orangefan
Heisman
Posts: 5,218
Joined: Mar 2007
Reputation: 358
I Root For: Syracuse
Location: New England
|
RE: Why did the Great Midwest Conference form?
(09-12-2017 09:48 PM)Fighting Muskie Wrote: (09-12-2017 07:57 PM)solohawks Wrote: (09-12-2017 07:37 PM)gosports1 Wrote: (09-12-2017 12:58 PM)MU88 Wrote: (09-11-2017 09:30 PM)gosports1 Wrote: i want to hear more about Marquette/St johns incident in 91! I never heard Marquette was in play back then
Back in 91, the BE bball schools agreed to add the football schools, but wanted another of their own. Evidently, the deal was that the bball school would agree to adding football to the conference, and then vote to add the slate of the football schools. Thereafter, there would be a vote to consider the addition of one, non-football school. I think it was to equalize the numbers of full time members, 7 to 7. The MU AD told me that MU was that non-football school. At the last minute, SJU flip flopped after the football schools were admitted and voted against adding any further members. So, there were not enough votes to add the non-football school. Take it for what its worth, but the story came directly from the MU AD.[/align]
interesting never heard that. in 91 however I think the fb schools were fb only . it was around 95 that WVU and Rutgers were offered full membership. VaTech was not. About same time ND also came on board
Why did the Big East make Va Tech wait 5 years after WVU and Rutgers got full invites and Notre Dame came on board?
Snobbery. VT wasn't their type of school and I think they were viewed as rural upstarts. I wonder if VT had been treated better by the Big East if they would have been so anxious to pull political strings to grab Syracuse's ACC invite and jump ship?
Former Syracuse AD Jake Crouthamel described the event in an article on the SU website. http://cuse.com/sports/2001/8/8/history2.aspx
Quote:At the NCAA Convention in San Antonio in January of 1994, I was asked by Neil Pilson, then president of CBS Sports, to meet with him. The meeting was a shocker. CBS had been out of the college football business for some time with ABC/ESPN claiming all the exclusive rights. This was CBS's opportunity to get back in. It had reached an agreement with the SEC for football and basketball, and needed BIG EAST inventory to round out its programming. CBS laid a lot of money on the table for exclusive national network rights of The BIG EAST Conference for football and basketball. We pointed out to CBS that we could not represent the non-football playing schools in the BIG EAST for their basketball rights. The response from CBS was that it would then assume the basketball rights for the eight BIG EAST football schools. A total mess! We were looking at a situation where B.C., Pitt, Miami and Syracuse were being asked by CBS to pull its basketball television rights away from The BIG EAST Conference. Clearly, we couldn't do that and remain in The BIG EAST Conference. On the other hand, we couldn't reject the amount of money CBS was offering for the package deal.
After meeting with CBS the directors of B.C., Pitt, Miami and I met. I suggested that the only shot we had at keeping everything together and at the same time benefiting from the CBS largesse was to get a majority vote by "packing the court." To do that we needed to get two football schools accepted as new members of The BIG EAST Conference. In order to accomplish that we needed seven votes from the ten members, the four IA schools and three more. We believed UConn and Villanova would support us because both were talking about elevating their football programs to Division IA. That left one vote to coerce. If we could get it, we would be at 12 members, with a 6-6 representation of Division IA, and a 6-2 vote in the football conference. We could then force the vote on the football side, needing only one more vote on the basketball side to approve the CBS package offer.
This plan was presented to the 10 BIG EAST Directors and met with immediate and firm resistance by the non-IA schools. Once again football was driving the membership issue. After several futile and very long meetings among the directors, no resolution could be reached. The voting of the directors was split with the IA and IAA schools on one side and the basketball schools on the other. We turned the matter over to the presidents of our 10 schools to make the final decision. After two meetings a decision was reached in March, 1994, ironically at the Lubin House in New York City, the day before BIG EAST men's basketball tournament was to begin. St. Johns had represented a very strong anti-expansion position throughout our discussions. However, once the president became involved, and with the input of then head men's basketball coach Lou Carnesecca, the long-term implications were understood, and we had our seventh vote. Rutgers and West Virginia were added as our 11th and 12th members. There were, however, some very bitter and lingering feelings both about the process and the result. There was one condition attached to the agreement and one understanding. The condition was that should the University of Connecticut and/or Villanova move their football programs to Division IA within a given period of time, either or both would be invited to participate in The BIG EAST Football Conference as a full members. This is happening at UConn. The understanding was that the six Division IA member schools would not block acceptance of a 13th member which might have a Division IA football program but not be included in The BIG EAST Football Conference; i.e., Notre Dame. In June, 1994 Notre Dame officially became the 13th member in all sports except football.
