondered if that would happen to us (And Rutgers) this year with the whole AAC being a new conference deal, and not wanting either of the two preseason conference favorites (UofL and Rutgers) to walk away with the last guaranteed BCS appearance. I do wonder if not for TV obligations (And those pending NCAA credits) who knows it if we would have done.

(10-09-2013 09:30 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed

The scenario of cowtowing to someone else doesn't sit well with any established conference. The only one that I have observed doing that was the Big Eight/SWC merger. And we see how long that lasted in harmony. It is easy to say "well they should have done whatever PSU wanted," but in reality no established brand, or one who thinks they are established, will put up with that. Notice how many teams the Big Ten added to make PSU happy when they joined? Zero. How many the ACC added when Florida State came aboard? Even when Notre Dame joined partially, they did not bring anyone with them, much less four other teams.

(10-09-2013 08:40 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 06:56 PM)omniorange Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 11:46 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 10:59 AM)omniorange Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 10:06 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  Wow, that is spectacular. What a fantastic read, thanks for that. I can't believe in all the reading I've done about expansion, I never came across that. I'd read a lot of the sources, but never that piece.

And right on with this:

"The one thing about the whole ACC expansion process that makes me shiver like I’m walking past a graveyard is how ignorant the ACC presidents appeared to be of Virginia Tech, dismissing the Hokies early in the process without knowing much about VT’s athletic finances, academic support, and fan support. With the exception of John Casteen, the ACC presidents were quick to dismiss the Hokies in favor of BC and Syracuse early in the process, without doing their homework. Why? Because Shalala gave those terms to the ACC athletic directors and John Swofford, and they passed them on to the presidents. It’s a good thing for Virginia Tech that Casteen forced the ACC presidents into taking a closer look at VT."

The ACC has made a lot of dumb moves over the years, which I could easily list. But the biggest mistake of all was one that they were saved from despite themselves.

I keep telling myself that this is a new ACC that finally "gets it." I think the moves of the last couple years strongly support that view. But I shudder to think if that hadn't broken the way it did and they didn't add VT.

To this day, many still do not understand what was truly happening back in 2003. It wasn't that the ACC wasn't aware of VT's football prowess, it was assumed that they were always going to be there for the taking if needed.

And of course, BC and SU were not going to give the ACC what they claimed either, the conference of the entire East Coast. Which is why it made no sense to the everyday sports fan when Swofford used that to justify the expansion.

Just as in 2010, the BiG's real targets were ND, Texas, and either A&M or Nebraska, the ACC's endgame was Miami, ND, and quite possibly PSU (remember the BTN wasn't a factor back then), but definitely they wanted BOTH Miami and ND.

But unlike the egotistical Delany who truly believed he could get three of their four targets above thanks to the BTN (but had to settle for only Nebraska), Swofford knew the ACC had no chance of getting all three of Miami, ND, and PSU right then and there. The ACC needed to do it in increments. Miami had already said they wanted both BC and SU. The thinking was ND would want Pitt and BC while PSU would want any two of BC, SU, and Pitt.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2003 expansion and that was ND was showing interest immediately, at least in terms of a partial football membership. And swelled heads like Fox at NC State, Wetherell at FSU, and the Virginia president whose name escapes me for the moment thought they had both Miami (they couldn't go back to the Big East after the stink the jilted BE football schools put up) and ND (believing the Irish had no place to go with the BE falling apart) so they overruled Swofford and told him to secure Miami (which required VT, something the presidents at FSU, GT, and Clemson knew and were probably "in" on it with UVa) and then aggressively pursue ND.

The result was ND couldn't bring themselves to be even a partial with an exclusively southern conference away from their core strength - the Northeast. And even though VT provided way more in terms of football than either SU or BC would have, the truth is the TV money was basically a wash and ACC football still took a dive mostly due to Miami and FSU both taking steps backward.

So no need to "shudder". Swofford knows the prize and has managed to go about trying to secure it in the only way it can be secured (if it can ever be secured), in increments.

