Need to get to the Utah game and some more basketball stuff, but too many tabs related to the expansiopocolypse that need clearing.
While the college sporting world waits on the decision of Mizzou, Boston College’s AD Gene DeFilippo felt like popping off a bit about how influential he was in the ACC realignment committee. The comments that got all the attention were the ones pertaining to how he and BC were the reason UConn didn’t get an invite, but Pitt did along with Syracuse.
While Syracuse presented no problem, UConn did — to BC, which was still fuming over what it perceived to be vitriolic comments made when BC was finally invited to join the ACC and started competing in 2005. UConn and Pittsburgh filed a lawsuit against BC, and Calhoun made comments about never playing BC again.
DeFilippo does not deny that BC opposed the inclusion of UConn.
“We didn’t want them in,’’ he said. “It was a matter of turf. We wanted to be the New England team.’’
The other was the role of a certain Mouse Monopoly in the decision on who to invite for expansion.
BC athletic director Gene DeFilippo, who was part of the 12-member ACC expansion committee, adamantly denied that the move was dictated by basketball interests, but he did concede that the effects of it may boost that sport more than football.
“It had nothing to do with basketball,’’ said DeFilippo. “It was football money which drove expansion. It was football money and securing our future.’’
…
The overwhelming force behind the move, DeFilippo insisted, was television money.
The ACC just signed a new deal with ESPN that will increase the revenue for each school to approximately $13 million. With the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse, said DeFilippo, another significant increase will come.
“We always keep our television partners close to us,’’ he said. “You don’t get extra money for basketball. It’s 85 percent football money. TV – ESPN – is the one who told us what to do. This was football; it had nothing to do with basketball.’’
The UNC blog, Carolina March points out this creates a conflict in the narrative of the actual story. The story starts with a premise that the ACC expansion move was dictated in no small part because of basketball driven jealousy of all the attention the Big East gets. That, of course, would favor UConn over Pitt. Especially when you factor in the women’s basketball side of things as well.
The contradiction, though, is DeFilippo then talking about how the move was all about football and the TV money. Something that favors Pitt given Pitt’s history and frankly greater passion for football over UConn. Note, that I’m not saying that UConn fans don’t care about football. It is just that they have been a 1-A program for a little more than a decade. They have been primarily a basketball school and are not at the same place in terms of history and the ratings Pitt football gets versus UConn.
The other conflict in the story is the claim that the ACC decision to expand came on the heels of the Big 12 sniffing around Pitt. Not Syracuse. Not UConn. So, that would logically suggest that Pitt was a top target of the ACC originally.
Honestly, I think DeFilippo was talking out of his ass with regards to UConn. He, and BC, do want UConn to be minimized because to them they are a regional threat and a Johnny-come-lately in football. But to be holding a stronger grudge against UConn but not Pitt for what went down when BC bolted for the ACC is questionable at best. Especially when the powers at UConn are gone, but Pitt still has the same Chancellor.
Ah, BC. There must be something about that school. They really are no more greedy and self-interested than any other program. They are just so ineptly blunt about it. They backstabbed Holy Cross at the formation of the Big East. They were in, out, then back in the ACC expansion in 2003 and 04 — all the time expressing loyalty like a weather vane. Now this.
The ESPN stuff, though, really is the big deal. And that was what DeFilippo has really tried to backtrack.
Boston College released DeFilippo’s short letter on Tuesday. In it, he apologizes for “any negative effects caused by my recent interview with a Boston Globe reporter.”
He adds that he “spoke inappropriately and erroneously regarding ESPN’s role in conference expansion.”
The general consensus is that DeFilippo is mainly sorry for speaking blunt truths. Especially since it makes a lot of sense.
Absolutely not — because there’s been speculation for months that the Big East sealed its fate last May when it rejected a nine-year, $1.4 billion television contract from ESPN. Long story not so long, the Big East decided it would rather open up bidding to NBC and Fox than accept that deal from ESPN, meaning the Big East was probably going to sign a deal with NBC or Fox, meaning NBC or Fox likely was on the verge of gaining a relevant share of the college sports landscape, and that’s not something ESPN (or anybody in ESPN’s position of power) would have liked.
