One year later, Duke sees ACC expansion paying off

Few fans took notice when Miami and Virginia Tech officially became members of the ACC July 1, but with mixed feelings of anticipation and remorse, Duke certainly did.

From a financial standpoint, the conference and its member schools have secured economic stability for the long term with the ability to generate additional revenue through a league championship game and new television contract for football. Expansion, however, also signals the end of an era, leaving behind the days of round-robin scheduling in football and basketball. And as a league that has traditionally put basketball first, the augmented ACC enters its inaugural season as a football power as well.

The league has finalized scheduling for basketball and is planning a lucrative football conference championship game, which will start when Boston College officially joins in 2005. Still, the Blue Devils must cope with the good and bad--the financial benefits and competitive disadvantages.

"I have to admit that in the long run, expansion is better for us financially than if we didn't expand," Athletic Director Joe Alleva said. "It will prove to be better. However, competitively speaking--particularly in basketball, but also in football where you have to compete with Miami, Virginia Tech and BC [it is not as good].... If I had to weigh everything, I really think expansion, overall, is probably a good thing."

Being a family was easy in May, when the league signed a seven-year, $37 million annual television contract, justifying one of the primary motivations for expansion. The deal with ABC and ESPN provides financial security and should produce a higher payout than before for each school, even though there are more mouths to feed.

One of the primary arguments against expansion was the necessary increase in travel costs, considering the geographic spread of Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami. But for schools like Duke, with teams that already have high travel budgets because they play elite out-of-conference competition, the changes should be marginal.

"That part is a misnomer," Alleva said of increased travel expenses. "If my tennis team doesn't go to Miami, it probably goes to Texas to play. Travel is not as big a factor as people made it out to be."

Duke, however, was not swayed during the expansion discussions by financial incentives, as other ACC schools may have been. The University stood to earn very little additional revenue in football or basketball, the highest grossing sports in college athletics.

"Our instinct was, from the beginning, that we didn't want to see this as a financial opportunity," said Tallman Trask, Duke's executive vice president, who works closely with the athletic department and was closely involved in the expansion process. "I think it was driven by a lot of people who wanted to see it as a financial opportunity."

Miami, however, will not benefit financially from expansion in the near future. The Big East does not share all revenue among its members like the ACC does, so the school reaped major benefits from its highly successful football program. Still, Miami is happy with its decision to join the league.

"We will not get more money than we would get from [staying in] the Big East, at least in the first few years," said Wayne Roberts, Miami's senior associate athletic director. "The Big East is more of a risk and reward league. The ACC is a much more stable league. Now we don't have to worry about having a competitive football team every year to balance the budget."

Competitive questions 
 

Duke opposed expansion for largely competitive reasons; the trio of new schools add little in basketball prowess but make it more difficult for Duke to field a competitive football team.

Despite all the hype surrounding new head coach Ted Roof and the potential revitalization of the Duke football program, the team's ability to win in a conference that just added two perennial powers and will add another moderate power next year is uncertain. The Blue Devils' two conference wins in 2003 cannot cancel out the fact that they had not previously won a game against a league opponent since 1999, a span of 30 games.

"I do believe that having expansion, and what most other coaches in this conference believe, is that it makes us the best football conference in the country," North Carolina football head coach John Bunting, whose school initially joined Duke in opposing expansion, told the Winston-Salem Journal.

The Hurricanes and Hokies bring national prominence to the league, having amassed 35-3 and 26-13 records, respectively, over the past three seasons. Miami also won the 2001 national title.

Scheduling scenarios 
 

Competing at the top of the league may not be a problem for the basketball team, but Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski opposed expansion from the outset. Krzyzewski and many other coaches around the league are disappointed that the expanded conference will eliminate a true double round robin schedule.

The tentative schedule matches each team with two main rivals--Duke's "primary partners," as the league is calling them, will be North Carolina and Maryland--and ensures a home-and-home series with those teams each year. The other teams will be broken up so they only play twice every two years.

This system, however, makes it impossible to crown a true conference champion because of the varying levels of schedule difficulty. Playing the Tar Heels and Terrapins twice each season will likely give the Blue Devils one of the more challenging league schedules.

In addition to losing the ability to determine an outright champion, many purists worry that the league will struggle to maintain vibrant rivalries between teams that are not paired as primary partners. Duke, for example, will not play a home-and-home series with N.C. State this season, ending 79 years of tradition.

"I still think our conference is the best," Krzyzewski said. "Would I have liked to see it remain the same? Absolutely. The double round robin, great rivalries and true champion is the idealistic way of playing basketball."

The ACC basketball tournament, long a benchmark for similar events, will also take on an altered form. With the league's expansion, the end-of-the-season tournament will add additional games to the Thursday schedule.

New kids on the block 
 

No one expects Miami or Virginia Tech to contend for conference championships in men's basketball just yet, but that does not rule out the possibility for the future. "The league is too good and has too good of a TV package. You are going to get exposure," and the teams will become more competitive soon, Krzyzewski said. Recruiting will likely benefit from the increased media coverage, and with the current dynamic of college basketball, one or two superstar players can turn a program around in a hurry.

"People want to play in this league," Miami head coach Frank Haith said. "They find this league to be a great basketball league. No one does it better than the ACC in terms of exposure and academic reputation."

Duke football coaches noted that the high-profile additions and increased television exposure could have a similar positive impact on their football program.

Miami and Virginia Tech, however, will find it just as difficult in some of the Olympic sports as in basketball, as the 51-year-old conference boasts some of the best all-around athletic programs in the country. Among the nine ACC members prior to expansion Wake Forest finished worst in the Director's Cup standings, a measure of overall athletic prowess, at 43rd in the country. Miami and Virginia Tech were 50th and 79th, respectively, and will need significant upgrades to play at the ACC's level in a number of sports.

Both schools plan to put greater emphasis on these sports, especially with the expanded conference's additional financial resources, which stem primarily from football and men's basketball.

"It is going to cost more to be competitive in the ACC, but the ACC will allow us to have the resources," Dave Cianelli, Virginia Tech's director of track and field, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "The best thing about the ACC is they really do put a lot of emphasis on Olympic sports. They are not an afterthought... the ACC wants the schools to do well across the board."

Whether expansion will ultimately pay dividends is still to be determined. Duke, however, is embracing the new opportunities and challenges alike.

"We have made a commitment that I believe firmly in," former Duke President Nan Keohane said. "But it is ever in contention--the costs, which are significant, but the benefits that are great."

Jake Poses contributed to this story.