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Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
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Wilkie01 Offline
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Post: #41
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3
10-08-2013 04:44 PM
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CrazyPaco Offline
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Post: #42
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 04:43 PM)orangefan Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 04:17 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  And the whole UConn moving up thing really sprung as part of the compromise to invite RU and WVU in as full members.

Correct. UConn had an invitation regardless of what happened with VT, Temple, or whoever based upon a compromise that was reached when RU and WVU were added for basketball. However, with the NCAA requirement to have 8 all sports members playing football to be an FBS conference, the conference needed UConn to make a decision so it could know whether UConn would count towards the 8.

I think it might have been a BCS minimum to retain the autobid, not NCAA. I'm not sure. But that is splitting hairs.
10-08-2013 04:48 PM
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CrazyPaco Offline
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Post: #43
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
One thing is clear. The Big East, literally, was one giant crisis after another for the entire length of its history. With the ACC having an apparent decade plus of stability now locked in, it is something that Pitt, SU, BC, VT, Miami, Louisville and ND haven't been able to enjoy in a long time. It's time to do some serious damage on the field instead of the board room.
10-08-2013 04:55 PM
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4x4hokies Offline
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Post: #44
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 04:44 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3

Did you run out of threads to troll on the AAC board?
10-08-2013 04:55 PM
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Wilkie01 Offline
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Post: #45
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
You must be young, because, if you are not you have selective memory loss. Louisville and Virginia Tech hated each other as bad as Pitt and West Virginia do. 07-coffee3
10-08-2013 05:00 PM
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ChrisLords Offline
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Post: #46
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 04:44 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3

Yeah, I'll remember that the 1 time in the next 13 years we actually play each other.

I'd be in favor of trading other division partners with UVA so VT could have Louisville and UVA could have BC.

Or swap GT with Louisville and have VT's other division partner be GT. Either way it works out the same for VT.
10-08-2013 05:46 PM
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omniorange Offline
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Post: #47
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 11:46 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 10:59 AM)omniorange Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 10:06 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  Wow, that is spectacular. What a fantastic read, thanks for that. I can't believe in all the reading I've done about expansion, I never came across that. I'd read a lot of the sources, but never that piece.

And right on with this:

"The one thing about the whole ACC expansion process that makes me shiver like I’m walking past a graveyard is how ignorant the ACC presidents appeared to be of Virginia Tech, dismissing the Hokies early in the process without knowing much about VT’s athletic finances, academic support, and fan support. With the exception of John Casteen, the ACC presidents were quick to dismiss the Hokies in favor of BC and Syracuse early in the process, without doing their homework. Why? Because Shalala gave those terms to the ACC athletic directors and John Swofford, and they passed them on to the presidents. It’s a good thing for Virginia Tech that Casteen forced the ACC presidents into taking a closer look at VT."

The ACC has made a lot of dumb moves over the years, which I could easily list. But the biggest mistake of all was one that they were saved from despite themselves.

I keep telling myself that this is a new ACC that finally "gets it." I think the moves of the last couple years strongly support that view. But I shudder to think if that hadn't broken the way it did and they didn't add VT.

To this day, many still do not understand what was truly happening back in 2003. It wasn't that the ACC wasn't aware of VT's football prowess, it was assumed that they were always going to be there for the taking if needed.

And of course, BC and SU were not going to give the ACC what they claimed either, the conference of the entire East Coast. Which is why it made no sense to the everyday sports fan when Swofford used that to justify the expansion.

Just as in 2010, the BiG's real targets were ND, Texas, and either A&M or Nebraska, the ACC's endgame was Miami, ND, and quite possibly PSU (remember the BTN wasn't a factor back then), but definitely they wanted BOTH Miami and ND.

But unlike the egotistical Delany who truly believed he could get three of their four targets above thanks to the BTN (but had to settle for only Nebraska), Swofford knew the ACC had no chance of getting all three of Miami, ND, and PSU right then and there. The ACC needed to do it in increments. Miami had already said they wanted both BC and SU. The thinking was ND would want Pitt and BC while PSU would want any two of BC, SU, and Pitt.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2003 expansion and that was ND was showing interest immediately, at least in terms of a partial football membership. And swelled heads like Fox at NC State, Wetherell at FSU, and the Virginia president whose name escapes me for the moment thought they had both Miami (they couldn't go back to the Big East after the stink the jilted BE football schools put up) and ND (believing the Irish had no place to go with the BE falling apart) so they overruled Swofford and told him to secure Miami (which required VT, something the presidents at FSU, GT, and Clemson knew and were probably "in" on it with UVa) and then aggressively pursue ND.