Cheers,
Neil

Even if that is 100% true, and I don't agree that it is (we had a pretty good source on that while it was going on) it was still almost a massive mistake.

One, it turns out that it was Syracuse that was available all along, and I think we can safely say BC would have been as well.

Sure both SU and BC would have been available as well. But what NOT taking SU turned out to be was keeping the Big East and a safe haven option for ND alive. It also could have led to ND, SU, Pitt, and MD joining the BiG in 2010 along with Nebraska. Again, Delaney's ego of wanting RU before either SU or Pitt cost him any shot he had at ND and longshot wise could have potentially also cost the league PSU.

Quote:However, does anyone thing VT would have remained outside the clutches of the SEC all these years? Maybe that's the way it looked in 2004 to Swofford, but it was absurdly wrong.

It was all over by 2004. The decisions were made in 2002 and acted upon in 2003. And yes, VT would have been an attractive eastern option for the SEC when A&M became available in 2011.

But, would the ACC have cared if they had already pulled off Miami and ND (not to mention the unthinkable, getting PSU as well)? That was the thinking. Not saying it was right or wrong for the conference overall. Just stating where the vision was heading.

Quote:And it's not like hindsight is 20/20, many of us at the time felt that what the ACC desparately needed was football success and high profile matchups, and not some 30 year plan to maybe, sorta, if things go right, some day have some kind of sweet relationship with Notre Dame.

And football fans of these institutions should think like that. But none of that changes the fact that having VT did not make the ACC a viable football conference and it certainly didn't it make it a stable one. They simply were not either with both FSU and Miami down. They struggled to look better than the Big East during that time frame.

What has the ACC looking good again in football now is the fact that the 4 best football programs in the league are all doing well this year so far.

But what made the ACC a stable, viable conference again that wasn't in danger of being pulled apart were the additions of SU and Pitt which led to getting ND as a partial member. And that all happened before the ACC doing well in football came about.

That's the reality of it. Plain and simple.

None of what I have said is meant to be a knock on VT and it certainly isn't meant to make SU look like a better pick one on one in comparison with the Hokies. It's said to bring the big picture view to the table that sometimes the one-o-one comparisons just can't.

Cheers,
Neil

Ok, if you are telling me there was a grand plan, and the ACC wasn't just willy nilly choosing expansion candidates by throwing darts at a wall, I'll concede that. No problem.

What I'm saying is, for lack of a better way to put it, that plan was stupid. Looks stupid now, and to a lot of people, looked stupid then.

It was extremely apparent by 2003 that the balance of football was moving south, that the athletes were in the south, and the attention was in the south.

It was apparent that college football was growing by leaps and bounds, networks were getting into it in a big way, and that the NCAA tournament had massively devalued the rest of college basketball.

The idea of landing Notre Dame and Penn State was, I'm sorry, a pipe dream, and has only played out that way. Nobody could possibly rationally claim that if the ACC had taken Syracuse they would have gotten Penn State to leave the Big 10.

Maybe the ACC did have a grand plan, but that plan was clearly, demonstably out of touch with the realities of college sports in 2003. Just like so many of the moves the ACC was making until about two years ago, from which point I think they have been VERY on target.

Maybe in 1993 or 1983 that plan would have seemed practical.

There are decisions that turn out to be wrong, but given the set of circumstances at the time they were made, are defensible and make sense. FSU choosing the ACC over the SEC is like this. You can say now it is dumb if you want, and at times I have, but at the time you could absolutely make a case for it, however it worked out.

But trying to exclude VT in 2003 is absolutely not one of them. That was a bad, bad plan. I don't see how you can say that taking VT and leaving Syracuse kept Big East stable and prevented the ACC from being stable. It proved out which one survived and which one didn't.

The scenario that you describe where we take Syracuse, which pulls Penn State into the ACC, and then ND into the ACC, was pure foolishness if that's what the ACC had in mind.

The plan wasn't stupid, it was brilliant, and had Swofford be allowed to execute it as it was drawn up it had a good chance to succeed.

