Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 4, 1994 TAG: 9406040031
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In part because of that, it turns out Tech was just different enough to miss out on the Big East's expansion in March. Tech thought it would be included in a four-school, all-sports expansion by the Big East, which added only West Virginia and Rutgers.
Fall foliage is a stunning backdrop to Tech's Blacksburg home, but the rural beauty of the New River Valley and Tech's reputation as a fine academic school with a turned-around athletic program did nothing for television networks or, apparently, for other conferences seeking population boosts.
And, Tech's 3-year-old association with "Eastern" football schools through the Big East couldn't overcome the league's basketball-school loyalty that helped scuttle a plan that would have formed a new eight-team all-sports league. Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Boston College and Miami - the so-called "Syracuse group," four Big East Division I football-basketball schools that supported the four-school expansion - chose tradition over a new horizon.
One TV industry source who kept an eye on the Big East's doings said Tech is "very well respected" in the league. But . . .
"Tech was a victim of a compromise, and a victim of geography," the source said. "If they were in Philadelphia . . . "
So without a TV market to sell and with none of the big-boy leagues knocking on the door, Tech joined Temple as the left-outs of the Big East's two-team expansion that brought in WVU (a historically "Eastern" school, a possible target of the Big Ten and the only game in a state of 1.8 million people) and Rutgers (New York-New Jersey presence and TV market and a target of the Big Ten).
The Tech public still has questions, however. Such as . . .
What happened to the 14-or-eight-team scenario?
By all accounts, the eight-team breakaway that would have put Tech in an all-sports league with Big East football playing members Syracuse, BC, Pitt, Miami and Atlantic 10 members Temple, WVU and Rutgers never was just a bluff by the Big East Four. In fact, operating procedures for the new league were agreed to by the eight athletic directors at a February meeting in Pittsburgh.
When expansion became a presidential issue, however, the strength of the Syracuse group's conviction apparently thinned.
"How many people file for divorce and then pull it off?" Villanova athletic director Gene DeFilippo said.
The 10 basketball-playing Big East schools, which had brought the league to prominence in the mid-1980s, were one reason. DeFilippo said Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel, then-assistant commissioner Mike Tranghese, current assistant commissioner Tom McElroy and Georgetown athletic director Frank Rienzo were instrumental in creating the league.
"There was a lot of loyalty," DeFilippo said.
Add money, stir, and the potion reads: compromise.
Syracuse chancellor Kenneth "Buzz" Shaw said once the four Division I Big East football schools realized how much money they would leave, the costs overwhelmed the benefits of breaking up the Big East.
The costs included but were not limited to:
Separation or "buyout" fees, ranging from $1 million if a school gave two years' notice to $2 million for an immediate departure. The new league likely would have begun play next fall.
NCAA Tournament money. The Big East gets $3 million-plus from the basketball tournament payout of CBS' seven-year, $1 billion contract to televise the NCAA playoffs. Not only would the Syracuse group give up their shares of that, they also could not carry their individual NCAA Tournament units with them to a new league - meaning, for example, that the "old" Big East would benefit from the past success of Syracuse in the NCAA Tournament, but the Orangemen's new league would not.
One league source said Syracuse had as much as $10 million at stake over the next five years.
Besides, Shaw said, no guarantee ever existed.
"[We said we would] try very hard to get to 14 and strongly consider getting out," Shaw said. "That's different than saying you're going to."
And different from what some other participants remember from months of talks. Tech athletic director Dave Braine said the four Big East schools considering the split knew from the beginning how much it would cost to leave.
"I was in every meeting I was allowed to attend," Braine said. "I heard Chancellor Shaw and [Pitt] President [Dennis] O'Connor. Never one time was a compromise mentioned."
Shaw said he didn't think Tech and the Atlantic 10 schools could afford to help with Big East exit costs, but he admitted one could "argue whether those kinds of considerations [should have] been explored with the four."
Tech was ready to pay, including $500,000 to leave the Metro Conference.
"We knew how much it was going to cost us," said Braine, who would not say how much the new-league entry fee would have been. "We were willing to bite the bullet to do it."
Could anything have prevented the Big East's exclusion of Tech and Temple?
Only, it seems, a last-minute change of heart by the Big East's basketball schools who were arguing against expansion all along. The main lesson learned by Tech, Temple and other interested parties was: It just doesn't work that way.
Discussions examined issues such as non-revenue sports travel and basketball conference play for permutations from 11 teams to 14, DeFilippo said. Progress and agreement apparently moved with glacial speed.
"It went on and on and on," DeFilippo said. "Everything you got into, everybody had a different agenda."
DeFilippo said the pros and cons of each of the four schools were examined. None of them, however, had a chance to directly influence the process after the compromise gained momentum.
One of the issues that killed a four-team expansion was that the basketball schools would not agree to a conference format that might keep some teams from playing in the year-end tournament in New York City - a prime event for fund-raising.
Braine said that had he been given the chance, he might have sought a deal wherein the four new schools would not have participated in the Big East tournament for three or five years.
Even that may not have worked.
"There isn't a single thing that Virginia Tech or Temple could have done," Tranghese said. "The issue that brought people to the table was Rutgers, and a TV contract nobody wanted to walk away from."
Tranghese said the Big Ten's rumored interest in Rutgers, a long home run from New York City, became real during the Big East talks when Rutgers' athletic director and president had discussions with the Big Ten. That bolstered one argument for Big East expansion: keeping those Midwestern schools (and Penn State) out of New York, the Big East's biggest market.
That also helped make it obvious which schools were involved in a two-school expansion compromise.
There have been reports that when the Big East voted down a three-school expansion, Tech was the school excluded. Tranghese said that's "absolutely untrue," that the vote was on numbers rather than schools.
Braine said he believes Tranghese did everything possible to protect Tech and Temple during the expansion talks.
"In the pecking order, clearly Rutgers had to be there," Tranghese said. "West Virginia is, clearly, by its past record, the most valuable football property."
Could or should Dave Braine have known about the 11th-hour compromise?
Probably not. The presidents resolutely sat on the results of their Feb. 25 meeting: that a compromise had gained momentum.
Why? Shaw said that because nobody knew exactly how the vote was going to go, the presidents felt they couldn't update anybody. Tranghese probably could have, but he was under the presidents' gag order.
"It not only happened late, it happened quickly," Tranghese said of the compromise. "If I knew the discussions were narrowing to 12 in advance, I would have told the four football schools. I would've gotten in trouble for doing it, but I would've told them."
Braine just wishes somebody had. He didn't find out until two days before the vote that a 12-team Big East probably would result.
Along with the Syracuse group now using exit money as an excuse not to split when they knew all along how much it would cost, the Big East's silence is what bothers Braine the most, he said.
Looking back, Braine said, he had maybe one clue that the 14-or-eight scenario was in jeopardy. That came during the Feb. 15 meeting in Pittsburgh when, he said, Crouthamel made "a very passionate plea that he was going to do everything within his power to make 14 work" because of what it would cost to leave the Big East.
After the vote, Braine called Crouthamel, who admitted the compromise had been in the works for three weeks.
"I said, `Why didn't you tell us about it?' " Braine said. "He said, `I guess we should have.' "
The sting of what happened - and how it happened - has not left Braine.
"We talk about integrity and how important that is," Braine said. "There was no integrity in that at all.
"I understand business, and I understand the bottom line. But do it up front. I would like to ask their presidents, do they have any idea what they did to Virginia Tech and all our alumni and all our people? How would they like to have that happen to their school?"
by CNB