The result was ND couldn't bring themselves to be even a partial with an exclusively southern conference away from their core strength - the Northeast. And even though VT provided way more in terms of football than either SU or BC would have, the truth is the TV money was basically a wash and ACC football still took a dive mostly due to Miami and FSU both taking steps backward.

So no need to "shudder". Swofford knows the prize and has managed to go about trying to secure it in the only way it can be secured (if it can ever be secured), in increments.

Cheers,
Neil

Even if that is 100% true, and I don't agree that it is (we had a pretty good source on that while it was going on) it was still almost a massive mistake.

One, it turns out that it was Syracuse that was available all along, and I think we can safely say BC would have been as well.

Sure both SU and BC would have been available as well. But what NOT taking SU turned out to be was keeping the Big East and a safe haven option for ND alive. It also could have led to ND, SU, Pitt, and MD joining the BiG in 2010 along with Nebraska. Again, Delaney's ego of wanting RU before either SU or Pitt cost him any shot he had at ND and longshot wise could have potentially also cost the league PSU.


Quote:However, does anyone thing VT would have remained outside the clutches of the SEC all these years? Maybe that's the way it looked in 2004 to Swofford, but it was absurdly wrong.

It was all over by 2004. The decisions were made in 2002 and acted upon in 2003. And yes, VT would have been an attractive eastern option for the SEC when A&M became available in 2011.

But, would the ACC have cared if they had already pulled off Miami and ND (not to mention the unthinkable, getting PSU as well)? That was the thinking. Not saying it was right or wrong for the conference overall. Just stating where the vision was heading.

Quote:And it's not like hindsight is 20/20, many of us at the time felt that what the ACC desparately needed was football success and high profile matchups, and not some 30 year plan to maybe, sorta, if things go right, some day have some kind of sweet relationship with Notre Dame.

And football fans of these institutions should think like that. But none of that changes the fact that having VT did not make the ACC a viable football conference and it certainly didn't it make it a stable one. They simply were not either with both FSU and Miami down. They struggled to look better than the Big East during that time frame.

What has the ACC looking good again in football now is the fact that the 4 best football programs in the league are all doing well this year so far.

But what made the ACC a stable, viable conference again that wasn't in danger of being pulled apart were the additions of SU and Pitt which led to getting ND as a partial member. And that all happened before the ACC doing well in football came about.

That's the reality of it. Plain and simple.

None of what I have said is meant to be a knock on VT and it certainly isn't meant to make SU look like a better pick one on one in comparison with the Hokies. It's said to bring the big picture view to the table that sometimes the one-o-one comparisons just can't.

Cheers,
Neil
10-08-2013 06:56 PM
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omniorange Offline
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Post: #48
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 12:41 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  Lou, I think your assessment of VT is correct if only because not getting VT in 2003 would have seen the Hokies join the SEC along with A&M in 2012. The ACC w/o VT would have forced Swafford to accept deals far less palatable than Louisville and partial ND to ensure conference stability. I'm talking about partial Texas along with TT and either Baylor of TCU, moves that would have fundamentally undermined the ACC.

But again. If the ACC had pulled off the unimaginable and gotten Miami, ND (partial for 7 years with full membership by 2011), PSU or Pitt, BC and SU, would the ACC have cared?

I'm not sure they would have. It was a risk Swofford and the consultants the ACC hired thought was worth taking. But as they say, the best laid plans...

Or another way to look at it, is what was meant to be will be.

Btw, nothing prevents VT from leaving the ACC for the SEC now or in the future.

Cheers,
Neil
(This post was last modified: 10-08-2013 07:05 PM by omniorange.)
10-08-2013 07:05 PM
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omniorange Offline
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Post: #49
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 04:44 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3

Which is why they should be your cross-divisional rival instead of UVa.

