RICHMOND, Va. -- Virginia Tech was given a chance to join three Big East schools that might jump leagues, another step in the possible expansion of the Atlantic Coast Conference.
ACC presidents decided Wednesday to reconsider the Hokies for admission into their planned superconference. The move would create a 13-team ACC if approved, and could free Virginia president John Casteen III from casting a decisive vote.
 | |
| Will Frank Beamer's Hokies join the other Big East teams that are hoping to leave for the ACC?(AP) |
The idea was presented to Virginia Tech president Charles Steger in a meeting with Georgia Tech president G. Wayne Clough on Wednesday night, two sources told the Associated Press. The government and college sources spoke on the condition they not be identified.
Virginia Tech athletic director Jim Weaver met with Steger on Thursday. He said Steger and Clough spoke Wednesday night, but added the Hokies "have not received an official invitation and that's the extent of it."
School officials also released a statement, saying "the expansion plans are the work of the ACC, and we have to wait and see what the ACC wants to do."
Clough, a former dean of the college of engineering at Virginia Tech, told the AP Wednesday night he didn't meet with Steger in any official ACC capacity.
"It was a friend to a friend and I said any information I got from the meeting I would take back to my colleagues," Clough said when reached at his Blacksburg home.
ACC spokesman Brian Morrison said no league member is authorized to act on behalf of the conference and no invitations have been extended.
The decision to reconsider Virginia Tech was made during a three-hour conference call of the nine league presidents after it appeared the original expansion plan involving Miami, Boston College and Syracuse would not get the required seven votes for approval, a government source with knowledge of the talks said.
Casteen, whose suggestion that the Hokies be including in an expansion plan was rejected by the league presidents last month, pledged then to continue pushing for Virginia Tech. His suggestion that they be reconsidered Wednesday came in the third of three lengthy conference calls that have all ended without a consensus reached.
If the Hokies agree to be included, it would mark yet another about-face for the school, which has at times pursued inclusion in the ACC plan and at times decried the raid that would leave the rest of the Big East conference with an uncertain future.
Virginia Tech also is one of five Big East football schools that filed suit June 6 accusing the ACC, Miami and Boston College of conspiring to destroy the Big East.
Casteen has been under pressure from Gov. Mark R. Warner and other state officials to do whatever he could to protect Virginia Tech's athletic viability. Casteen left on a European vacation after the teleconference and was not available for comment.
The ACC's expansion plan once looked like a certainty, but that was before officials at Duke and North Carolina raised concerns about travel costs, student welfare and projected revenues of an ACC football title game and future TV contracts.
The league's apparent failure to allay those concerns would have left Casteen in a position to cast the vote that either killed the deal -- or wounded Virginia Tech.
Morrison said ACC commissioner John Swofford would have no comment on the issues discussed in Wednesday's teleconference, or when another would be scheduled.
The Big East said it would have no comment on the ACC targeting Virginia Tech.
Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general for Connecticut, where the suit was filed, called the offer to include Virginia Tech "another sign that the ACC is desperate and divided, and that it's real goal is to destroy the Big East as we know it."
If the Big East schools leave for the ACC, they each must each pay a $1 million exit fee. The penalty doubles after June 30.
AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service
Copyright 2003, The Associated Press, All Rights Reserved
