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So you think the worst of the conference expansion wars is behind us? Well, think again.
For one thing, the Big East is getting ready to raid Conference USA and take four of its teams, even though Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese whined all summer while the ACC was poaching his league. But there's another even more ominous sign of what's to come. The ACC's athletic directors are convening this week in Charlottesville, Va., to discuss how -- not whether -- the league will attempt to acquire a 12th team.
Why is 12 such a magic number? Because the ACC wants to be able to stage a lucrative conference football championship game, and according to NCAA Bylaw 17.11.5.2-(c), a league cannot in effect have a football conference title game unless it has 12 teams. Ticketmaster
So what, you ask? Just change the rule -- or "the damn rule," as Mike Krzyzewski so aptly called it. Well, the ACC asked to have the rule amended to allow 10-team conferences to hold a football title game, but last week the NCAA Championships/Competition Cabinet recommended against granting the ACC's request. The Management Council will have the final word in January, but as the Cabinet's chair, Nora Lynn Finch, told me, "The issue isn't dead, but it's dying."
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Meanwhile, it's killing college sports. There are several reasons -- none of
them valid -- why the Cabinet turned the ACC down, but here's the worst of them:
The SEC doesn't want to see an ACC football championship game that will compete
with the SEC's for regional, and national, dollars. "The SEC made the effort
to get to 12 teams in order to have a championship game," says Georgia
athletic director Vince Dooley, who sits on the Football Issues Committee, which
also heard this issue. "If the ACC wants to do the same thing, why should
we change a rule just for them when it's been on the books for a long, long
time?" Ticketmaster
The answer is that the conference wars are causing too much collateral damage. Ironically, Bylaw 17.11.5.2-(c) was first proposed in 1987 not by a Division I superpower, but by two Division II conferences that had expanded to 12 teams and couldn't decide on a football champion based on the regular season alone. The push for a league title game was rooted in the old-fashioned desire to have a champion crowned honestly. There were no major TV dollars involved -- we're talking Division II here. In those days, such rules were passed for all three divisions at once. Today, Division II can pass a rule that only applies to Division II, not Division I-A.
As usual, the passage of the rule had unintended -- and harmful -- consequences. The SEC was the first to take advantage of it by inviting Arkansas and South Carolina to join the league in 1992, thereby increasing its membership to 12 teams. The Big Eight followed suit shortly thereafter and filled out its ranks from schools that had been part of the old Southwest Conference, which has since disbanded. Now the MAC, which has 14 teams, also has football and basketball championship games, so naturally other leagues feel they need do the same to stay competitive. Ticketmaster
The Big 12 might also have a reason to fight the ACC's efforts to get around the 12-team rule, but Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg instructed the league's three cabinet representatives to vote in favor of the ACC's proposal. Unfortunately, that kind of big-picture thinking is all too rare. Says Davidson athletic director Jim Murphy, who also sits on the Football Issues Committee, "Human nature being what it is, it's a lot easier for people to turn inward and say, 'How is this going to affect the schools in our conference?'"
When such narrow-mindedness is applied to important decisions, there is only one answer to that question: Everybody loses.
With all the attention generated by the NCAA Championships/Competition Cabinet's rebuke of the ACC, another significant development from those meetings slipped under the radar: The Cabinet is also recommending that the NCAA eliminate school-sponsored foreign tours for all sports.
These foreign tours have become very popular among college hoops programs. Not only do the trips give players the chance to bond, but teams were also allowed 10 extra practices to prepare for the excursions. Right now, schools are permitted to take one trip overseas every four years, but the NCAA has grown concerned that the trips are becoming too costly and ubiquitous -- and are being used mainly as recruiting tools. It also doesn't help that many teams are now taking trips during fall break, even though the spirit of the rule is to provide an opportunity to travel during the summer.
Trips sponsored by conferences and outside organizations such as USA Basketball will still be permitted, but if the Management Council passes this recommendation next spring as expected, the school-sponsored sojourns overseas will become a thing of the past.
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