Cheers,
Neil
10-08-2013 07:06 PM
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XLance Offline
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Post: #50
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 07:05 PM)omniorange Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 12:41 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  Lou, I think your assessment of VT is correct if only because not getting VT in 2003 would have seen the Hokies join the SEC along with A&M in 2012. The ACC w/o VT would have forced Swafford to accept deals far less palatable than Louisville and partial ND to ensure conference stability. I'm talking about partial Texas along with TT and either Baylor of TCU, moves that would have fundamentally undermined the ACC.

But again. If the ACC had pulled off the unimaginable and gotten Miami, ND (partial for 7 years with full membership by 2011), PSU or Pitt, BC and SU, would the ACC have cared?

I'm not sure they would have. It was a risk Swofford and the consultants the ACC hired thought was worth taking. But as they say, the best laid plans...

Or another way to look at it, is what was meant to be will be.

Btw, nothing prevents VT from leaving the ACC for the SEC now or in the future.

Cheers,
Neil

Would have been one heck of a conference..........
btw we still have room for PSU and ND.
10-08-2013 07:51 PM
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omniorange Offline
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RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 07:51 PM)XLance Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 07:05 PM)omniorange Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 12:41 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  Lou, I think your assessment of VT is correct if only because not getting VT in 2003 would have seen the Hokies join the SEC along with A&M in 2012. The ACC w/o VT would have forced Swafford to accept deals far less palatable than Louisville and partial ND to ensure conference stability. I'm talking about partial Texas along with TT and either Baylor of TCU, moves that would have fundamentally undermined the ACC.

But again. If the ACC had pulled off the unimaginable and gotten Miami, ND (partial for 7 years with full membership by 2011), PSU or Pitt, BC and SU, would the ACC have cared?

I'm not sure they would have. It was a risk Swofford and the consultants the ACC hired thought was worth taking. But as they say, the best laid plans...

Or another way to look at it, is what was meant to be will be.

Btw, nothing prevents VT from leaving the ACC for the SEC now or in the future.

Cheers,
Neil

Would have been one heck of a conference..........
btw we still have room for PSU and ND.

True, but ND needs to want to be a full member and the ACC will either need its own successful ACCN or somehow have the BTN become meaningless.

Both of those are longshots at this point in time, the latter moreso than the former. And its not as if I give much hope for the former with the current ND administration, unlike the admins that were around in 2003.

Cheers,
Neil
10-08-2013 07:59 PM
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CK42NC Offline
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Post: #52
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
04-cheersI Second that one! It sounds it would be special!


(10-08-2013 07:06 PM)omniorange Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 04:44 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3

Which is why they should be your cross-divisional rival instead of UVa.

Cheers,
Neil
10-08-2013 08:23 PM
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ChrisLords Offline
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Post: #53
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 07:05 PM)omniorange Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 12:41 PM)vandiver49 Wrote:  Lou, I think your assessment of VT is correct if only because not getting VT in 2003 would have seen the Hokies join the SEC along with A&M in 2012. The ACC w/o VT would have forced Swafford to accept deals far less palatable than Louisville and partial ND to ensure conference stability. I'm talking about partial Texas along with TT and either Baylor of TCU, moves that would have fundamentally undermined the ACC.

But again. If the ACC had pulled off the unimaginable and gotten Miami, ND (partial for 7 years with full membership by 2011), PSU or Pitt, BC and SU, would the ACC have cared?

I'm not sure they would have. It was a risk Swofford and the consultants the ACC hired thought was worth taking. But as they say, the best laid plans...

Or another way to look at it, is what was meant to be will be.

Btw, nothing prevents VT from leaving the ACC for the SEC now or in the future.

Cheers,
Neil

Nothing except the GoR, the $50 million dollar exit fee that goes up every year and the fact that when Texas A&M joined that VT told the SEC they had no interest in leaving the ACC unless other schools were going to leave first. The SEC showed interest and VT said we have no interest.
10-08-2013 08:35 PM
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Dr. Isaly von Yinzer Offline
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Post: #54
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 04:44 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  At the end of the day, there is no love lost between Virginia Tech (a/k/a: VPI) and Louisville. So this discussion only makes it clear, the ACC games between VPI and Louisville will be wars. 07-coffee3

No, I get that. Just make sure that you handle yourself properly. Don't become to the ACC what WVU fans were to the Big East. You are better than that - that's all I'm saying.
10-08-2013 08:55 PM
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ohio1317 Offline
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Post: #55
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
Fantastic link. Read the whole thing.
10-08-2013 09:54 PM
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Post: #56
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
(10-08-2013 03:12 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 02:07 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 01:33 PM)brista21 Wrote:  
(10-08-2013 12:15 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote:  However, I think the funniest line of the whole series of articles is how the author states "but in 1994, the [Rutgers Scarlett] Knights had a pretty strong football team". My lord, that is ridiculous revisionist history beyond the pale.