(10-08-2013 10:06 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  Wow, that is spectacular. What a fantastic read, thanks for that. I can't believe in all the reading I've done about expansion, I never came across that. I'd read a lot of the sources, but never that piece.

And right on with this:

"The one thing about the whole ACC expansion process that makes me shiver like I’m walking past a graveyard is how ignorant the ACC presidents appeared to be of Virginia Tech, dismissing the Hokies early in the process without knowing much about VT’s athletic finances, academic support, and fan support. With the exception of John Casteen, the ACC presidents were quick to dismiss the Hokies in favor of BC and Syracuse early in the process, without doing their homework. Why? Because Shalala gave those terms to the ACC athletic directors and John Swofford, and they passed them on to the presidents. It’s a good thing for Virginia Tech that Casteen forced the ACC presidents into taking a closer look at VT."

The ACC has made a lot of dumb moves over the years, which I could easily list. But the biggest mistake of all was one that they were saved from despite themselves.

I keep telling myself that this is a new ACC that finally "gets it." I think the moves of the last couple years strongly support that view. But I shudder to think if that hadn't broken the way it did and they didn't add VT.

Obviously Miami was the driving force behind ACC expansion efforts in 1999 and 2002/03. The ACC was then in desperate need of another major football member and Miami, with its multiple MNCs, was the obvious choice. Thus the ACC's strategic plan was simple--give Miami whatever it wanted to join the ACC. UM's president--Donna Shalala (a Syracuse graduate)--insisted that SU and BC had to be a part of the deal, and so that's what the deal was--at least early on.

As I recall, Virginia Tech officials made at least one trip to Greensboro shortly after ACC expansion was announced to plead VT's case to John Swofford. No sooner had they entered his door than they were shown the door. As with all expansion, money drives the train and adding new markets brings in more money. Syracuse and Boston College added new markets to the ACC; Virginia Tech did not. I also recall reading that a poll was taken of ACC presidents very early on (before 1999?) as to which BE schools they would most like to see added to the ACC. The only school to get unanimous approval? Syracuse University.

(10-09-2013 11:33 AM)XLance Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 08:40 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 06:56 PM)omniorange Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 11:46 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-08-2013 10:59 AM)omniorange Wrote:  To this day, many still do not understand what was truly happening back in 2003. It wasn't that the ACC wasn't aware of VT's football prowess, it was assumed that they were always going to be there for the taking if needed.

And of course, BC and SU were not going to give the ACC what they claimed either, the conference of the entire East Coast. Which is why it made no sense to the everyday sports fan when Swofford used that to justify the expansion.

Just as in 2010, the BiG's real targets were ND, Texas, and either A&M or Nebraska, the ACC's endgame was Miami, ND, and quite possibly PSU (remember the BTN wasn't a factor back then), but definitely they wanted BOTH Miami and ND.

But unlike the egotistical Delany who truly believed he could get three of their four targets above thanks to the BTN (but had to settle for only Nebraska), Swofford knew the ACC had no chance of getting all three of Miami, ND, and PSU right then and there. The ACC needed to do it in increments. Miami had already said they wanted both BC and SU. The thinking was ND would want Pitt and BC while PSU would want any two of BC, SU, and Pitt.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2003 expansion and that was ND was showing interest immediately, at least in terms of a partial football membership. And swelled heads like Fox at NC State, Wetherell at FSU, and the Virginia president whose name escapes me for the moment thought they had both Miami (they couldn't go back to the Big East after the stink the jilted BE football schools put up) and ND (believing the Irish had no place to go with the BE falling apart) so they overruled Swofford and told him to secure Miami (which required VT, something the presidents at FSU, GT, and Clemson knew and were probably "in" on it with UVa) and then aggressively pursue ND.

The result was ND couldn't bring themselves to be even a partial with an exclusively southern conference away from their core strength - the Northeast. And even though VT provided way more in terms of football than either SU or BC would have, the truth is the TV money was basically a wash and ACC football still took a dive mostly due to Miami and FSU both taking steps backward.