The only way ESPN could ensure NBC or Fox wouldn’t gain a relevant share of the college sports landscape was to make the Big East irrelevant, and, in case you haven’t heard, the Big East is suddenly really close to being irrelevant because the ACC took Syracuse and Pittsburgh to get to 14 members. That led to the Big 12 taking TCU to get to 10, which could lead to Louisville and West Virginia exiting the Big East, too.
“ESPN is the one who told us what to do.”
Again, those words aren’t surprising — they’re just surprising to hear on the record from an ACC athletic director. Meantime, it should be noted that ESPN and the ACC have both denied DeFilippo’s remarks in statements to the New York Times, but what else would they do? It’s not like the ACC can say ESPN assured it of a better television contract if it would take Syracuse and Pittsburgh from the Big East, and it’s not like ESPN can say it stood to benefit in a variety of ways from the ACC being strengthened at the Big East’s expense.
Especially since it opens ESPN up to a nasty lawsuit over what the Big East eventually gets as a TV Contract in the next year.
Now the Big East needs to expand. That has been obvious since before Pitt and Syracuse got their ACC lifeline. The problem has been that the basketball side has sought to limit any additional members. They grudgingly agreed to TCU but expected the football side to then take Villanova without questions. When the football schools ultimately balked when the details of Villanova’s move were learned, there was no other movement by the conference.
Even after Pitt and Syracuse left, the Big East schools have spent nearly a month doing very little. They can’t raise the exit fees because too many football schools are balking while waiting/hoping for a chance to bolt.
Invites aren’t happening because the Big East basketball schools hold the majority power now that Pitt and Syracuse are not able to participate in voting. The preferred option by the basketball members is to find schools willing to be in the Big East for football only so as not to diminish the basketball pool of money. That is why the interest in Navy, Air Force and Army generated the biggest noise. Army has already said no thanks. Air Force seems still interested and Navy is hesitating.
The other moves the Big East seems willing to make at this point is finally extend the invite to UCF and a couple other C-USA programs to get the number of football programs up to a full 12. The sad thing is that this could have been done any time in the past few years to try and create further stability in the conference and not have them scrambling so poorly now. But, as always the Big East reacts to what others do instead of planning ahead.
I know many people think the Big East will eventually negotiate with Pitt and Syracuse to let them out as early as the 2012 season. I have my doubts. The Big East already lost TCU for next year. Only Navy and Army could possibly be able to come to the Big East by next season — assuming they can break a bunch of their contracts for games for next year. Temple would have to give the MAC two years notice. MWC would expect a year notice from Air Force like they did from TCU. And C-USA where UCF, SMU, ECU, Houston, and whatever else is plucked from there have their own restrictions.
If the Knights ultimately decide to join the Big East, Conference USA officials told the Sentinel that UCF would have to pay an exit fee of about $7 million. Schools leaving C-USA must pay their annual share of television revenue under dual contracts with Fox Sports Network and CBS Sports for five years and an additional one-time $500,000 fee.
The last time Conference USA lost members, it negotiated games with remaining league members in exchange for reduced exit-fee payments. USF ended up playing a four-game football series with rival UCF, in part, because of its Conference USA exit-fee arrangement.
If C-USA schools leave this year, league leaders are not currently planning to offer any game trades to reduce exit fees and will require a bonded percentage of the full exit fees before schools can join other conferences.
Conference USA also plans to enforce its exit rules, which means the earliest UCF could join the Big East would be for the 2013 football season.
Starting at $7.5 million dollars to leave (more than the Big East exit fee), makes it much more expensive to negotiate a quick departure. So it seems increasingly likely that Pitt and Syracuse will be playing in the Big East for at least another, awkward year, simply because the number of teams in the Big East will require it to keep its BCS automatic qualifying status.