Mostly just reading the thread in a very entertained fashion, but this needed a response. Pretty strong was hyperbolic yes, but the '94 squad wasn't bad. People forget that we were only horrific in the late 90s early 00s. We were just mediocre for most of the history of the program or we were good but against inferior competition.

Yeah, remember this article was from 2004. So the 94 era did look pretty good compared to where they were when this article was written, if not compared to the relative "success" of more recent teams.

By my definition of mediocre, Rutgers was not a mediocre program for most of its history. Really, not until Schiano turned things around and they started to dump money into football could it claim mediocrity. Most of its history, until the 80s, Rutgers played a 1AA/FCS type of schedule. So bad was their schedule, that in 1976 when Rutgers went 11-0, it got no bowl invite and finished only 17th in the polls.

The 1993 and 1994 Pitt teams were horrid, and they still beat Rutgers for two of their combined six wins. The teams that I saw at Rutgers in those days could hardly be labeled even as "average" as one would typically talk about "average" or "mediocre" programs across the landscape of college football today. Perhaps the 5-5-1 squad was historically one of the better Rutgers teams to that point, but that just tells you had bad the state of that program was back then. I'm not just referencing on the field performance, it was their terrible facilities and, not unimportantly, the bottom line support (if not hostility) of the school to the athletic department. RU could have easily gone the way of Temple (and actually, so could have Pitt).

That's a fair assessment.
10-08-2013 10:49 PM
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Wilkie01 Offline
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Post: #57
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
When I lived in Newport News, VA Tech and William & Mary were my favorite VA schools. I still like the Hokies, but not at the expense of the Cardinals. 07-coffee3
10-08-2013 10:56 PM
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PhiladelphiaVT Offline
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Post: #58
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
Reading that series of articles brought back some gut-wrenching memories for me. How well I remember the series of events that took place in April/May/June of 2003---I was on on the internet for hours every day following the ACC expansion drama. When the ACC voted 8-1 in late May to send a delegation to inspect Miami/Boston College/Syracuse for ACC membership I was convinced those three would promptly receive their official membership invitations--as, historically, inspection visits were a mere formality.

So after all the difficulties Virginia Tech had experienced over the decades trying to find a permanent all-sports conference home (the history of which Will Stewart outlined) and after finally finding such a home in the Big East--it seemed certain that once again Tech would be on the losing end of conference realignment. And then, just a week or so later, VT became the first Big East school to be offered ACC membership. Talk about a shock! I've always wondered why North Carolina and Duke reversed themselves so late in the game and voted against expansion. Unfortunately, Will's articles failed to shed any light on that crucial development. And because he stood by Virginia Tech throughout the whole ACC expansion ordeal, President Casteen became (and remains) a pariah to many University of Virginia fans and supporters. To me the man is a hero.
10-09-2013 12:11 AM
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Hokie Mark Online
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Post: #59
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
No doubt, 2 of the better ACC additions were Va Tech and later Louisville.

The author refers to some of the actions in the past as back-stabbing. I lived through all of this, and honestly I never felt "betrayed". Frustrated, yes! I kept wondering "what does VT have to do to get invited to join the ACC?" (the league I always wanted the Hokies to join). The fact that we were voted out of the Metro... meh. By then it was only a shadow of its former self anyway.
10-09-2013 04:37 AM
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Post: #60
RE: Expansion through the years from a Virginia Tech perspective (Metro/BE/ACC)
Duke and Carolina have usually been the most adamant against expansion, we always wanted the round table basketball and football schedules. From what I heard a long time time ago when we realized it was going to happen one way or another we listened to our friends at UVA and Wake, mainly UVA, and decided perhaps 10 is a good enough number so we voted for Tech. If they would have had it their way that's as far as we would have went but negotiations by swoff and other schools eventually changed our minds.

Either way that was a great read, crazy to think how different the landscape would be today
10-09-2013 04:48 AM
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