Commitment fueled drive to bring Miami and Virginia Tech to the ACC

By Charlie Barnes, Executive Director - Seminole Boosters

So what are we to make of the new skyline of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and of the embarrassing public chaos out of which it was forged?

When Miami and Virginia Tech officially enter the league next year, the ACC, surely as parochial an outfit as ever was, will instantly become a pre-eminent national power in football, baseball and, of course, basketball. This seems on the face of it to be such a good idea, such an obviously brilliant scheme, it’s bewildering to think how anyone could have objected to the plan in the first place.

Oh, but object they did.

Let’s consider what was behind the move to bring Miami into the ACC this spring and summer of 2003. Know this, and it needs to be acknowledged by our fans: Dave Hart is the man who delivered Miami into the fold. There is no other player who occupies the same level in this story.

It took Hart years—years—just to get anyone in the conference to talk about expansion.

When Hart arrived at Florida State in 1994, he began to sort through the ACC mindset and apply that to what he knew about the changing face of college athletics. Hart could see plainly that college football was becoming the primary revenue generator at all levels. Even the lucrative NCAA Basketball Tournament could return only a fraction of the dollars generated by college football’s TV contracts and BCS Bowl system.

Hart also saw that while the ACC schools were pouring money into facilities and stepping up their commitment to football, the fans’ passions remained committed to basketball.

Our last two seasons aside, in 11 years the Seminoles have yet to find a football rival in the conference that our fans find worthy of excitement.

Seeing all of this, seeing that even after a decade of competition Florida State remained the only major ACC player consistently on the national stage, what Hart feared the most was that FSU would stumble and the conference wouldn’t be there to pick up the slack. What Hart feared was that television networks would see an ACC greatly diminished by the perceived decline of Florida State, and we would be unable to sustain a national presence.

What I fear, said Dave Hart, is not the day when we will have a downturn—those days come and go. What I fear is the day when we find ourselves part of a conference with little commitment to football, competing for the fans, dollars and recruits against schools nourished by the football culture of their own conferences.

“At that point,” said Hart, “it will be too late to act.”

And so Dave Hart launched a crusade, and crusade is the correct word, to ensure the recruitment and admission of Miami into the ACC. Along the way, Duke and North Carolina consolidated their campaign to ensure that just such a thing would never happen.

Fans watched this summer as both Duke and North Carolina stood in unwavering opposition to any move toward expansion. All talk of money, of threats, of compromise, of everything, left them unmoved.

There were so many reasons to expand that it seemed no reasonable person could doubt the wisdom of adding new teams.

Opposition seemed so shortsighted. But Duke and Carolina knew that they would always be able to compete at the highest national levels of collegiate basketball, with or without the rest of the conference. They felt that any enlargement of the role of football would necessarily conflict with and perhaps diminish the beloved basketball culture. There’s no disputing that the culture of football and the culture of basketball are different. Duke and North Carolina fought to preserve what they saw as the rightful heritage of the ACC and their place within it. We Seminoles fought to preserve a future for ourselves as members of a league taken seriously as a football conference.

Observers of the game conclude that Duke and Carolina had three goals. Their first goal was to stop expansion. Their second goal was to subordinate football to basketball forever. Preventing Miami from entering the league in such a public and appalling spectacle would more than ensure that the issue of expansion would never rise again.

The third and final goal, some believe, was to drive Florida State out of the ACC. I believe that would have happened had the vote gone wrong.

So where are we today?

There is much bad feeling. Commissioner John Swofford was director of athletics at Carolina for years. The damage to that relationship may be beyond repair.

In the arena of basketball, Duke and Carolina will no doubt continue to be spectacular players on the national stage. In fact, we all wish for that to be, for it will sustain the glory of the ACC.

But both Duke and Carolina are fully aware of what has been lost to them, and lost for all time.

At the official welcoming ceremony for Virginia Tech and Miami, Duke was not represented. To the press, Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski refused comment saying only, “It’s done.”

Yes, it is. Yes, it most certainly is.