Quote:
Originally Posted by Logan
Well in the case of BC, it was more about the anger felt by many of the remaining Big East schools. While Miami and VT were upfront about their desire to move on, BC initially came out and stuck by the BE schools, lambasted the others for moving for more money (it made plenty of geographic sense for those schools to join the ACC), and then when a spot opened up for them, they did all their behind the scenes shit and bailed. There was plenty of furor over Syracuse signing the BC deal on some boards, even from some Cuse fans, and I could tell you right now, if Mulcahy was still the Rutgers AD, we would never consider playing them (I'm long over it).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Swaggs
Agreed. BC deserved the anger directed towards them because they were in the braintrust that decided to file the lawsuit and then they decided to flip afterwards (which obviously didn't happen overnight). That was over hurt feelings, rather than mandated by the conference and it probably hurt BC (because they are so far away, geographically, from the rest of the ACC) while not really harming the Big East teams (BC was a decent rivalry, but I doubt any school would list them as their #1 rival and they don't bring a traveling fan base or TV ratings or anything).
In the case of a rivalry like Missouri-Kansas, it is a mutually beneficial game that brings good exposure to both schools.
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Hm. Perhaps I wasn't aware of the details going on on the other end of the raid, but my recollection of the events is that the ACC offered BC, Miami, and Syracuse initially. VT (through the Virginia state government) and UConn (through the Connecticut AG Blumenthal) were the muscle behind the lawsuit. The bigger of the two problems was VT's power play, which forced Virginia to support VT instead of BC or Syracuse for the ACC, even though VT was part of the original lawsuit with the remaining Big East schools. BC wanted to come to the ACC all along because they thought they were getting in with Syracuse and Miami. Miami was voted in by the ACC easily, but Virginia couldn't accept anyone else in unless VT got in first, so VT got in as the 11th member. After that, Syracuse basically was off the board and the question was whether BC (which was the more enthusiastic of the two schools about coming to the ACC) would get voted in. However, they fell one vote short because I believe the NC State chancellor at the time wanted to make a play for Notre Dame. When ND refused, the ACC returned to BC later, thus the two-step expansion. I do remember reading about a lot of disappointment on the BC end after they were rejected initially since they were pretty much all set to go to the ACC that first year of the expansion. Led to a pretty awkward exit period.
Edit:
An article detailing the original suit filed in Connecticut. BC is named as a defendant while VT is one of the plaintiffs.