My peripheral role in the TSL shop is to provide some sort of insight, no matter how feeble and ill-informed it might be, and hopefully to inject a little humor into things. That has proven to be a very difficult task this time around, as I can find nothing funny about these grim proceedings other than gallows humor that I doubt would be received very well [certainly �Proactivity Now� went over like a lead balloon] and my heart is really not into attempting to pen. These days it is not easy being a Hokie.

I believed Tech belonged in the ACC, and still do, but it is not to be. I do not assign blame or nefarious motives to Virginia President Casteen. He has much more on the ball than a handful of dim-witted message board frogs, and knew the stakes involved both for Virginia Tech and the Commonwealth, from the athletic and economic standpoints to everything else. I am convinced he worked for Virginia Tech and finally found himself alone on an island in a position that is likely to bite him one day in future dealings with his conference. He is an honorable man who chose an honorable position and stuck with it, certainly a refreshing departure from what we see in the Big East these days.

Likewise, Governor Warner tried his best for Tech. Politicians are not known for expending political capital in what they perceive as lost causes, and I believe the Governor, like President Casteen, sincerely believed they could work Tech into the ACC. I also do not for one second accept as true the proposition that Duke and Carolina changed their positions on expansion simply as a means of providing cover for the Hoos. I tend to believe that they regarded expansion as inevitable, and while not exactly lying back and enjoying it, decided to influence things in order to determine who would be in, or, more specifically, who would not be. Not much has changed in fifty years along Tobacco Road, at least in certain ways of thinking.

The justification for expansion coming from the ACC�s Greensboro expansion war room seemed to change by the day. The pre-meeting roar of �Mo Money� was shot down by Disney executives, leading Johnny�s boys to quickly adopt a rallying cry of �The future is now,� and when that failed to produce the desired results was followed with the shouting fire in a crowded theatre approach, a wail of �We�re all gonna die� if expansion was not approved, a panic-inducing tactic that, in the end, finally worked. The eat or be eaten argument that finally allowed ACC Commissioner John Swofford to shove expansion down the throats of a resisting Duke and Carolina like a mother feeding Brussels sprouts to a three-year old leads one to speculate as to exactly what Florida State AD Dave Hart told the ACC, something uttered within days of the conclusion of a 2001 season that saw Maryland finally break FSU�s stranglehold on the league football championship. It was enough to convince Swofford that expansion HAD to be done this time.

There were kernels of truth amid the hyperbole of all of the pro-expansion arguments, and Swofford just might have been scared into believing that the diabolical SEC might have cooked up a plan for a super conference of sixteen teams, an Eastern and Western conference composed of four-team geographical pods of Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Tennessee and Vanderbilt in the East along with Florida State, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, combined with a Western one of Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi State and Ole Miss in one pod and LSU, Arkansas, Texas and Texas A&M in the other. This would have shoved the ACC right out of the BCS topography and had to be dealt with. Unless a fourth Florida powerhouse magically appears on the football landscape in the next few days, ACC expansion will checkmate that plan and likely mothball it for a very long time. 

Of the chosen teams, Syracuse will become the first school in the history of the ACC to be issued a membership invitation that it does not desire. AD Jake Crouthamel is involved in efforts to save the Big East, but in the end will have no choice but to go along with Miami for his school�s athletic future. I did wonder why Boston College was chosen when it seems UConn has so much more to offer as a large state university running a well-financed athletic program that has a large and enthusiastic fan base, assets noticeable only by their absence on Chestnut Hill. BC has maximized its athletic potential, one that will find them near the bottom of the expanded ACC. The Eagles continue to clutch the hope that their twenty-year attempt to have the NCAA grant Doug Flutie another year of eligibility will bear fruition, but it hasn�t seemed to work so far.

UConn would appear to have been more advantageous to the ACC than Boston College except in one area, the one that was most important to Swofford and Miami President Donna Shalala: that of Athletic Director. Crouthamel is a strong AD who is fighting to save the Big East, and UConn AD Lew Perkins would have done the same. On the other hand, BC AD Gene DeFilippo has hidden behind the skirt of Donna Shalala and is holding on for dear life, and when she strides to the ACC with purposeful steps he will be clinging to that skirt and running along, attempting to keep up. Somebody chose wisely.

It is said that money is the root of all evil. That is certainly a debatable point, but it is an absolute truism that money is the root of all conference expansion. There is a reason the ACC is preparing to dismember the Big East and not the other way around, and it has much to do with why the little fish do not eat the big ones and three-legged gazelles do not chase down lions. The ACC has much money and the Big East has comparatively little. This is the way of life in the oceans, savannah, and the corporate boardrooms that now dominate collegiate athletics. 

The ACC acted, and it is with the certain knowledge that ACC bids are soon to be on the table that the Big East now meets. The atmosphere is probably not the most cordial ever seen at this annual junket, where golf and cocktails usually rule. It can be assumed that WVU AD Ed Pastilong did not greet Miami AD Paul Dee with the usual �Hello Paul. What�s new?� Several schools whose athletic fates hang in the balance, including Tech�s, wait and watch to see what BE Commissioner Mike Tranghese can conjure up.

We had better hope that there is something more than the ridiculous notion that Florida State, Georgia Tech and Maryland can be persuaded to abandon a strong league for a weak one. It also needs to be a little more concrete than simply begging Miami to stay or appealing to a loyalty that seems to be non-existent. Tranghese needs to somehow play the Notre Dame card, and, quite frankly, it is hard to see why the Irish would play, given that, if worse comes to worst, there is another stable and highly profitable league (the Big Ten) awaiting them if they so choose, which must make Pittsburgh quite nervous. While the new Pitt AD is not attending the BE meetings, he can be expected to be in Chicago later this week caddying, waiting tables and bartending in the hopes of a really big tip. It is likely to be wasted labor, however, if Notre Dame decides that future BCS realities absolutely require they join a conference. That would seem to make the selling job by Tranghese that much tougher. But Tech�s future depends on it. When ACC officials speak of locking up the entire eastern seaboard, they do not mean the entire eastern seaboard with the exception of a strong football program smack in the middle of the expanded ACC range.

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