Thirteen. Thirteen?
That's an unlucky number that the Atlantic Coast Conference is willing to gamble everything on to quench its expansion thirst.
 | |
| Miami president Donna Shalala should realize that a move could hurt the football team on the field and in the wallet.(Getty Images) |
The Associated Press is reporting that the ACC will now invite four teams from the Big East to its once close-knit, virtually homogenous conference. Virginia Tech, in an obvious move to win back a yes vote from Virginia, is going to get an invite along with Miami, Boston College and Syracuse.
It's a bold move that might recharge an expansion process that appeared to be stalling last week. It might also prove to be the knockout blow for the Big East, which is unlikely to exist as we know it when everything shakes out.
At this point, so much remains unsettled, leaving as many questions as there are potential ACC members. It all starts with a simple one: Why?
1. Why 13?
It's a compromise move. The expansion process was in danger once Virginia Gov. Mark Warner got involved. Concerned about the athletic future of Virginia Tech and wary that one state institution (Tech) was suing another (the University of Virginia), he got UVa to back off an expected yes vote to adding Miami, Boston College and Syracuse, which would have crippled the Big East.
Since Duke and North Carolina were already against expansion, ACC commissioner John Swofford no longer had the needed seven yes votes and never called for a vote. The process was stuck at 6-3.
But with Virginia Tech extended an invite, Warner's concerns would be gone and, the argument goes, so too would be Virginia's opposition to expansion. Thirteen gives you 7-2.
2. Will it stop at 13?
Maybe, maybe not. Thirteen is a dreadful number for scheduling purposes, and now that any semblance of tradition, familiarity and homogeneity of the schools is shot, why not go for 14?
Because if 13 isn't going to work financially, 14 definitely won't. Why divide the revenue pie into smaller and smaller slices?
Thirteen is enough, unless scheduling concerns are so great that forming two seven-team divisions becomes worth the loss of revenue. That's what they're praying for in Connecticut and Pittsburgh, the two most likely extra additions.
If the ACC wanted to go to 14, a better possibility might be Notre Dame. The Irish can make a play to join for all sports other than football, allowing the hoops schedule to balance out, but not take a full share of league revenue because it wouldn't have a claim to football money.
Right now, we know of no ACC source suggesting any of this will happen. Just wishful thinking at a few shunned Big East schools.
3. Is this a good idea?
Not unless you stand to personally profit off of expansion. No league that has stretched itself past 12 members has ever survived. None. The WAC went to 16 and quickly broke apart. The Big East, currently at 13, is an infighting disaster that will soon be busted up. Conference USA, which has a variety of memberships, is unlikely to last.
Twelve is a stretch. Thirteen or more is a bust. It is a marriage of convenience that is doomed. Sort of like a Drew Barrymore nuptial. There are a lot of smiles and sweet talk early, a lot of promises that this will be different, that this will last. But deep down no one thinks it will. No one.
This won't either. Inevitably, the scheduling problems (there is no way for all the teams to play each other in football or basketball) ruin the fraternity. The schools are too diverse. The shared values are gone. The league is created for money, and those kinds of partnerships break up when someone invariably offers a school or three more money to go elsewhere.
Take Virginia Tech as an example. First it fought ACC expansion, then it begged the league to get an invite, then it sued to stop it and got political pressure applied to UVa and now, well, now it will likely bail on its one-time Big East brethren if membership is offered. You think these guys know anything about loyalty?
The ACC can spin this any way it wants, but the rock solid, classy 50-year-old league is about to embark on a completely unnecessary process that will eventually rip apart what was once a perfect union.
4. So why are they doing it?
Good question.
Conference commissioners are paid to generate revenue streams. Swofford is convinced it can happen here. Presidents invariably back commissioners. And since no one values loyalty or tradition anymore, and no one cares about the well-being of the student-athletes, you wind up with a 13-team conglomeration.
Swofford has been a bulldozer here. It hasn't been pretty; the reputation of his league has been sullied, and there have been more mistakes than brilliant tactical moves, but he has never let up. He clearly was more interested in making expansion happen then doing what is best for the ACC. Only he knows why.
Commissioners will talk all day about how if you don't prepare for the impending doom, you will be doomed. But that's the greatest Chicken Little argument ever. The BCS can only exist with television. And television will only pay if the East Coast is involved. The Big East and ACC were fine and protected before this process.