So no need to "shudder". Swofford knows the prize and has managed to go about trying to secure it in the only way it can be secured (if it can ever be secured), in increments.

Cheers,
Neil

Even if that is 100% true, and I don't agree that it is (we had a pretty good source on that while it was going on) it was still almost a massive mistake.

One, it turns out that it was Syracuse that was available all along, and I think we can safely say BC would have been as well.

Sure both SU and BC would have been available as well. But what NOT taking SU turned out to be was keeping the Big East and a safe haven option for ND alive. It also could have led to ND, SU, Pitt, and MD joining the BiG in 2010 along with Nebraska. Again, Delaney's ego of wanting RU before either SU or Pitt cost him any shot he had at ND and longshot wise could have potentially also cost the league PSU.

Quote:However, does anyone thing VT would have remained outside the clutches of the SEC all these years? Maybe that's the way it looked in 2004 to Swofford, but it was absurdly wrong.

It was all over by 2004. The decisions were made in 2002 and acted upon in 2003. And yes, VT would have been an attractive eastern option for the SEC when A&M became available in 2011.

But, would the ACC have cared if they had already pulled off Miami and ND (not to mention the unthinkable, getting PSU as well)? That was the thinking. Not saying it was right or wrong for the conference overall. Just stating where the vision was heading.

Quote:And it's not like hindsight is 20/20, many of us at the time felt that what the ACC desparately needed was football success and high profile matchups, and not some 30 year plan to maybe, sorta, if things go right, some day have some kind of sweet relationship with Notre Dame.

And football fans of these institutions should think like that. But none of that changes the fact that having VT did not make the ACC a viable football conference and it certainly didn't it make it a stable one. They simply were not either with both FSU and Miami down. They struggled to look better than the Big East during that time frame.

What has the ACC looking good again in football now is the fact that the 4 best football programs in the league are all doing well this year so far.

But what made the ACC a stable, viable conference again that wasn't in danger of being pulled apart were the additions of SU and Pitt which led to getting ND as a partial member. And that all happened before the ACC doing well in football came about.

That's the reality of it. Plain and simple.

None of what I have said is meant to be a knock on VT and it certainly isn't meant to make SU look like a better pick one on one in comparison with the Hokies. It's said to bring the big picture view to the table that sometimes the one-o-one comparisons just can't.

Cheers,
Neil

Ok, if you are telling me there was a grand plan, and the ACC wasn't just willy nilly choosing expansion candidates by throwing darts at a wall, I'll concede that. No problem.

What I'm saying is, for lack of a better way to put it, that plan was stupid. Looks stupid now, and to a lot of people, looked stupid then.

It was extremely apparent by 2003 that the balance of football was moving south, that the athletes were in the south, and the attention was in the south.

It was apparent that college football was growing by leaps and bounds, networks were getting into it in a big way, and that the NCAA tournament had massively devalued the rest of college basketball.

The idea of landing Notre Dame and Penn State was, I'm sorry, a pipe dream, and has only played out that way. Nobody could possibly rationally claim that if the ACC had taken Syracuse they would have gotten Penn State to leave the Big 10.

Maybe the ACC did have a grand plan, but that plan was clearly, demonstably out of touch with the realities of college sports in 2003. Just like so many of the moves the ACC was making until about two years ago, from which point I think they have been VERY on target.

Maybe in 1993 or 1983 that plan would have seemed practical.

There are decisions that turn out to be wrong, but given the set of circumstances at the time they were made, are defensible and make sense. FSU choosing the ACC over the SEC is like this. You can say now it is dumb if you want, and at times I have, but at the time you could absolutely make a case for it, however it worked out.

But trying to exclude VT in 2003 is absolutely not one of them. That was a bad, bad plan. I don't see how you can say that taking VT and leaving Syracuse kept Big East stable and prevented the ACC from being stable. It proved out which one survived and which one didn't.

The scenario that you describe where we take Syracuse, which pulls Penn State into the ACC, and then ND into the ACC, was pure foolishness if that's what the ACC had in mind.

