Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 30, 1990 TAG: 9007020166
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One possibility is the proposal, unveiled this week, for an expanded Metro, the conference with which Tech now is affiliated. Expansion would add new rivalries, the most important for Tech being West Virginia. And it would make football a Metro sport. Like other Metro schools, Tech is currently, and unenviably, a football independent.
Even better for Tech, however, would be membership in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Notre Dame opened the door to realignment in American college football when it pulled out of the College Football Association's television contract and cut its own multimillion-dollar deal. Then Penn State joined the Big Ten. Now there appears a possibility that the Federal Trade Commission will invalidate the CFA television package, involving 63 teams, on antitrust grounds.
If that happens, says Dick Schultz, executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, CFA schools will have "to go out on their own and get something attractive. Their individual conference may not be able to do that, but with a combination they might be able to maintain the status quo."
The motivation is money, of course, the lifeblood of big-time college sports. If the conferences will be negotiating with ABC, CBS, NBC and ESPN, they have to offer the most attractive and competitive matchups they can find.
In football, a traditionally strong power such as the Southeastern Conference has an advantage over the weaker ACC. But both conferences could be better (that is, bigger) than they are now. The Metro has weighed in first, but SEC and and ACC schools may well be interested in similar setups: as many as 16 teams, perhaps, in two divisions.
Such arrangements would not violate antitrust regulations, and these new superconferences would be attractive to the networks in terms of rivalries and ratings. There are any number of ways in which schools could arrange themselves.
For Virginia Tech, the most comfortable fit would be with an expanded ACC. To be sure, a 16-team, football-playing Metro would help Tech, but not as much as ACC membership. The ACC and a football-playing Metro might be roughly equal in level of competition. In basketball, the ACC is among the best in the country.
The crucial factors for Tech, however, are natural rivalries and geographic compactness. Tech could break links with such faraway schools as Tulane, Memphis State, Southern Mississippi and Louisville; it could establish ties with such neighbors as Virginia, North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest.
Tech is a more logical and compatible choice than others mentioned for the ACC, including some (such as West Virginia) that the Metro now is trying to recruit.
And such a move would make sense for an expanded ACC as well as for Tech.
The ACC could extend its existing borders slightly and become a streamlined 12-team league: the present eight schools plus Tech, Florida State and South Carolina (from the current Metro) and West Virginia. It might not be a perfect package, but it would be a strong one.
No question, Tech is in a dicey situation. If the ACC won't take Tech, then Tech needs to stay in the Metro and work for its expansion. And until now, the ACC has made it clear it's not interested in Tech.
But if major-college football in fact is about to undergo major realignment, the ACC just might get interested. That's too good an option for Tech to foreclose.
by CNB