There was just no need for this.
5. Does it even make financial sense?
It depends on how you cook the books, but it doesn't look that way.
Last year the ACC doled out a record $9.7 million in revenue to each of its nine schools. Swofford has argued that a 12-team league would bring in more than $30 million in additional revenue, thus making it at least a break-even proposition. The money would come through additional television revenue, NCAA basketball tournament money and the staging of a football championship game.
Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese mocked those numbers, and plenty of industry experts have come forward to question the math. But Swofford has stuck to it and sold it.
So how does it work with 13? The addition of another mouth to feed means the league needs to generate another $10 million a year to break even. How Tech does that is anyone's guess. It adds few (if any) television markets. The championship game is already a go at 12, so another team doesn't do anything. The school is in a remote, rural area, adding no major corporate sponsors.
To give each of the 13 schools and the league office a $9.7 million share, the ACC would have to generate $126.1 million. And that's just breaking even. The SEC set the all-time conference revenue record this year by divvying up $101.9 million among its 12 schools.
How Swofford convinces ACC presidents the league can earn at least $24.2 million more than the powerful and popular SEC will be interesting.
6. So is this a sure go?
Of course not. If this process has proved anything, it's that nothing is over until it's over. It could blow up again. One of the other six yes presidents could look at this new deal, double-check Swofford's math, realize that this is patently bad for student-athletes and switch.
Wake Forest would be the obvious choice. What the small, elite, private institution that struggles to field a competitive football team now has been thinking all along defies logic. Its football team, which struggles to beat anyone not named Duke, has absolutely no chance in an expanded ACC. Its other sports are also sure to be adversely affected.
Wake is more likely to become the Vanderbilt of the ACC than bolster its athletic fortunes or national reputation. But the Deacs have been stubbornly in favor. Maybe this changes.
7. Anyone else acting foolishly?
Sure. How about Miami, the key cog in this entire process.
Yes, we understand president Donna Shalala is obsessed with making a couple more bucks for her athletic department. According to UM sources, she has instructed her athletic department to turn a profit, even if she naively fails to understand how difficult that is at a private school in a pro sports market and doesn't factor in the free publicity the school gets from its sports teams.
The woman has spent too much time as a government bureaucrat to know anything about business.
But the question is why Miami fans would let a just-passing-through president potentially screw up a juggernaut of a football program is just as bizarre.
When it has gone 36-1 over the past three seasons and nearly won back-to-back national titles, a school shouldn't be looking to change leagues. It shouldn't be looking to change anything.
If Miami was smart, it would be white knuckling its Big East membership, realizing that the league offers a recruiting entrée into the talent-rich Northeast, a cupcake conference schedule that allows the scheduling of high-profile, high-powered non-conference games (Florida State, Florida and Tennessee) and relatively easy access into the BCS.
Why leave? Why anything? You can't get a better situation than 36-1. Miami is giving up near perfection because Shalala thinks it's a good idea.
8. What about the Big East?
It's in trouble. Losing three teams was bad. Losing four is worse.
Tech was the top remaining football program, the team that you could conceivably build a league around and beg for future BCS inclusion. Without the Hokies, only four full-time football members would remain -- UConn, Rutgers, Pitt and West Virginia. (Temple plays Big East football for one more year, but has no vote in conference matters).
That group isn't going to generate a lot of excitement and now must merge with a collection of Conference USA schools. The likelihood is these schools will find themselves in football's no-man's land -- outside of the BCS.
9. So what happens?
A civil war. Losing Tech is a major blow to the Big East's football interests. Ten teams now remain, and six of them -- Georgetown, Notre Dame, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova -- don't play Big East football.
Those schools, all Catholic institutions, are wary of making expansion moves that are driven by football. That is what caused the once peaceful Big East to get into this mess in the first place. With a clear voting majority, they can band together and force a breakup or at least impose their will on the future.
If there is a break -- if the four "football schools" are forced to go elsewhere -- the basketball schools are in good position. These schools want to keep the Big East name, its automatic bid to NCAA tournaments, its history and men's basketball contract with Madison Square Garden.
NCAA bylaws state that a league must have six continual members to exist. If the split goes down six to four, the basketball schools can add whomever they want and keep the valuable Big East name. The football four will have to go elsewhere.
