Hello, Old Friend(s)
What will you do as an equal partner?
No conference commissioner on your side
You won’t get your way
So now you go back home and say
Guys, won’t you bleed for me one more time
CHORUS:
Shalala — got the Big East on their knees
Shalala — they’re begging, Miami, please
Shalala — they’ll even buy the donuts for Paul Dee
You thought you’d bring along two
suck-ups
And run your new conference just like the old
But Casteen stonewalled
And the Hokies got the call
So your Big East extortion began again
Shalala — got the Big East on their knees
Shalala — they’re begging, Miami, please
Shalala — they’ll even buy the donuts for Paul Dee
(with apologies to Eric Clapton)
Miami announces their decision on Monday, but at this point, my interest is pretty much academic. VT is in the ACC, with a press conference scheduled for Tuesday. (There are a couple of factual errors in that article, but the ACC press conference has been confirmed by other sources.)
One thing’s for sure: I wouldn’t want to be in the Big East if Miami stays there. They’ll get their every whim (even more than they did with Mike Tranghese on their side, as he was before April), and the financial terms are liable to be extremely generous to Miami and downright miserable for everyone else, especially the unfavored like WVU (and like VT would have been). Otherwise, Miami invalidates their stated reason for leaving, the budget shortfall in their athletic department.
The other thing going on here, and what may have helped swing particularly NC State’s vote our way, is a massive power struggle between Miami and the Carolina schools who have traditionally run the ACC. Miami intended to bust into the conference with two flunkies in tow, and expected that they would get to run the new conference the same way as they did the old. (You know you own the conference when you can tape a 30-second commercial featuring your campus, your workout facilities, your highlights, and your beaches, slap a Big East logo on the end, and have it run in the conference commercial slot during every Big East team’s TV games in November.) NC State (perhaps even in collusion with Carolina and Duke) may well have decided that Tech would be more amenable to reason than a Miami coming in with two partners and at least one sure ally in FSU.
Another possibility is that NC State Chancellor Marye Anne Fox may be holding a spot open for the other school on whose Board of Trustees she sits. I’m not sure how much credibility I give that theory, but her affiliation is an interesting data point.
Heading west to the homeland this weekend. I wonder if Tech Bookstore has any VT-ACC shirts printed yet.
27 June 2003 / 0 Comments / Tags: realignment