And the take from a VT fan here: http://virginiatech.sportswar.com/articl...1990-1994/
They definitely got screwed.
Quote:1994: The infamous Big East snub
On another front, the CFA football TV contracts with the networks were about to expire at the end of the 1995 season, and conferences were beginning to negotiate their own TV deals, to take effect with the 1996 season. The CFA’s contracts with ABC/ESPN had limited college football exposure for years, but with CBS now a player, the opportunity was ripe for conferences to get increased dollars and exposure for their football programs. CBS had been out of the business of broadcasting college football since 1990, but with the loss of their NFL contract to the upstart Fox network, CBS was looking for new sports properties to sign up. College football looked like a prime candidate.
What did that have to do with Big East expansion? Simple, or maybe not so simple: CBS was negotiating with the conference for a combination football/basketball TV contract, but only for the eight schools that played football.
Huh?
You read that right. CBS was ready to sign a contract with the Big East’s eight football-playing schools not just for football, but for basketball. Ponder that a minute. On the football side it was a clean proposal, but on the basketball side, it was a mess. If the football schools signed a contract with CBS for basketball, it would give CBS rights to broadcast the hoops games of four schools that weren’t even in the Big East for basketball — schools such as Tech and Temple — but it wouldn’t give CBS the rights to broadcast games for the Big East basketball-only schools — schools such as St. John’s and Georgetown.
For the Big East, there were two solutions: (1) have the eight football schools break away into a new all-sports conference, making the TV contracts clean and simple; or (2) absorb the four football-only schools, which legally would make the new CBS basketball contract the property of all 14 schools, not just the eight football schools.
Heading into 1994, that was the situation, and you can see that either outcome was good for the Hokies. They would either be in an expanded Big East or in a new eight-team all-sports conference. Hokie fans were giddy with anticipation, and the issue was expected to be resolved in January or February of 1994.
In February, with Big East expansion still unresolved, CBS forced the issue by signing the eight BE football schools to a five-year, $72 million contract, $55 million of which was for football, and $17 million of which was for basketball. (As an aside, CBS also signed the SEC up to a five-year, $85 million deal for both football and basketball).
Within a week, ABC/ESPN followed suit, signing a five-year, $22 million contract with the eight football schools, bringing the total to $94 million over five years, or nearly $19 million a year. This really applied the pressure to the Big East football schools to expand the league or break away.
A breakaway looked like the most likely outcome, because 7 of 10 votes were needed for expansion, and at least four of the six basketball-only schools were staunchly opposed to expansion. A breakaway was such a near-certainty that in mid-February, athletic directors of the football schools met and drew up operating procedures for the anticipated new league. The four-team “Syracuse group” of Syracuse, BC, Pitt, and Miami, led by Syracuse AD Jake Crouthamel, pledged a breakaway if the league presidents didn’t vote for a four-team expansion.
On Wednesday, March 9, 1994, Big East presidents voted on expansion. But instead of membership in a 14-team league or an eight-team breakaway league, Virginia Tech got a knife in the back.
The news came back from the meeting: the league had voted for a two-team expansion of WVU and Rutgers, and Tech and Temple were left out in the cold.
When push came to shove, the Syracuse group didn’t have the guts to break away from the league that Crouthamel had helped found. In addition to the loyalty issue, which Crouthamel felt especially strong about, it would have cost the Syracuse group millions of dollars by requiring them to each pay $1-$2 million in exit fees, plus give up the NCAA basketball tournament revenue-sharing units the league had built up, worth about $400,000 a year.
So they protected their flanks by pulling in expansion properties Rutgers and WVU, while leaving out Virginia Tech and Temple, whom no one else wanted.
The shocked Hokies rightfully felt betrayed, but as often happens in expansion, what the athletic directors wanted and what the school presidents agreed to turned out to be two different things. The question remains, who came up with the idea of the two-team expansion? In a retrospective written in 2000 and posted on the Syracuse web site, Crouthamel wrote:
After meeting with CBS the directors of B.C., Pitt, Miami and I met. I suggested that the only shot we had at keeping everything together and at the same time benefiting from the CBS largesse was to get a majority vote by “packing the court.” To do that we needed to get two football schools accepted [emphasis added] as new members of The BIG EAST Conference.
In so saying, Crouthamel takes credit for the idea, singling himself out as the backstabber. But in a March 30, 1994 article in Husky Blue and White, then-UConn president Harry Hartley took credit for the compromise idea.
The decision stung, but there was little the Hokies could do about it, other than fume. The Big East poured salt on the wound by declaring a five-year moratorium on expansion … then within a year, inviting Notre Dame in for all sports but football, making the league an unwieldy 13-team conglomeration.
The Hokies had been put in their place. They were not wanted.
(This post was last modified: 09-13-2017 09:14 AM by orangefan.)
|
|