MORGANTOWN — In the grand scheme of college athletics, realignment has always been around.
Did you know Tulane was a charter member of the SEC? So was Georgia Tech. South Carolina was once a member of the ACC.
In the big-money era, though, the date of July 1, 2004 ended up being ground zero for what we are currently seeing, with teams flipping allegiances to the SEC and Big Ten.
That’s the date — where it concerns the WVU fan base — where greed first sank its claws into the ground and everything else was either confusion, frustration or helplessness.
That’s the date both Miami and Virginia Tech bolted the Big East for the riches of the ACC.
You already know what happened next. Boston College then left, followed by Pitt, Syracuse and eventually Louisville, completely destroying the all-sports version of the Big East, of which WVU was a member.
For WVU, it meant moving to the Big 12, a league that has brought Mountaineer athletics an era of both feast and famine.
Feast, as in the financial rewards have been many since joining in 2012. Famine, as in WVU finds itself on a lonely island with no true connection to the midwestern schools it now competes against.
You can thank the ACC for that.
Which brings us to Wednesday in Charlotte, N.C., as ACC commissioner Jim Phillips stood at a lectern to give his view on college athletics.
What he wound up doing was basically begging for mercy by spitting out rah-rah stuff that made sense in the 1980s, but certainly not for the current time.
“Any new structure of the NCAA must serve the many, not a collective few,” Phillips said. “We are not the professional ranks. This isn’t the NFL or NBA-Lite. This shouldn’t be a winner-take-all or zero-sum structure. College sports have never been elitist or singularly commercial.”
Translation: The ACC just found out how far it is actually slipping in the ranks of conference superiority and now wants fairness and humanity to reign in college athletics so it doesn’t get gobbled up.
To be fair, Phillips has only been the head of the ACC for less than two years.
He wasn’t around when former commissioner John Swofford raided the Big East of six schools, and did so without apology.
Phillips also wasn’t around when Swofford negotiated a 20-year deal with ESPN for the league’s media rights.
That deal, which runs through 2036, is now killing the ACC, and only makes sense for ESPN.
ACC schools are making somewhere between $35-38 million per year for the length of the contract.
The Big 12 surpassed those totals this year, handing out $42.6 million to its schools.
Schools in the Big Ten and SEC have long earned more than schools in the ACC, which now basically finds itself as a league filled with conceited and high-and-mighty members who simply can’t wait for basketball season to start.
“All neighborhoods need to be healthy,” Phillips said. “It’s not good for college athletics if they’re not.”
For now, the ACC is still considered a neighborhood, maybe even a member of the country club, so to speak, but just not one who gets patted on the back when it walks through the door.
The ACC’s table is getting closer and closer to the back of the room, rather than the front, and so Phillips’ plea for a common good was understandable.
“I will continue to do what’s in the best interest of the ACC, but will also strongly advocate for college athletics to be a healthy neighborhood, not a two- or three-gated communities,” he said.
It’s funny how no one in 2003 made these same passionate pleas for overall fairness when the ACC first raided the Big East, least of all anyone from the ACC.
No, Phillips is not to blame for what the ACC started or for the conference’s current situation.
But there is no denying the ACC now feels hands tightening around its neck, all because others got so much better at a realignment game it started.
To this, WVU and its fans should be rejoicing today, because the ACC will soon truly get what it deserves.
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