As for the Big East’s long-term BCS AQ status. That is murky. Some are already writing the obituary because of the level of competition the future holds.
Even if whatever conglomeration they come up with still stands mathematically ahead of the Mountain West and Conference USA come 2014, the bowls and the Big East’s fellow conferences have had enough. West Virginia is the league’s lone remaining school the bowls can count on to travel and draw eyeballs. Just because you give Temple or UCF a Big East label doesn’t mean fans are going to carve out four hours on Jan. 2 to watch them. The fact that an unranked 8-4 UConn team went to a BCS bowl last season (where it bought 4,500 tickets) while 11-1 Michigan State and Boise State did not was galling enough.
“You’re telling me you’re going to put 9-3 East Carolina in the Fiesta Bowl?” said one college football administrator. “Are you kidding me?”
Army, Navy and Air Force would be much more appealing — they draw well even to the third-tier bowls they play in now — but what are the chances any would win the league consistently?
Others have more optimism for the conference to keep its BCS AQ status. Whether it is political forces:
Continuing to grant a BCS bowl bid to the Big East champ is chump change to the rest of the AQ conferences compared to the political heat that could result from throwing out a league that has any service academies and large flagship universities in the Northeast. It’s imperative to the Big Ten, SEC and other AQ conferences that the BCS system itself is preserved, which likely means that they need to keep the Big East in the fold.
So what happens if the BCS threatens to pull the Big East’s automatic bid?
If I’m the Big East I threaten to file a lawsuit and tell all. Since there are no established criteria for pulling a league’s BCS bid, the Big East should view any attempt to take away its bid as impermissible. The primary value of Big East football right now is that BCS bid. If it vanishes then why would anyone want to be in the Big East? So the automatic bid is a definite property interest that is being relied upon by the league. Any rescission of that right is tantamount to collegiate sports war. If there is no established process to take away a right, how can that right be taken away?
Given all the antitrust scrutiny that the BCS is already under, can you imagine what a lawsuit’s discovery and depositions would look like if the BCS attempted to pull the Big East’s bid? The Big East was there at inception, it knows all the gritty details about how the six conferences came to power and what agreements existed between them to keep the vast majority of the bowl bonanza in their hands. Put simply, the BCS turns on one of its original six members at its own peril.
I think the political heat may be the bigger factor. Consider that New Jersey, Connecticut and West Virginia would all see their state university lose their BCS seat. That’s a 6-US Senator voting block right there. Not to mention if Navy and Air Force joined and saw the bid stripped out. To say nothing of if UCF joined. That would have Florida politicians in the center of the state under big pressure with USF and UCF denied.
Finally some silliness of the empty threat, courtesy of Dick Weiss.
If the Big East wants to play hard ball with Pittsburgh and Syracuse, which defected to the ACC without notice, it should hold them to the 27 month window of notification, which would preclude ‘Cuse and Pitt from entering the ACC until the start of the 2014 season. And, here’s the kicker, the Big East should also restrict league championship events, which have automatic BCS or NCAA bids attached, like their annual basketball tournament in the Garden to those schools that are committed to staying.
That way, the league can keep teams that are bolting the conference in the Big East Tournament but deny them the luxury of automatic entry to the Big Dance.
I’d like to take full credit for this idea but the genesis of the idea came from a close friend who is wired to expansion.
You know what? Pitt and Syracuse would love for the Big East to do this. Why? Because it would be the actionable claim to get the teams out of the Big East early. Pitt and Syracuse may not be involved in the decisions of the conference because they are leaving, but there is no way the athletic programs can realistically or legally be excluded from Big East competition if they are held in the conference. So, that won’t happen.
By this, did he actually mean people from ESPN actually spoke to him and or people from the ACC??
Or could he of been saying, since ESPN drives things, and football drives things, because of what ESPN gets the most money from (football), that ESPN “told” us what to do. Not from speaking to them directly, but, from the “we all know what they want” sense.