10. What about Notre Dame?
This is where things get both cloudy and interesting, the thing that could blow the above scenario out of the water. The Big East Catholic schools need Notre Dame to stay in the league to get to six, keep its automatic basketball bid and have a clear voting majority over the football schools.
For Notre Dame, having its basketball and Olympic sports compete in the Big East would appear to be the best-case scenario.
The Big East would almost certainly add some Midwestern Catholic schools -- Marquette, DePaul, Xavier, Dayton and/or St. Louis -- to ease travel (especially in non-revenue sports) for the Irish. The benefit of playing basketball in the major East Coast cities, where there's media exposure and alumni live, is a major positive.
But the Irish might prefer to go in another direction.
We can dispel one rumor that was floating out there and confused even some Notre Dame people. Supposedly there was a BCS bylaw making Notre Dame's reserved slot in the series contingent on the school maintaining some affiliation with a BCS league. It didn't have to compete in football, but it does have to be some kind of member (such as its current setup with the Big East).
Since the "new" Big East would, obviously, not be a BCS league, this seemed like a problem for the Irish. But that rumor, according to BCS spokesman Rob Carolla, is false. There is no provision in the BCS bylaws for this.
Which means Notre Dame is free to do as it pleases -- pick a side in the Big East, petition the ACC or beg the Big Ten for inclusion. And everyone else will have to wait and hope.
11. So what are some expansion predictions?
After the Big East's split, here's an educated guess on how it plays out.
The Big East will consist of two divisions with Dayton, DePaul, Marquette, Notre Dame, Saint Louis and Xavier in the West and Georgetown, Massachusetts, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova in the East.
Although many have speculated this will be a Catholic-only league, that isn't necessarily the case. The remaining schools just want basketball-first schools, which is why UMass is an appealing choice. It gives Providence a New England rival, is good for Olympic sport travel and offsets the loss of BC in the Boston television market.
St. Joseph's, which is often speculated as an expansion candidate, has little chance of getting an invite because it's a bitter rival with Villanova, which has nothing to gain by adding another Catholic school in Philadelphia.
The new league is cost-effective for Olympic sports travel (a major concern at cash-strapped Catholic schools). The addition of major media markets in the Midwest (Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, Milwaukee and St. Louis) should be appealing to the TV folks, especially ESPN, which could leave the league in the Big Monday spot.
Meanwhile a marriage of Conference USA schools and remaining Big East football programs seems inevitable. We'll go with UAB, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Memphis, Louisville, Rutgers, Pitt, Temple, West Virginia, South Florida and Southern Mississippi.
The league may decide to hold at 10 though, meaning a couple teams would be out. It might look to Texas, where C-USA members Houston and TCU live, instead of Deep South entries Southern Miss and UAB. A school such as Marshall might be a nice fit, but it's unlikely West Virginia would let a local rival in. But who knows for sure?
As for the A-10 and the rest, it will be a bottom feeding frenzy.
12. So who are the biggest losers here?
There is no lack of candidates.
First off, the student-athletes, not that fans care. University presidents should but don't. Which is why we are in this mess.
Second is the ACC and its proud tradition. That this could be sold out for what will likely turn out to be less money is stunning.
School-wise, if all of the above scenarios play out, Connecticut is a major loser. The school is basketball-mad, home to two national championship programs that are beloved. In Jim Calhoun and Geno Auriemma, the Huskies have best 1-2 coaching punch in the country. It will enter next season as preseason favorites to win it all in both sports.
But a basketball school is being pulled around by a fledgling football program that just completed its first season in I-A. The problem is departed athletic director Lew Perkins -- who jumped to Kansas earlier this month -- convinced the school to sink millions into upgrading to I-A. Moreover he got the state to spend $90 million building a new stadium in East Hartford.
So there is no turning back. As Virginia proved, school presidents fear only governors.
But how will fans feel if UConn basketball is playing in some diluted, far-off conference while its old Big East rivals are convening at Madison Square Garden. All so the football team can play in a non-BCS league?
No wonder Perkins left.
Then there are Pitt and West Virginia, two proud and often-strong football programs that could be regulated to non-BCS status through no fault of their own. (Rutgers has never been good enough to feel bad for.) These two deserve better but might get left out in the cold.
All because the ACC believes 13 is a lucky number.
13. Is there anyone who wins here?
Maybe it is Tulane president Scott Cowen. He wants to overhaul college sports and comes at it with a sensible, fair solution that starts with the abolition (or at least relaxation) of the BCS. That series -- and not a more equitable and profitable playoff system -- is the root of all of this.