The plan wasn't stupid, it was brilliant, and had Swofford be allowed to execute it as it was drawn up it had a good chance to succeed.

Really? You believe that taking Syracuse instead of VT, which would have let the ACC fall to the sixth best football conference behind the Big East, would have resulted in Notre Dame and Penn State joining the ACC in full? Something neither of them has given any indication they want to do?

If so, why aren't they in today, now that we have all those teams.

If Penn State wanted to leave the Big 10 and join the ACC, only on the condition that Syracuse joined, then Syracuse and Penn State could have been in instantly.

The idea that Swofford was going to lure Penn State and Notre Dame by dangling Syracuse is silly. Penn State had no problem leaving Syracuse.

If what you say is true, why didn't Penn State leave the Big 10 for the Big East to be with Syracuse?

I don't think anyone in their right mind believes that if the expansion had been Syracuse, BC and Miami, Penn State and Notre Dame would be playing in the ACC right now. I've never in my life heard such a thing.

After all, they're all here now, so when in Notre Dame and Penn State arriving?

(10-09-2013 10:08 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  You realize that is exactly what has happened now, right, and we have the answer? They kept the bid

That's not what happened. Currently, the Big East just changed their name to the American. It's BCS bid is retained because it is legally the same conference and it continues to be under contract with the BCS. (and it is also the last year of the BCS so the scenarios are hardly equivalent). Like a hypothetical break away conference in 2004-05, the current American does not have a long standing conference commissioner that was part of the original power structure. Similarly, the American isn't going to be part of the Power 5 and no one was interested in making an accommodations for it to even try to be involved. In a hypothetical where the BCS would be continuing forward as opposed to the college football playoff, I'm sure the BCS wouldn't be doing it any favors to the American either as far as altering rules to let it keep its auto bid during rebuilding past the current evaluation period as it did for the Big East in 2004. IMO, that was the more likely scenario back in 2004-05 as well for a hypothetical football break away that would have been not only new in name, but a new legal entity with a new commissioner. Likely, it would have had its BCS bid go away as soon as the BCS could have legally yanked it, and if it was a new legal entity, it really didn't have any legal right to an BCS autobid anyway so it might have disappeared immediately. Keep in mind, though, that the preceding hypothetical is based on the internal political ramifications of what might have went down in 2003 if Syracuse wasn't involved in the Big East and has little actually to do with on-field performance. Syracuse was more important internally for the Big East than what it did on the field.

As far as they separate hypothetical of a Big East with VT vs Syracuse, perception is rarely affected by on-field performance. There are many statistics that argue that the Big East was no worse of a football conference than the ACC during that period without VT. One could easily submit that VT took advantage of an extremely weak Coastal division. After 2005, VT never finished with less than 3 losses. Throw them in the BE, then another team, or VT, has additional losses and people still pointing fingers at the BE for not having a national championship competitor. What it would have done is given the BE a better traveling team, but as had been mentioned, VT certainly wouldn't have turned down an ACC or SEC invite at the first opportunity. I don't necessarily buy that anything would have turned out different, and due to internal politics described above, I think a spit off new football conference would have been in a much worse position.

Lou C, I think you are misunderstanding what he means. What he meant was had they taken Syracuse, the Big East likely would have split along company lines. Notre Dame was not going to go with the non-football Catholic schools and the remaining football schools would be defeating the purpose of splitting if they added ND back. Thus ND would not have a conference for its other sports, and may have been forced to join a conference. They would not have the fallback plan to leverage favorable terms like the still did when the negotiated the ACC join in 2012. Thus with ND's dislike flat out hatred of the Big Ten, and with several of their current foes already in the ACC, along with the geography, the ACC probably had a pretty good chance of landing Notre Dame in that scenario and making it a full membership. And had that happened, possibly Penn State as well.

