Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 10, 1994 TAG: 9403100098
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Dave Braine, the Hokies' athletic director, was at the Metro Conference basketball tournament Wednesday in Mississippi. He returned to his hotel and learned that, as he'd expected, the Big East had expanded - but not enough.
Talk about the Biloxi blues.
"My reaction is that I can't believe it," Braine said. "I just cannot believe it. . . . I just came from a Metro Conference meeting. I guess I'd better keep going to those, huh?"
Braine's voice was filled with hurt, with resignation, with anger, with sarcasm. It took three ballots and a five-hour meeting in New York City to settle Big East expansion. It was going to take much longer to settle Braine's innards after he heard the Big East was taking West Virginia and Rutgers for all sports, but not Temple and the Hokies.
"Right now my emotions are running the gamut," he said. "I wish you could feel what my stomach is feeling. It was a behind-the-scenes deal. We never had any indication, none at all."
It's hard to say what the presidents of the 10 Big East basketball schools had in their stomachs besides lunch when they voted Wednesday afternoon. Actually, they were at least disingenuous, if not downright gutless - particularly those from Boston College, Syracuse, Miami and Pitt. That's the football foursome that said it would bolt from the basketball-only six and form a new league with the football-only quartet of Tech, WVU, Temple and Rutgers.
They voted to save themselves. In the big-money world of college athletics, it's every man for himself. Just ask the leftover members of the Southwest Conference. Or, as Syracuse president Kenneth "Buzz' Shaw told Tech president Paul Torgersen when the Hokies' leader asked in a pre-vote phone call about the rumors that two schools might be left out:
"Walking away [from longtime Big East basketball rivals] would be simply too expensive," Torgersen said Shaw told him. "He said they just couldn't afford to divorce themselves."
Once Braine heard the rumors that Tech and Temple might not be invited to the whole feast, he started to worry. Where there's smoke, it's often behind closed doors. So, he called his fellow athletic directors at Temple and West Virginia.
"They knew nothing about it," Braine said.
About an hour after he heard the news from Torgersen, Braine got through to Syracuse's athletic director, Jake Crouthamel. Braine was assured that BC, Syracuse, Pitt and Miami had fought for all four basketball outsiders, but although football will be the league's major revenue producer, the basketball schools weren't going to lose control of a league that was founded on their sport.
That said, the expansion vote was forced by lucrative telecast contracts the football eight agreed to with CBS and ESPN. The deals - $72 million with CBS and $22 million with the cable network - wouldn't have happened without football. Of the $94 million, $76 million is football money, and the Big East stressed Wednesday that won't change.
However, after what happened to Tech and Temple in a New York minute, can the Hokies and Owls be sure some of those dollars won't be dribbled into hoops? And what of the constitutional amendment - call it the Connecticut-Villanova Clause - that will allow the Division I-AA football players in the Big East to join the current football eight with a declaration by 1998?
With Tech and Temple prohibited from voting on non-football matters, the two sides can force a 6-6 deadlock with block voting. St. John's, Georgetown, Seton Hall, Villanova, Connecticut and Providence wouldn't budge until they got a compromise. It happened on the third ballot.
The second ballot adds insult to injury for the Hokies. The first proposal was to add Tech, Temple, WVU and Rutgers. It failed to get seven "yes" votes. The second ballot was to add three schools for all sports. The school excluded? Tech. That also failed. The proposal to add two schools - and those had been decided by the presidents before they met - passed 7-3.
"So," Braine said wryly, "we're good enough to play football with them, but not good enough to play anything else?"
The vote was as defensive for some as it was offensive to others. Why did the Big East vote to give Rutgers and West Virginia full membership? It was only because they thought those teams were headed elsewhere. Villanova also didn't want city rival Temple with a better basketball program in the same league.
Rutgers would have been the 12th Big Ten member and the Big East would have had more than Penn State carrying the Big Ten banner into the Big Apple. West Virginia has been sold as a potential ACC expansion team, but that wasn't going to happen - at least not anytime soon.
Two days before the meeting, Braine asked Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese about the Temple-Tech rumor. Braine said Tranghese told him, "It will be 14 [full expansion] or eight [a breakaway by the football players]."
The commissioner was wrong twice. It's also obvious the presidents don't listen to him. Tranghese made it clear in a statement that this was a mess left in a meeting room by the presidents, not the athletic directors.
Torgersen was phoned in Biloxi by Miami president Edward "Tad" Foote on Wednesday afternoon with the Big East decision. "I wouldn't say he was terse," Torgersen said, "but he obviously didn't relish speaking to me on the subject."
Braine said he knows the decision "will devastate our people - our athletes, coaches, alumni and fans. I hurt, but I hurt mostly for them. Three years [since Tech was admitted to the Big East Football Conference in February 1991] and it comes to this. Our people have been to the altar [with the ACC] and had this happen before."
The Hokies can be sure their competitors will use the Big East snub against them in recruiting. You wonder if Bill Foster would have agreed to a contract extension as basketball coach had he known he wouldn't be a visitor to the Carrier Dome and Madison Square Garden. The decision also puts the Hokies in a potential quandary in all sports except football.
Tech can stay in the Metro, but will the league survive? Louisville, Tulane and Southern Mississippi have been mentioned with former Metro members as potential movers to a new football conference with the Southwest Conference leftovers. Would the Hokies tie up with Temple further and join the Atlantic 10?
Because Tech didn't get the answer it has sought for so long, there are more questions. There is no question the Hokies must stick with Big East football. They can't afford to do otherwise.
Braine said Wednesday he knew there was "some animosity toward Virginia Tech and Temple." As he has been about most things in his years at Tech, he was right.
The score was 7-3. It's one they won't forget in Blacksburg anytime soon.
by CNB