That ACC invitation hasn’t gotten into the mail just yet. The twists and turns of the unforgettable 2003 Conference Realignment season produced wild euphoria among some Hokies and Roanoke media types as the prospects of Tech’s fifty-year quest to join the Atlantic Coast Conference seemed about to finally produce a successful conclusion. Things took a turn for the unexpected and unknown due to that now famous inability of ACC presidents to agree on much of anything. Once again fans of all schools involved were forced to agonize for a few more days of living on a thin line and sports columnists, including Internet ones, again sat at their keyboards pondering new ways to inform their readers that nothing happened. And so it goes.

It was thought an end to the expansion quagmire in which the ACC finds itself had been reached Wednesday when, after a few more hours of squabbling and bickering by ACC presidents, an exasperated John Swofford finally paid attention to Hoo President John Casteen’s proposal to invite Tech along with the usual suspects. This seemed to produce agreement among the presidents, a group no doubt very weary of spending so much time staring at telephone speaker boxes, and Georgia Tech President Wayne Clough was dispatched willy-nilly to our Tech to sound out Dr. Steger on the ACC becoming the only DI-A conference to contain two Techs.

It probably was a short conversation, as I don’t imagine President Clough had even finished his opening remarks before Dr. Steger blurted out, "Yes." Clough then related the good news to the command and lack of control bunker otherwise known as ACC headquarters in Greensboro while Dr. Steger worked on the most polite way to say "Adios" to what would be the BE4, producing squeals of consternation among that group as well as the amusing spectacle of calls for loyalty from the people who sold Tech out in 1994 and contributed to the destruction of our basketball program by consigning it to A-10 oblivion.

That lasted about seventy-two hours, the amount of time it took NC State Chancellor and expansion gadfly Marye Anne Fox to again change her mind, which she sprung on fellow presidents during Saturday morning’s conference call. She was calling from Italy, where she no doubt added to the length of this call by explaining that she was shopping and unable to determine which pair of Italian designer shoes to purchase. There followed Marye Anne’s latest change of heart a ‘meeting’ that has been described as "contentious," with "fraying tempers," although it is not known whether Florida State’s president offered to engage in fisticuffs to decide the issue. With 13 not being the lucky number, it was back to the drawing board and two more hours of some of the ACC honchos mumbling "I vote ‘No’" over and over. What fun times these conference calls must be.

Attitudes have hardened in the ACC along with arteries to go along with the soaring blood pressure readings, as what seemed in the beginning to be a simple act of piracy has degenerated into a full-fledged war between the ACC’s founding old guard of Duke and North Carolina and relative new kids on the block Florida State and Georgia Tech, over not only the future of the conference, but the determination of who runs this league, anyway. It is a battle that in many ways mirrors the Big East scuffles between football powers Tech and Miami against the basketball infrastructure.

Duke and North Carolina, the solid ‘No’ votes throughout, are in part reacting to serious expansion opposition from some very influential and well-heeled alumni. This is caused by basketball, specifically the allocation of ACC Tournament tickets. UNC Chancellor Moeser and Duke President Keohane have already caused much irritation by explaining that the tournament will only be in Greensboro and Charlotte no more than half the time in the future. They are now faced with the prospect of returning to a quarter of those same people and informing them that their tickets are history, period.

This is an issue of vital importance to the Blue Devils and Tar Heels. The ACC Tournament is an event of huge social importance in the state of North Carolina, and is not to be trifled with. Large numbers of people are pouring large amounts of large into the athletic and academic coffers of Duke and Carolina for those tickets, and they don’t like this expansion business one bit. Imagine Dr. Steger having to explain to several Platinum Hokies that they can no longer receive football season tickets for no good reason.

Duke has other motivations in play, also. The expansion debate has become enmeshed in other debates in the Duke community, ranging from the calls for a new basketball arena to Duke’s place in the overall athletic scheme of things. Following the 1999 expansion brouhaha, I attended a Duke ACC Tournament function at which Coach K spoke. He pointed out that Duke had much more in common athletically, academically and philosophically with schools such as Georgetown and St. John’s than it did with Florida State and Clemson, and one day Duke just might find themselves in just such an alignment. This claim was scoffed at by most in attendance, but it was true then and is now: expansion offers nothing whatsoever in a positive vein to Duke.

An ACC containing at least one more powerhouse with whom Carl Franks has no chance of competing and the metamorphosis of their splendid little basketball league into a huge conference that has sacrificed basketball and has become completely driven by football considerations is not a desirable one for Duke. While Duke associating with the Big East basketball schools who would welcome them with open arms would help things out a lot, solving the problem of fitting four expansion candidates into three available slots, it won’t happen in the short term that is so vital to Virginia Tech’s emergence as a football power.

Carolina once threw enough money at its football program to field a pretty good one, and they can probably do it again, but Duke cannot. This battle for the heart and soul of the ACC has very serious long-term consequences for the Blue Devils. That the ACC might not have a lot of influence in future BCS powwows is not a great concern of Duke’s, the ultimate basketball school. Duke and Carolina are periodically joined by NC State, where a decade of basketball mediocrity and the enthusiasm generated for the football program by song and dance man Chuck Amato has turned them into a pro-expansion football school, at least on even-numbered days.

Very different forces are driving the Southern Tier of Florida State, Clemson and Georgia Tech. They are up against the competitive disadvantage provided by the SEC, especially FSU, where the Noles have problems competing for television viewers in the vital Florida television market with the much more compelling schedule and television opportunities SEC membership provides arch-rival Florida. The FSU hierarchy, along with those of Georgia Tech and Clemson, which also have in-house SEC competition, considers an expansion that provides a better grade of opponent plus the excitement of a football championship necessary.

That the old blue guard keeps thwarting what the Southern Tier considers of vital importance to their futures shows them exactly what position they occupy in the ACC pecking order, and has led to some thinly veiled threats to leave the conference. The threats of bolting to the SEC or anywhere else are empty ones for all but perhaps FSU. While the SEC probably would love to have FSU teeing it up with Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama, it is hard to see much profit to be gained by adding Georgia Tech and Clemson, and the SEC command structure would show a little more spine were the Noles to demand that the Jackets and Tigers accompany them than did Swofford when presented with the same one by Miami President Donna Shalala.

There is also the little matter of ACC exit fees, estimated by the Greensboro newspaper to be over seven million dollars for any school stupid enough to want to leave such a profitable alliance. Most likely, those three schools are going nowhere, not to an SEC that would certainly balk at Georgia Tech and Clemson or to some future incarnation of a BABE.

And so expansion drags on, with the formerly well-respected men and women of the ACC President’s Council continuing to make fools of themselves while keeping college athletic fans both nervous at the future prospects for their schools and entertained at the high level of bumbling engaged in by these supposedly learned guys and gals. For expansion to happen, somebody is going to have to change a position clung to strongly for two months now or perhaps Chancellor Fox will get up on the expansion side of the bed Tuesday morning for the next conference call.

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