I do not know Syracuse being invited would have made all of that happen, but you can see that when they finally did take Syracuse and Pitt, it did smoke out ND as member in all other sports, and a 5/8 member for football. And that was when they still had both the Big 12 and a weakened, but alive Big East to fall back on. So it is plausible that taking them at a time when ND had no other preferable options, and when they were down (comparatively) in stature to where they had been, that the plan may have worked. Sure thing? No. But it's not as far fetched as you think.

(10-09-2013 02:03 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Lou C, I think you are misunderstanding what he means. What he meant was had they taken Syracuse, the Big East likely would have split along company lines. Notre Dame was not going to go with the non-football Catholic schools and the remaining football schools would be defeating the purpose of splitting if they added ND back. Thus ND would not have a conference for its other sports, and may have been forced to join a conference. They would not have the fallback plan to leverage favorable terms like the still did when the negotiated the ACC join in 2012. Thus with ND's dislike flat out hatred of the Big Ten, and with several of their current foes already in the ACC, along with the geography, the ACC probably had a pretty good chance of landing Notre Dame in that scenario and making it a full membership. And had that happened, possibly Penn State as well.

I do not know Syracuse being invited would have made all of that happen, but you can see that when they finally did take Syracuse and Pitt, it did smoke out ND as member in all other sports, and a 5/8 member for football. And that was when they still had both the Big 12 and a weakened, but alive Big East to fall back on. So it is plausible that taking them at a time when ND had no other preferable options, and when they were down (comparatively) in stature to where they had been, that the plan may have worked. Sure thing? No. But it's not as far fetched as you think.

Mmmm, I respect you a lot as a poster, but I do think it is as far-fetched as I think.

You really think Notre Dame would have given away independence, back in 2003, rather than play with what is basically now the new Big East? Why would ND be insistent that whatever conference they associated with had football, if they weren't going to be playing football? They weren't committed to any football games with the Big East anyway.

And back then, there wasn't even the most remote discussion of a system that would ever freeze them out, as there is today.

Today, Notre Dame does need to make sure they have a good and safe landing spot, which is the ACC. Otherwise, they wouldn't have given up 50% of their available schedule to the ACC.

Besides, if Notre Dame wanted to join a conference, they could have joined the Big East, kept Syracuse, BC, Miami and probably added FSU and Maryland. All they would have had to do is make the call, and the Big East would have given them whatever deal they wanted.

That would have been a much stronger conference than the ACC, and the raiding would have gone the other way.

Doing ANYTHING to try to lure Notre Dame, when they clearly don't want to go, is a losing proposition. The B1G left a spot open for what, 12 years?

If that was the plan, it was an extremely foolhardy one and had virtually zero chance of succeeding.

While I agree that ND hates the Big 10, it is worse now than it was then. If by some chance ND felt FORCED to join a conference back then, it would probably have been the Big 10. Despite the animosity, they had actually gotten somewhat close to Notre Dame joining a couple times, including right around that time.

http://www.fannation.com/truth_and_rumor...ed-big-ten

(10-09-2013 01:56 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 10:08 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  You realize that is exactly what has happened now, right, and we have the answer? They kept the bid

That's not what happened. Currently, the Big East just changed their name to the American. It's BCS bid is retained because it is legally the same conference and it continues to be under contract with the BCS.

Same thing would have happened had the broken up in the past. Because the same scenario would have played out. That was expressed in their BCS contract.

(10-09-2013 05:00 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  Mmmm, I respect you a lot as a poster, but I do think it is as far-fetched as I think.

You really think Notre Dame would have given away independence, back in 2003, rather than play with what is basically now the new Big East? Why would ND be insistent that whatever conference they associated with had football, if they weren't going to be playing football? They weren't committed to any football games with the Big East anyway.

Notice they could still play in said conference right now without ever having to play any particular team. And a few months after Syracuse and Pitt left, they were gone, despite 12 teams they had been in conference with for nearly a decade, 9 they had been with for nearly 20 years, and as soon as Syracuse and Pitt left, they were gone.

I am not saying it would have happened, but it is not unplausible, based precisely on what we did see happen in 2012.

