ACC presidents pull trigger under fire

REALIGNMENT IN THE NEWS
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The Atlantic Coast Conference web site features a fancy graphic highlighting the league's celebration of its golden anniversary, accompanied by a prominent tagline: "Commemorating 50 years of excellence in intercollegiate athletics."

Next year, perhaps the site's editors will amend that tagline to add: "... And that 50th year was a doozie."

On a day that powerful voices from the league's heartland chimed in with disdain over recent events, the mud-wrestling match between the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East over schools the former has been trying to snatch from the latter appeared headed for a dramatic, unanticipated conclusion.

USA Today, The Washington Post and ESPN.com all reported overnight that the ACC's presidents had voted to issue invitations to Miami and Virginia Tech — abandoning all previous game plans as well as a pair of northern schools they had been hotly courting, Boston College and Syracuse.

Will Miami — with an alumni base rooted solidly in the northeast and which is thought to feel reluctant about the idea of departing the Big East unless accompanied by cultural cousins Boston College and Syracuse — take the bait?

Will Virginia Tech — a vociferous plaintiff against the ACC in a lawsuit aimed at halting the raid on the Big East — follow its heart or its brain, its fanbase or its lawyers? Will it be swayed by the fear of being labeled the ultimate symbol of college athletics hypocrisy?

Will Boston College and Syracuse instigate legal actions of their own, accusing the ACC of misleading them into an exposed position that has severely and irreparably damaged their relations with the Big East brethren they jilted for an irresistible siren song?

Will the nine-member ACC — in order to accommodate two divisions, logical scheduling and a football title game — feel compelled to quickly issue another invitation to round out the lot to 12 schools?

In any event, ACC commissioner John Swofford had little to say in the wake of the long and secretive umpteenth teleconference that led to the blockbuster decision — a decision the league office did not acknowledge.

"We are very close to reaching a definitive conclusion to this process," said Swofford in a statement. "We expect to have an announcement in the near future."

The end-game didn't come soon enough to head off another day of stinging criticism from a pair of Tobacco Road icons who are convinced the ACC strayed from its mission.

Former UNC System president William Friday was of the opinion the whole deal should be called off.

“I think the wisest thing now, given the turmoil we're in, is to just say wait a minute and grab the opportunity to show real leadership as a conference and say we’re just not going to talk about this any further right now,” Friday told Raleigh's Time Warner Cable News 14.

“For the first time in my experience you're seeing the intervention of politics in making decisions that are strictly academic and institutional issues,” Friday said. “That's not a good thing.”

Friday's reference to politics was in regards to the involvement of states' attorneys general in the lawsuit filed against the ACC by Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Rutgers and UConn.

Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski indicated the ACC hasn't distinguished itself in its aggressive efforts to annex several schools at the expense of the Big East, and he lent his support to a plan to add only Miami.

"I hope we mend fences because we've obviously gone into another person's yard with our tractor-trailer and knocked down a few trees," Krzyzewski said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

Rutgers had suggested a compromise, embraced by North Carolina chancellor James Moeser, that would allow Miami to join the ACC, but only as long as ACC officials agreed to end their bid to add other Big East schools.

02/23/2007 10:36:43 AM