He faces an uphill climb. But this madness may be just the revolting shock it takes to convince university presidents that they need to do something before it is too late. Maybe Cowen's movement gains some momentum. At this point, it's about all we can hope for.
Thirteen just doesn't seem like a lucky number for college athletics.
News and notes
- Memphis coach John Calipari was surprised that his top high school recruit, 6-10 center Kendrik Perkins of Beaumont, Texas, has decided to remain in the NBA Draft. Calipari says Perkins does not have a promised spot in the first round, meaning a guaranteed contract is not there. "It's sad," said Calipari, "I don't know if he understands the difference between $12 million and $300,000. He is listening to the wrong people." But NBA sources believe Perkins will have a guaranteed contract even if he slips into the early second round.
- Every high schooler who is a borderline first-round selection should be forced to watch the recent MTV documentary about a year in the life of DeAngelo Collins. A year ago, the California star entered the draft and on the show boldly predicted he would be a top 20 selection. He wasn't drafted at all. He spent the year trying out for teams, getting screwed out of money by a European team and eventually being cut by the CBA. He is now in a L.A. summer league and at the end of the film says he should have gone to college. People looking to profit off of him sold Collins a bill of goods, something he slowly realizes during the program. It was a pretty sad tale.
- Minnesota got a rare June recruiting gift when it landed local product Kris Humphries, a 6-8 McDonald's All-American who signed with Duke last fall. Humphries has been released from his commitment at Duke and looked at Indiana an Iowa State before deciding to become a Gopher. Humphries probably won't be able to play next season unless he can convince the generally conservative people with the National Letter of Intent that he deserves to be released from the binding document. Most likely he plays for Minnesota in the 2004-05 season.
- Expect former Wright State head coach Ed Schilling to join the Memphis staff officially in the next few weeks. Schilling, who spent five years at the Horizon League school previously worked for Calipari at UMass and the New Jersey Nets. Schilling will replace Steve Roccaforte, who left to become an assistant at Lamar with the promise of succeeding coach Billy Tubbs in a couple of years.
- Not only did Notre Dame get point guard Chris Thomas back for at least another year -- he pulled his name out of the NBA Draft -- but the Irish picked up Arizona transfer Dennis Latimore, a promising 6-8 forward who got lost in the shuffle in Tucson. Mike Brey has had great success with transfers -- Ryan Humphrey, Danny Miller -- and Latimore will help in 2004-05. In the meantime, Thomas makes ND a preseason top 10 team.
- The NCAA and a group of tournament promoters are in federal court this week in Columbus, Ohio, fighting over the controversial 2-in-4 rule, which limits the amount of exempt tournaments college teams can play in. The promoters are arguing that the rule will kill off popular events such as the Maui Invitational, Preseason NIT and Great Alaska Shootout.
- A few years ago, after Tom Izzo danced with the idea of heading to the NBA only to decide to stay at Michigan State, he stated that if he was going to do college hoops, then he was going to do it right. That means as many big time non-conference games as possible and road trips to all the great arenas. He has lived up to his promise in recent years but outdid himself this time. State's non-conference schedule features games with Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, Oklahoma and Syracuse. The annual Coca Cola Classic in-season tournament will feature a replay of the 1979 Final Four field, with Indiana State, Penn and DePaul visiting the Breslin Center. "I believe this is one of the very best college basketball schedules," said Izzo. We agree.
- State's game with Kentucky, of course, will be held at Ford Field in Detroit in an effort to break the all-time NCAA attendance record. Seating at the NFL Stadium is expected to exceed 75,000. Already State has sold more than 32,000 seats to boosters and season-ticket holders. Tickets to the general public don't go on sale until June.
- Long-time and highly regarded University of Detroit assistant Mickey Barrett has switched over to women's basketball and is now the Titans women's head coach. Barrett had three years experience as a women's assistant at Xavier before spending 10 years at Detroit under Ricky Birdsong and Perry Watson.
- Next time you are in Chicago, or its greater metropolitan region, be sure to stop by Bar Louie, especially the one in Lincoln Park. It is located in the lobby of the Day's Inn but this is a heck of a place, with good food and a lot of energy. We'd go so far to call it the best Day's Inn lobby bar in the nation.
