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June 9, 2003
It was bound to happen.
Friday, the University of Connecticut filed a lawsuit on behalf of five members of the Big East Conference aiming to disrupt the potential expansion plans of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
As they say in Greensboro, North Carolina…home of the ACC….”It ain’t gonna happen…”
In a release to the ACC website, theacc.com, Commissioner John Swofford said the ACC will continue in it’s pursuit of expansion operating “in the best interests of the league, the member institutions, and our student athletes.”
“We are disappointed with the actions taken, but NCAA institutions are free to associate with other institutions they deem most in harmony with. The ACC has acted properly and legally throughout the process and is unaware of any conduct by Miami, Boston College or Syracuse that would viloate the terms of their conference by laws or that could bind them to the Big East against their will, should they desire to change their current conference affiliation,” Swofford said.
The ACC has been studying the possibility of expansion for more than a year, creating a strategic planning group, hiring a consultant and doing more homework than a calculus major. The topic of expansion is something that came up every year at the annual meetings in the spring…maybe for the past decade. Like anything else in this world the ball started rolling when one guy approached another guy, who talked to this person, who called this guy…so on and so forth. Dave Hart, Florida State Athletic Director and one of expansion’s key proponents thoughout the process thought all along the University of Miami would be a great fit. He went to one of FSU’s board of trustees, who called his friend with the Hurricanes’ Board of trustees just to see if Miami was interested. The word Miami received was that another Big East member institution was interested in joining the ACC. That pleased the Miami top brass, as they looked more like a follower than a leader.
The ACC actually discussed the addition of Miami in 1991, but postponed the discussion which prompted the ‘Canes joining the Big East. It got really serious in ’99, but the vote of the nine member institutions fell short and the topic was tabled again.
Now there’s another argument…Virginia Tech president Charles Steger and Swofford have released conflicting reports about a May 6th visit to the ACC offices by Steger. Steger said he was just trying to get a feel for what the ACC was going to do and was not asking for admission into the league. Swofford said Tech initiated the visit to the ACC offices and expressed desire to join the ACC. This is just a simple case of he said, you said, and really doesn’t have anything to do with the lawsuit or what is coming down the pike.
“The process of expansion is complicated,” Swofford said in an ACC release Sunday. “It requires due diligence. The process is not complete but we will continue, and ultimately our member institutions will decide whether or not expansion is a viable option.”
This is not new….the Big 12, Conference USA, the Mountain West, and the SEC have all made progress expanding. With the BCS facing change after 2005 and the rising cost of college athletics, the ACC is doing nothing more that looking ahead. Not one or two years down the road, but 10 years into the future.
Business is business….and we are all in the business of college athletics. Like it or not.