(10-09-2013 10:22 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 04:37 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The fact that we were voted out of the Metro... meh. By then it was only a shadow of its former self anyway.

On top of that, and granted we were no saints then, I was always under the impression that Virginia Tech was voted out, or not invited to join and procedurally handled as such, because they were never going to leave BE football, and many felt they would be joining the BE very soon anyway, and no one wanted to have a founding member having one foot out of the door. Some of us (fans) actually wondered if that would happen to us (And Rutgers) this year with the whole AAC being a new conference deal, and not wanting either of the two preseason conference favorites (UofL and Rutgers) to walk away with the last guaranteed BCS appearance. I do wonder if not for TV obligations (And those pending NCAA credits) who knows it if we would have done.

I understand the VT perspective on that history but from the UofL perspective, we had to protect ourselves. The majority of the big money on the table in the Metro was based on us. We had the most wins, the titles, the final fours, the name -- and we were expected to walk away from it all. If we had left, all the money that WE had generated for the conference over the entire life of it was to go to the other teams. We were the only team who was constantly on TV, bringing in the money. And much as stated above, other schools, including VT planned to keep their football money without sharing with us. Then and even now the bulk of UofL's athletic budget is based on basketball. It wasn't fair to expect us to share equally with a ton of schools generating basically nothing -- yet we get none of their revenue in return. We were trying to get football to a higher level, but VT wasn't going to help with that at all.

It was a bad situation, and the same as later and as now, every school basically had to do what was best for their own futures -- regardless of which sports were included or not.

I do look forward to playing the old Metro schools again though -- it used to be great playing them. We did also play quite a few of them in football since we were all independents for years.

(10-09-2013 08:40 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  The idea of landing Notre Dame and Penn State was, I'm sorry, a pipe dream, and has only played out that way.

(10-09-2013 09:30 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed Eastern football power.

Except, of course, we have some Big Ten people themselves saying in 2012 that the recent additions of Maryland and Rutgers and an emphasis toward eastern expansion was done in part to keep PSU from getting roving eyes to another conference (without saying said conference being the ACC) and that was with the BTN in play.

Again, the thinking was sound for 2002/2003 despite what others think NOW.

(10-09-2013 08:40 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  It was extremely apparent by 2003 that the balance of football was moving south, that the athletes were in the south, and the attention was in the south.

It was apparent that college football was growing by leaps and bounds, networks were getting into it in a big way, and that the NCAA tournament had massively devalued the rest of college basketball.

Don't dispute anything you say here. But it doesn't counter the fact that going with a southern expansion with VT didn't truly address either of those issues in terms of making the ACC a great football league or even a viable stable one overall. Why? Because honestly, the SEC will likely ALWAYS be considered the football league of the South.

Just like the BiG will always be considered the football league of the Midwest and the Pac, the football league of the West Coast. The strategy as articulated by Swofford back in 2003 was making the ACC the conference of the Eastern seaboard. As I have mentioned in several posts of the past, it's about identity. Not just how the ACC views itself, but how it's perceived by others. And with the 2003 results, the ACC was considered SEC-lite.

Being SEC-lite did nothing for the conference except make it extremely vulnerable to being torn apart just a year or so ago and destroyed its reputation as a great basketball league. While returning to the strategy of 2002/2003 basically stabilized the league for the moment and made the Big 12 now the most vulnerable of the P5 conferences instead of the ACC.

Again, that's the plain and simple truth of the matter whether posters on this board want to accept that or not.

Maybe things might have played out differently if both Miami and FSU hadn't taken a step backwards, but they did so we will never know for sure on that end.

Cheers,
Neil

(10-09-2013 02:03 PM)adcorbett Wrote:  Lou C, I think you are misunderstanding what he means. What he meant was had they taken Syracuse, the Big East likely would have split along company lines. Notre Dame was not going to go with the non-football Catholic schools and the remaining football schools would be defeating the purpose of splitting if they added ND back. Thus ND would not have a conference for its other sports, and may have been forced to join a conference. They would not have the fallback plan to leverage favorable terms like the still did when the negotiated the ACC join in 2012. Thus with ND's dislike flat out hatred of the Big Ten, and with several of their current foes already in the ACC, along with the geography, the ACC probably had a pretty good chance of landing Notre Dame in that scenario and making it a full membership. And had that happened, possibly Penn State as well.

