When the Atlantic Coast Conference lured the University of Miami, Virginia Tech, and later Boston College out of the Big East in 2004, the goal was clear: turn the basketball-crazy ACC into a football powerhouse. The cross-conference exodus seemed to be just the right move to jumpstart such an evolution—Miami had made it to BCS bowl games in each of the last four years and Virginia Tech and Boston College were known heavyweights.
The verdict is still out on whether or not the move was a success, but evidence is mounting towards one conclusion: it’s failing. Since the expansion, the conference has gone 0-4 in BCS games (they are 1-9 overall). ACC fans entered this season’s opening weekend with high hopes—Clemson was ranked ninth and Virginia Tech was 17th—but probably spent last Sunday preordering their season tickets for basketball. Clemson suffered an embarrassing 24-point loss to Alabama, Virginia Tech dropped its opener against mid-major East Carolina, Virginia was embarrassed by USC, and Maryland only managed to beat the Div. I-AA University of Delaware by a touchdown.
The ACC’s tribulations are relevant to Georgetown sports fans for a couple of reasons. First, like it or not, we are in ACC country. It’s difficult to pin down a geographically dominant conference in a city with no big-time football, but the District’s proximity to College Park and Blacksburg leaves little doubt.
But the most important reason for Georgetown fans to look at the wallowing ACC is once again rooted in the 2004 exodus. The loss of Miami and Virginia Tech, two teams that combined to win at least a share of ten of the first 13 Big East Conference Championships, should have been the death knell for Big East football. It wasn’t—the Big East is 3-1 in BCS games since the move. There are many reasons why this happened—the emergence of West Virginia as a national power, the resurgence of Rutgers after a century of dormancy, and the solid play of upstarts like the University of South Florida—but one man who deserves as much credit as anyone is outgoing Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese. Tranghese’s ability to keep the conference afloat during the football debacle while simultaneously strengthening its already impressive basketball pedigree cannot be overstated. The commissioner will step down after the 2008/2009 season, and a search committee, co-chaired by Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, is already in place to choose his successor.
There’s plenty of time for the ACC to regain a little of its dignity this season. For we members of the Big East Conference, it will be a lot more amusing if they don’t. But no matter how bad this fall gets for the students and fans of the ACC, there’s always basketball. To that, we can relate.
