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07/28/2003
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The moral decline of civilization has long been lamented, and at the Big East media gathering, it was clear exactly how far we have sunk. The revelation came from Mike Tranghese, who delivered blockbuster news to assembled media by telling them that an institution has fallen.
There is, to paraphrase the Big East commissioner, no honor among thieves.
It could have been a sad moment had it not been
so educational. The average person has probably given little thought to the subtleties of a bank robbery, but Tranghese made it clear that there is a monumental difference between picking a lock to a vault and pointing a gun at a teller.
The difference, in a convoluted sort of way, is analogous to the way the Atlantic Coast Conference raided the Big East in annexing Miami and Virginia Tech and the way the Big East is planning to raid other conferences.
It is a matter of protocol.
The ACC did not inform the Big East that it was courting Miami, Syracuse and Boston College before ultimately inviting Miami and Tech. "We were not informed until the process was well down the path," Tranghese grumbled.
When it is time for the Big East to expand, however, Tranghese will be open and candid. He said that he already has been in contact with other conferences that have schools the Big East is interested in seizing. But there is a big, big difference in what he is doing and what the ACC did.
"I've shared information about our process," Tranghese said of his conversations with other conference commissioners. "I assured them I won't talk to any schools until our [school] presidents say to me: 'This is what you need to do.' Before I go to talk to a school of that conference, I will let [the commissioners] know exactly what it is and how we're going to proceed with doing it."
That process, oddly, has more in common with a stickup than a break-in, particularly since Tranghese admits that once the Big East decides on expansion targets, it will invite them regardless of their affiliations or objections by their respective conference commissioners. It will be a hostile takeover.
"I don't think people have said, 'Come take my members,' if that is what you are asking me," he said. But it does "give them sort of a leg up on the planning process."
It does not, however, change the ultimate result. Tranghese admitted that if the ACC had handled it in a manner he deemed proper, Miami and Virginia Tech still would have left the Big East.
"I'm not naïve enough to think it would have altered the outcome in any way," Tranghese said. "I just think there is protocol."
But is there? Louisville and Cincinnati are the two most likely Big East expansion targets. Both are in the non-BCS Conference USA, so they would accept a Big East invitation whether it was delivered surreptitiously or by the Blue Angels. A raid is a raid.
Tranghese blistered the ACC last week, calling some of the explanations of the expansion process "cockamamie nonsense." He also offered free advice, telling the ACC to "shut the rhetoric down and go play."
But it is safe to say that he did not share the outrage of Tulane president Scott Cowen, who on Tuesday announced that 44 non-BCS member schools were going to formally and possibly legally challenge the BCS structure.
What Tranghese or anyone else aligned with BCS conferences cannot explain is why a Big East school like Rutgers, which averaged 19,818 fans a game last year and is a perennial loser, should be a BCS school while Brigham Young, which averaged 62,176 a game and has an excellent program, is not.
Oddly, the Big East now has more in common with the non-BCS schools than it does with the ACC. Cowen and his group want to join the party; Tranghese and the Big East presidents don't want to get kicked out.
In this period of bloated money for the privileged and arbitrary exclusion of the non-BCS schools, however, anyone who attempts to invoke a morals clause risks the charge of hypocrisy. Sometimes there is more honor in silence than sanctimony.
E-mail jhubbard@dallasnews.com
Jan Hubbard writes about college sports for The Dallas Morning News
Note: www.dallasnews.com
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