I do not know Syracuse being invited would have made all of that happen, but you can see that when they finally did take Syracuse and Pitt, it did smoke out ND as member in all other sports, and a 5/8 member for football. And that was when they still had both the Big 12 and a weakened, but alive Big East to fall back on. So it is plausible that taking them at a time when ND had no other preferable options, and when they were down (comparatively) in stature to where they had been, that the plan may have worked. Sure thing? No. But it's not as far fetched as you think.

Basically, yes, that is what I am saying. SU and Trangheses was what kept the hybrid Big East alive over the objections of its own AD. Even hated Georgetown fans have recently admitted that on their board. Louisville, one of the newest members was shocked that SU jumped to the ACC in 2011. Both Jurich and Pitino publicly stated they never thought that would happen.

I think had the ACC pursued the strategy of 2003, ND would have joined as a partial member back then just like they recently did. That actual option was still on the table back in the summer of 2003 after taking only VT and Miami (when the ACC and ND were negotiating up to early September) but it contained the caveat that SU, BC, and Pitt be taken as full members as well. ACC wanted a commitment of full membership from ND after 7 years in exchange. Negotiations broke down.

And yet here we are a decade later and that is precisely where the ACC is at. Back in 2003 the ACC would have been negotiating from a position of strength which is why they thought they could get ND without SU, BC, and Pitt while in 2012 they were negotiating from a position of weakness which is why no commitment for full membership 'x' years down the road.

Anyway, I'm done. It's football season, let's enjoy the games.

Cheers,
Neil

(10-09-2013 09:37 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 09:30 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed Eastern football power.

IMO, the ACC can still be a contender, but it won't dominate like it might have done.

I agree with that. They got caught sleeping by that, as did everyone. It's tough to blame them, so I don't know it's a negative, but it isn't a positive as far as being forward thinking.

That said, I've read enough to know that Penn State decision makers had a hard on for the B1G anyway, so it might not have made a difference, but they could have taken a shot.

Would have been an interesting conference. I wonder if the connection to the South if made twenty years earlier would have prevented the extreme withering of Northeastern college football.

This. Bryce Jordan was dead set on bringing Penn State to the Big Ten. He felt it was a conference full of schools that looked just like Penn State. (Not wrong there. The Rutgers and even Maryland moves 20+ years later are best justified on the same grounds of institutional fit.)

(10-10-2013 08:43 AM)brista21 Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 09:37 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(10-09-2013 09:30 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  The window of opportunity for the ACC to add Penn State closed when PSU joined the Big Ten. Had the ACC jumped way back when (and been willing to add whatever teams were necessary to make PSU happy - e.g. Pitt, SU, BC, WVU), then the ACC could have been the undisputed Eastern football power.

IMO, the ACC can still be a contender, but it won't dominate like it might have done.

I agree with that. They got caught sleeping by that, as did everyone. It's tough to blame them, so I don't know it's a negative, but it isn't a positive as far as being forward thinking.

That said, I've read enough to know that Penn State decision makers had a hard on for the B1G anyway, so it might not have made a difference, but they could have taken a shot.

Would have been an interesting conference. I wonder if the connection to the South if made twenty years earlier would have prevented the extreme withering of Northeastern college football.

This. Bryce Jordan was dead set on bringing Penn State to the Big Ten. He felt it was a conference full of schools that looked just like Penn State. (Not wrong there. The Rutgers and even Maryland moves 20+ years later are best justified on the same grounds of institutional fit.)

Agreed and more to the point, from late 70's to the mid 90's, the ACC has always thought of itself as a Southern Atlantic Conference. The idea of adding PSU would have been foreign to all parties. The thought of absorbing the NE schools and becoming an East Coast conference would not come until much the 2000's.