Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 19, 1990 TAG: 9007190070
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The Metro Conference and the eight schools it is courting for expansion set an Oct. 15 deadline Tuesday to either support the plan in principle or pull out.
"I've worked at a university," said Ken Haines, executive vice president of Raycom Sports & Entertainment and a former information official at Virginia Tech. "October 15 is rushing it."
The reason: The administrators who attended Tuesday's meeting, at which Haines presented Raycom's proposal for a 16-team football league and a 12-team basketball league, must present the plan to their schools' trustees. Only then can decisions be reached on a proposal that would create the nation's largest college football conference.
"It was felt that October 15 was a reasonable period of time to receive reaction from [each] university community," said Haines, who directed the study that produced the expansion plan. "Most schools need to get the feeling of their university boards, and it wasn't possible to do that with everyone until October 15."
Athletic directors and some assistant ADs from the 16 schools met Tuesday night for about one hour after the administrative officials left the meeting room, and they gathered again briefly Wednesday morning. Charlie Theokas, Temple's athletic director, said most of the discussion was about football scheduling. Haines presented a hypothetical six-year football schedule Tuesday night, based on two eight-team divisions each split into groups of four teams.
Theokas also said committees of athletic directors were formed to help the schools' presidents gather information on subjects such as scheduling and possible television revenue before the chief executives present the plan to their trustees.
Orange Bowl Commissioner Steve Hatchell also attended the Tuesday meetings and discussed the possibility of the Orange Bowl agreeing to take the proposed Metro's champion.
Miami, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers, Temple and East Carolina have been asked to join Virginia Tech, Louisville, Memphis State, Florida State, South Carolina, Tulane, Southern Mississippi and Cincinnati. Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College and East Carolina would join for football only.
Although reaction to Raycom's proposal generally was favorable Tuesday night, some schools still must be persuaded to back the plan. Florida State President Bernard Sliger said his school has been contacted by the ACC about interest in that league's possible expansion, and said Florida State will use the next three months to determine whether the proposed Metro is its best option.
The Southeastern Conference has expressed strong interest in Florida State and Miami, which has remained non-committal about the Metro's plan. The SEC has commissioned a consultant's study on expansion and expects to have the results by mid-September.
Representatives from the eight Metro schools and the eight invitees got a heavy dose of statistics from Haines on Tuesday. After the meeting, Haines released some details about the plan, including:
An "expanded major TV market-clearance scenario" in which the 16-team football league could reach 43 percent of the nation's TV households - 39.7 million homes - based on Raycom projections.
The proposed Metro would have the largest total enrollment of any conference in the country, about 40,000 more students than the Big Ten and more than double the current Metro's enrollment.
The proposed Metro would have had more end-of-year Top Twenty football and basketball appearances from 1987-90 than all but two conferences. According to Raycom's figures, the Big Ten had a combined 41 Top Twenty appearances; the Big Eight 30, and the proposed Metro 30. The Metro, with its current eight teams, had 14 Top Twenty appearances in the past three seasons, seventh on a list of nine major conferences.
The information packet Haines presented to representatives of the 16 schools included listings of men's and women's varsity sports sponsored by each school; a cost-of-living index for each school's metropolitan area that listed the costs of groceries, housing, health care and utilities as a percentage of the national average; and a chart showing the distance of each school from the nearest airport and the air-travel distances between schools.
by CNB