Miami and Virginia Tech leave Big East

After more than two months of speculation, the Atlantic Coast Conference’s plans to expand… After more than two months of speculation, the Atlantic Coast Conference’s plans to expand were set in motion on June 30, when Miami and Virginia Tech announced that they had accepted invitations to switch leagues.

Their departure leaves the Big East with six football-playing schools after the 2003 season and puts the conference in a different scenario than previously expected.

Originally, the ACC was interested in adding Syracuse and Boston College, along with Miami. Instead, the league’s members opted to go with Virginia Tech, extending formal invitations to the Hokies and Hurricanes last week.

While Virginia Tech, a former plaintiff in the lawsuit filed against the ACC, accepted the invitation almost immediately, Miami waited until the June 30 deadline to listen to the Big East’s counterproposals before deciding.

“It has been a bizarre, strange and goofy process,” Miami President Donna Shalala said during a press conference Monday. “But it has allowed us the opportunity to give ourselves some distance, so that we got a view of who we are, where we are and where we want to be.”

The Big East’s counterproposal was supposedly financially greater than the ACC’s, but it was apparently not enough.

According to Big East Commissioner Michael Tranghese, the conference members have no plan yet about what to do with what is left of the Big East, and he said that a plan should not be expected soon.

“What we’ve talked about have been concepts,” Tranghese said in a teleconference on Monday. “We’re not going to solve the problem by the weekend. There are so many details, we have to make certain we make the right move.”

What Tranghese is sure of is how the public views the leaders and members of both conferences.

“I think the public is disgusted with us all,” he said. “Institutions of higher education are held to a higher standard and I think people have looked at us – and I don’t think in a good way, me included.”

With the departure of the Big East’s two most successful football programs, the conference will have six members after this season, with Connecticut scheduled to replace Temple in football after the 2004 season.

Although it has not yet been discussed, Tranghese admitted that the conference might consider moving UConn’s admission to the league up a year.

“We haven’t had discussions about it,” Tranghese said. “It’s a subject we’re going to talk about and it’s one of the things we’ll put on the table.”

Despite losing Miami and Virginia Tech, the Big East is safe as far as keeping its automatic Bowl Championship Series bid and its television contracts for both football and basketball.

According to Tranghese, the Big East is entering the first year of a four-year basketball contract with ABC/ESPN, along with a separate agreement with CBS. The conference is also in the third year of a football contract that runs until 2007.

Concerning the BCS, Tranghese said he is not worried about the Big East losing its automatic bid, reasoning that there is nothing in NCAA legislation that says the conference should lose it. The current BCS contract ends after the 2005 season.

“We’re in the BCS for the next three years,” he said.

One problem the Big East faces is how it will remain a major football conference. NCAA rules mandate that, to be considered a part of Division I-A football, the conference must have no less than eight members by 2005.

“We don’t have to do anything right away,” Tranghese said. “We haven’t sat down and analyzed any schools. There are schools that have tried to approach us and they have been shut down. We were not involved in anything until we got a final decision from Miami.”

The one thing that Tranghese does not want to do is raid another conference, the way he feels the ACC did to the Big East.

“I talked to the commissioners from two leagues and I’ve given my word that they won’t get blindsided,” he said. “I would let them know who might be involved. We won’t do it the way the ACC did.”

While he would not comment on what teams the Big East might be interested in adding, Tranghese said he has spoken with the commissioners from both the Atlantic-10 and Conference USA. Louisville has been rumored to be interested in making the jump, but Tranghese said, “The talk about Louisville has come from that part.”

Tranghese considered this year the greatest in the history of the Big East. After winning the 2001 football national championship, Miami lost last year’s title game to Ohio State.

The Syracuse men’s basketball team won a national championship and St. John’s defeated Georgetown to win the National Invitational Tournament. UConn’s women also won the basketball national championship, giving the Big East the women’s champion for the fourth year in a row.

“We went from total euphoria to the deepest, darkest period in our league,” Tranghese said. “We could have stayed the way we were; no one was threatening to get rid of us.”

Of all the options that the Big East will now consider, the way to stay successful, according to Tranghese, is as easy as winning games.

“I guess it’s not any more complicated than that,” he said. “We don’t need to do anything other than win games. We’ve got some good programs and I don’t think there’s any hidden magic – except winning.”