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'Love advice' needed for ACC-Big East spat?
From staff and wire reports
[ Originally posted 06.11.03. ]
RICHMOND, Va. Could 'marriage counseling' soothe the
bitterness that has erupted in the relationship between two partners who got
intimately involved with each other through the Bowl Championship Series?
Virginia Gov. Mark Warner urged the NCAA or an outside
mediator to intercede in the clash between the Atlantic Coast Conference and
the Big East over the former's plan to expand at the expense of the latter.
Warner sees mediation as a better alternative for both
parties and for the state of Virginia which happens to have relatives on
both sides of the fight than a protracted and expensive legal battle.
In a statement released Tuesday, Warner said the state's "interests as a
whole will be ensured" if both Virginia of the ACC and Virginia Tech of the
Big East stay in major conferences.
NCAA president Myles Brand said his organization has no
authority to intervene in the right of schools to determine their own
conference affiliations.
In a statement released Tuesday, Brand also said the
organization would provide whatever help it could, including third-party
mediation if "an invitation to do so was forthcoming from all parties."
Warner's remarks came one day after reports that two schools
voting in favor of pursuing the addition of Miami, Boston College and
Syracuse to the ACC were having second thoughts, and four days after five
Big East schools sued trying to stop the raid of their league.
Officials at Duke and North Carolina have developed serious
concerns about adding the three schools. The ACC needs the approval of seven
of its nine schools to go forward with expansion.
One of the potential losers in the expansion is Virginia
Tech. Tech was rejected by the ACC schools for expansion, and would go from
a Big East football powerhouse to a school with an uncertain athletics
future if three of the Big East's best teams leave for the new
super-conference.
In a conference call Tuesday, representatives of the five
schools that are suing spoke favorably of mediation and defended their
lawsuit as a necessary step to stop the perceived rapid destruction of their
league.
"We're in a position where events were moving very quickly,"
Pittsburgh president Mark Nordenberg said of the lawsuit. "We faced the
prospect of irreparable harm. We had a responsibility to protect our
conference and its institutions and we took steps to do that."
Virginia Tech president Charles Steger called the lawsuit "a
last resort" that highlighted the fact that the stakes are huge, especially
for the school facing the prospect of being left in a weakened league.
Mediation, Nordenberg said, might yield "plans by which two
conferences operate, coexist and become stronger in years ahead."
That idea, in addition to the misgivings expressed at Duke
and North Carolina, could give new hope to schools that seemed resigned to
Miami, Boston College and Syracuse leaving.
Concerns about expansion at Duke, revealed in an e-mail sent
by university president Nan Keohane, said the Blue Devils were prepared to
vote against expansion unless additional issues about student welfare,
travel costs and divisional alignment were addressed by the ACC.
"I voted in favor of entering formal conversations for
collegial reasons," Keohane wrote in the e-mail, sent Friday. "I believe
that was the right decision at the time. However, I am now concerned that
the kinds of substantive discussions we anticipated before a final vote
would be taken have not materialized, and show no prospect of doing so."
North Carolina president James Moeser sent a letter to the
ACC presidents Thursday expressing similar concerns. Moeser did not
immediately return a phone call seeking additional comment, but was to
participate in a conference call among the league's presidents Tuesday.
The potential glitch comes three days after the five Big
East schools sued the ACC, Miami and Boston College to try to stop the teams
from defecting. Unresolved, it could put Virginia President John T. Casteen
III in position to scuttle the expansion plan by also voting against it.
Casteen has maintained that he believes Virginia Tech would
be a good fit for the ACC, and that he will continue to support its
candidacy.
Casteen decided to "let the ACC process runs its course" and
would not have any comment, school spokeswoman Carol Wood said. Steger said
he is confident his counterpart will "do what he thinks is right."
No other presidents at ACC schools have publicly expressed
concerns about the expansion plan, but speculation by some in the media that
the deal would materialize as early as Tuesday did not pan out.
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Bonesville.net and The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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02/23/2007 10:36:36 AM
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