Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 25, 1994 TAG: 9402250096
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If issues were decided on rhetoric alone, the Big East Conference might have been a 14-team league long ago.
Boston College athletic director Chet Gladchuk said Wednesday he was dreaming of an expanded Big East even before the league took in Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Temple and Rutgers for football only in 1991.
Today in Boston, executives from the 10 basketball-playing Big East schools meet and may decide whether the league adds the four football-only schools to become a 14-team all-sports league. If the league doesn't expand, the football four plus Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Boston College and Miami will form their own all-sports league.
Gladchuk can argue for expansion like a campaigning congressman.
"People with vision will clearly focus on the importance of this merger," Gladchuk said. "They will have enough foresight to understand that next year, and the next year, and the next year it's what's right, it's what works, it's what the 1990s into the 2000s are all about."
Not for everybody. Tech athletic director Dave Braine has told groups of Hokies fans that the odds are "80 percent" in favor of a 14-team league, but some sources say Georgetown, Seton Hall and St. John's are lobbying to gather enough "nay" votes to kill the merger.
Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has said there is a $1 million penalty if a team leaves the Big East. Syracuse, Pitt, BC and Miami don't want to pay it and are passionately arguing for expansion; Georgetown, Seton Hall and St. John's don't want to be stuck as the only ones voting against expansion.
"There is a lot of baggage, handicaps, hurdles and egos . . . all kinds of agendas," Gladchuk said. "But we have to stay focused on the objective. The objective is to create a superconference.
"My only hope is that rational thinking prevails here. . . . We're big. We're good. We're strong. We're healthy at 14. Otherwise, we're fragmented and vulnerable."
Of the two main options - a 14- or an eight-team league - the latter would seem better for Virginia Tech in terms of revenue sharing (fewer ways to divide the pot), basketball scheduling (more non-conference flexibility) and goodwill (nobody in the league who didn't want to be).
Tech basketball coach Bill Foster is on record favoring an eight-team group - and possibly targeting Louisville as a ninth member. Braine won't publicly commit to favoring one idea over another.
"[The Big East] was built by basketball," Braine said. "If you forget that, you're very callous."
Braine said if the league expands, he won't worry about animosity from schools that opposed the merger.
"I think time heals all that," he said.
The Hokies' future is gilded anyway, mainly because of the Big East's five-year, $72 million deal with CBS and a five-year deal with ESPN announced Thursday. Even if the Big East expands to 14 teams, $58 million of CBS' money will be shared only among the eight football schools.
Big East spokesman John Paquette said not all schools will be represented by their presidents at today's meeting, meaning a formal vote might not be held. The league expects to release a statement about the meeting by this afternoon but has no plans for a news conference, Paquette said.
by CNB