I’m sure there is a word for that, but I don’t know what it is. I have said that before regarding competition in the business world, “well since so and so is going in that direction, that pretty much tells us what we need to do”.
No biggie, was just wondering if anyone had actually spoken to him about what he meant.
Doesn’t matter to me, we’re in!!! Good article.
With football ruling, sounds like we would have been first choice on that end, and you can you tube Coach K’s reaction and answer on you tube, very excited and thrilled that Pitt and Syracuse were invited, and even says, “to get two power programs like that, has got to make you happy”.
So, all is good, like I said, we’re in, nice to be on the winning side for once!!!!
Ya, Chas, why wouldn’t they still be mad at Pitt too??
Sounds like he wanted to “stick it” to UCONN, just to “stick it” to them publicly!!!
They acted pretty quickly too, if he was snubbing UCONN on his own, in the conference meetings, I believe that could have been overcome with some prodding from others, that, “look, this is what’s best for the conference” talk. Showing him the numbers, what have you.
Hey, if he really did snub them, and it helped us, great!! If it really was the invite looming to the Big12, great!!!
If there was never anything, and the ACC picked Syracuse and Pitt, great.
We’re in baby, great!!
The Weiss thing is hilarious. What a tool!
Here’s my option: Pitt and ‘Cuse simply walk in 2012 and don’t even pay the $5 million. They say to the Big East, “So, sue us!” Worked out real well for the BE the last time.
I’m just joking of course, but it makes as much sense as Weiss’ option.
The replacement coach currently has a 1 and 5 record with losses of 30-3 to UCF and 20-19 at home to Duke. Its only win was over D2 UMass.
Now the dilemna .. not sure when the contract of current coach expires, however, does the AD have the right to fire the coach that hasn’t expired if he fired the coach for possibly looking to break his contract?
@EMel
Feel free to call Rob a troll. I won’t object. LOL
Here’s something for you all (southern thing) to consider. Does the Big 10 really want the ACC market in Pittsburgh and NY? (especially if a ACC network is launched)
Could the TCU thing set a precedence in future conference expansion?
A Lot of things can happen in 27 months.
Just sayin. haha
BC has been very relevant in ACC football until this year dude. They have challenged for the (whatever) division they play in. BC has been in like 12 straight bowl games. So you’re way off base.
PITT will be a ‘King’ in the ACC.
I GUARANTEE. (that is if we actually start playing in it)
My idea was that if the ACC was to admit UConn and Rutgers, it would finish off the Big East as a football conference and Pitt & Syracuse could join the ACC much sooner. If UConn never enters the ACC, it’s no big deal to me anyway.
Rob is certainly a troll. WVU’s basketball better than Pitt’s? Come on.
Or Big 12, ya, that makes sense, WVU in a Southwest/Great Plains league!!! LOL
Apparently Rob, WVU is not more relevant, hence no invite to the ACC or SEC.
And Rob, please, you show your lack of any knowledge of the Big East, to not say the Big East was not on unstable ground.
Really, out of all of these, the comment about people thinking the BE being unstable are hallucinating, Rob, read the net, the papers, watch the t.v., keep up with news, if you want to comment on it, because that comment really shows your lack of knowledge towards anything BE.
And, once again, I must say to the trolls…..
We’re in baby, no matter what is said, we’re in!!!
Frankly, can’t blame them, if we were left out, I’d be ticked too.
Anywho, my brother is the computer/accountant head, of a medium sized company.
Two brothers own it, and their sons and daughters are peppered throughout the place.
Oh, I forgot, the owners are former WVU football players. Probably about mid 60ish, sons, 30’s and 40’s.
They have always had a jovial Pitt-WVU relationship with my brother (Pitt guy) and several other office people who are Pitt and even some Nitters.
Always good natured ribbing and stuff.
The monday after that Saturday announcement, or whenever it went public, the following day, one of the sons came in, walked right by my brother, not even a good morning.
The two owners, who are hands on owners, did not come in for two days by the way.
