The weather at Virginia Beach was wonderful. With the ending of the ACC expansion drama, I found that personal decompression was required, and only a few hours after the final expansion vote was taken, the only one that counted, I was heading east. I spent a few days engaging in some of my favorite activities that do not involve Tech sports: gorging on fresh seafood, walking along the beach at dawn watching the sun rise on the Atlantic and a new era of Virginia Tech athletics [well, so maybe it did involve Tech sports] and spending quite a bit of time relaxing on a sixth floor balcony with my feet on the railing and a cooler of iced adult beverages nearby observing the ocean and beach and contemplating the series of events that had led to Tech finally being able to refer to itself as �Virginia Tech, member of the Atlantic Coast Conference.� There were times during the preceding two months that I had not felt nearly so sanguine.

Like most Tech fans, I was very worried that this terrific football ride we have been on for the last decade was going to come to an end. An expansion that would have turned Tech into another East Carolina looked very much like the proverbial �done deal.� Unlike most Tech fans, however, I was dealing with the grim knowledge that Tech football was heading down the tubes while also facing the editorial realities of a TSL column being due most weeks, and neither Will nor TSL subscribers would particularly care for a weekly dosage of gloom and doom; the news media was serving that function quite well. You try writing regular columns trying to inject a little optimism and good cheer into the Hokie Nation while in the depths of despair, as I was in late May and early June. It ain�t easy.

I almost never read anything I write after it has been posted, an exercise I have learned only serves to make me notice what I should have changed, and by then it is a little late. I have yet to go back and re-read any of the columns I turned in during this expansion fight, but a while back I did return to the column I wrote about Tech in CUSA that then appeared would turn out to be more prophetic than satiric. It was the column that Jesse did not find so amusing and around the end of May, quite frankly, neither did I.

I had it easy, too. I quickly tired of reading the dire predictions and panic-stricken posts made on the TSL free board. The gloating of message board dullards of other schools pushed me over the edge and I adopted what I considered the sensible habit of only reading the considerably more rational and thoughtful posts on our subscriber�s board, a practice I still continue. This was an option not available to Will, who had to deal with that mess on a regular basis while contemplating that the future of the business he conceived and has poured his heart and soul into was not bright, should this expansion succeed as originally planned. Things did not, however, go as planned, by Donna Shalala at least, and the good guys won.

It certainly didn�t look that way when Mike Tranghese first threw the news of the ACC�s proposed raid of the Big East into the fan. The prospects for a positive outcome looked quite bleak when Jim Weaver journeyed to ACC headquarters to pitch Tech�s case and was treated like a vacuum-cleaner salesman. It was nothing personal, as there were plenty of people among the ACC staff who did not believe for one second the claims by some consultant sitting in a Denver office far removed from the realities of college football who pored over spreadsheets until noticing that one per cent of the New York City television market contained more people than the entirety of Roanoke�s [as if they were the only people who watched Tech football] and the inclusion of Syracuse might inject a few marginal dollars into the ACC�s troubled upcoming negotiations for a new football television contract.

That was incorrect thinking, as anybody who had actually been in a conference with Syracuse and Fredo could explain that television networks holding rights to Big East football had generally ignored those two, unless they were playing Tech or Miami. Various ACC cadres of executives had been studying Tech as a potential member of the ACC for fifty years and, not being idiots, couldn�t help but notice what Tech had accomplished in football over the last decade, and knew that we would be a splendid choice to help teach area ACC schools the mechanics of actually becoming a football power. It didn�t matter, however, as Donna Shalala was driving the expansion bus, and she did not want Virginia Tech in the picture.

Most are still unsure as to what motivated Shalala to reject Tech in favor of Syracuse and Fredo, but whether it was pressure being applied on her by influential and mysterious northeastern Miami alumni, or her desire to create a super-conference overloaded with money-losing private schools, the ACC determined that Miami had to be brought in and was agreeing to every demand made by Shalala, and the first was that Tech not be included.

Things changed, however, and after expansion passed from the athletic directors to the university presidents, Tech�s position steadily improved. Hoo president John Casteen, whose original pro-expansion vote turned out to be a conditional �Yes� only if Tech were included, found political cover for a position not particularly popular among his own tribe from Governor Warner, who also proved quite helpful in chatting with his fellow governor in North Carolina, who quietly encouraged UNC Chancellor Moeser to continue to sit out expansion. Casteen�s position was set before Warner entered the fray, information that is lost on the media no-nothings who continue to bray about things of which they are woefully uninformed.

NC Governor Michael Easley also probably had a few words with NC State Chancellor Fox, who brought the long and excruciating expansion saga to a surprising end by voting �Yes� first for Virginia Tech, then Miami and then, after popping another Swiss chocolate, checking her finely-crafted timepiece and noticing it was late, vetoed Fredo. One can imagine that the thud of his jaw hitting the floor reverberated all around Chestnut Hill and will continue to for a long time. It was the most delightful of finales for this Tech fan - not only were we in, but Syracuse and Fredo were out. Guys, the next time an athletic director waves around a piece of paper offering to save your conference, I would recommend signing it.

There is more than a little poetic justice in the bouncing of Fredo from expansion. Gene DiFilippo, his stooge of an AD had, at the urging of Shalala, made the initial expansion contacts with Dave Hart of FSU and, due in no small part to the hulking bulk of Paul Dee being unable to move around Greensboro unnoticed, the buffoon DiFilippo had traveled to ACC headquarters and conducted the early and secret negotiations. After serving Shalala�s purpose as her lapdog, he was then dropped like a hot bowl of clam chowder. Too bad.

I would guess that if Shalala ever finds herself in a Connecticut courtroom, she will claim that she certainly did not start any conspiracies, Fredo did, and he is no longer a party to the suit. Fredo was around long enough to serve the purposes of both Shalala and the ACC of getting Miami into the conference, and when he was no longer of any service, was jettisoned. As he attempts to disentangle himself from the puppet strings, here is a little bit of info for Fredo to chew on: You were had, pal, and were so blinded by the sunlight reflecting off that statue you were visualizing you never saw it coming.

While the dropping of Marye Anne�s �No� bomb on Fredo might cause DiFilippo�s statue to be re-sized into something more mid-major, it will also provide a handy defense for the ACC should the lawsuit ever see the light of day. Only schools within the ACC�s existing geographic footprint were taken, and if what will soon be known as the Little East can�t hang on to a BCS bid with the available schools from their footprint, maybe they need to talk about that with the Big 11. I suspect the ACC got whom they desired, and a twelfth team will take care of itself eventually, especially if Marye Anne has as much influence on her fellow Notre Dame trustees as she did on ACC expansion.

Shalala did not seem overjoyed at the ditching of Syracuse and Fredo. After watching every bit of leverage she had over the ACC disappear the very instant Tech was voted into the league before Miami, she spent a weekend pouting about the ACC calling her bluff not to come without the other two and then folded and followed the only coherent action, joining Virginia Tech as a new ACC member. Welcome aboard, Canes. Like Syracuse and Fredo, she had played a high-stakes game and lost, but sticking with the Li�l E was not a realistic option. I�m sure it was a most amusing conversation, at least for a Tech fan, when she explained to Presidents Shaw and Leahy that her promise to not go to the ACC without them was worth no more than the ones she gave to everybody else. In the end, Shalala lied to everyone.

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