Anyhow, the son, did not talk to anyone for three or four days. The other sons and daughters did not as well, allthough, he said the daughters were cordial at times.
This went on all week!!! The two owners and the son, did come out ok. They called an office meeting on Friday, apologized to everyone in the office. Admitted they had been acting childish, were not professional, but, it really caught them off guard and took them aback!!!
They bought everyone lunch, about 30 people, and kept apologizing about their childishness, and ended up on a good note for the week.
Back to normal the following week, with jabs about where WVU will end up and Pitt stabbed us in the back type stuff, my brother said, all in good fun.
I do want to say, they did nothing bad to any employees, my brother loves them, says they are really good family people.
But, I tell this anectdote to let everyone know how pissed they are. They’re pissed at the Big East, they’re pissed at Pitt and Syracuse, the SEC, even their own administration for letting this happen.
Like ruddy faced, having heart attack pissed over the entire situation.
And these are professional people. My brother has worked their for 23 years, says, he’d never seen anything like it ever before. The tension in the air was palpable.
Anyhow, they are embarrassed by their actions, and love their employees, which my brother confirms, they just lost it, weren’t mad at any employee, just the whole situation.
I never say anything to scare anyone, but I’d really think twice about going down to the game in Morgantown if any of you have plans. It could be very nasty!!
And those stats on all those deviate sexual crimes in WV are just not fair, because, you know, sheep lie.
Frankcan is one of us. Back off. And how ironic is it that a WV troll would try to correct someone’s grammar. With your grand academic credentials, you just got rejected by both the SEC and ACC.
P.S. Actually your stats are off. You should include the state of West Virginia, as it’s Pittsburgh’s biggest suburb!!!!
Pitt is in the ACC!!!! Hey, I heard that SMU is coming to the Big East, ought to be a great hoops game!!!
nyuck, nyuck, nyuck!!!
Murder, aren’t you the people that just threw bricks through LSU fans car, and beat and stabbed the guy????
Dude, when you want to be a troll, here’s one clue, don’t be from WVU, the whole country knows your backwards, not just us!!!
Here’s the point: Pitt’s in the ACC. WVU’s in the Big East.
Oh, & 13-9. No, we won’t let that go. Ever.
Navy Panther and Marcus thank you very mutch
Let me try to simplify. You see, West Virginia is known primarily for its moonshine and missing teeth. The “teeth” side of that has been adequately covered above. But “barley” is a grain that is used to distill certain alcoholic beverages. Sorry again. To make hootch. Anyway, because of that proud history, I was suggesting it was a subconscious psychological predisposition (sorry yet again – the devil made you do it) that you used the term “barley” instead of “barely.” Hope that helps. Or, perhaps you were spelling it as it is pronounced in the western portion of Virginia. But in any case, kudos for at least not trying to spell it “bearly.”
To be clear, it is the state university of West Virginia, right? West Virginia is a beautiful state in many respects. But have you been to downtown Wheeling recently? Downtown Charleston, the state capital? Been thrown out of a casino after midnight in Chester? Ever been assaulted after a WVU football game? Probably not, unless you are a pregnant LSU fan who I am sure was asking for it.
Same with the girl, a daughter and niece all in one shot!!!
The director was going for realism!!!!
“Squeal, boy!”
Pitt is in the ACC!!!!
You’re the troll that came on this sight!!!!
What a moron, you’re gonna call people out, when you come on another teams blog!!!!
You’re too stupid for your own good!!!!!!
Anyone see the movie ‘Wrong Turn’?? I think LOL had a staring role!!! LMAO!!!
What does LOL stand for anyway? Left Out Losers, as in your Mountaineers’ failed attempt to leave the Big East?
And you can get on FRANKCAN’s typing all you want. We all know he has trouble typing. But he has no trouble thinking, which you must suffer from by coming on a blog of Pitt fans and posting your troll crap.
Why does sentence structure matter to you anyway? 3/4 of your state can’t read. But of course they only need to read 2 words: Mine shaft —->