Hope as a Strategy
A Discussion Regarding the Impact of Early Athletic Administrative Decisions at Both UCF & USF
(Our Hated Rival)
Hope as a Strategy (Prelude)
[Originally written in Summer 2006]
Almost 3 years ago - as The Great Conference Realignment was playing out - there was a ton of anger, apprehension and (in the first ever use of this word on any sports message board) angst among UCF fans as we watched our hopes for our athletic program’s future play out on the national scene. At the time I wrote a series of articles on the premium board to help explain why USF was the apparent leader to receive the BE bid, and what led to them over us. At the time the topic was so emotional I HAD to limit the series there.We all now know what happened, but the story of our athletic program since its inception is still an interesting story. So in the Dog Days of the Summer of 2006, it has been suggested that now’s the time to resurrect “Hope as a Strategy” as a history lesson for UCF’s Fandom. And for those that read the original series, I’ve added a coda.Parts 1 & 2 tonight…
Hope as a Strategy (Part I)
[Originally written in Fall 2003]
Some on this board have asked how we got to the position where we’re behind the velvet rope nervously waiting for the bouncer to nod in our direction, while our neighbors to the west get whisked right through the front door. It’s a long, long story, one where university decisions made over the past 3 decades by both programs (combined with events outside the control of either of us) result in the situation we find ourselves today.
First though, count me in the camp that believes that our two universities AND athletic programs are remarkably similar (save men’s basketball). Despite common belief, USF is only 7 years older than UCF as a university. What’s more telling is that our respective athletics programs actually began within a year of each other, ~1970. Yeah they have a med school, but otherwise in academics, admission requirements, student body size, etc. the average Floridian (much less the average American college sports fan) would be hard pressed to come up with any defining difference between the two on and off the field. And, if in any way it makes any difference to the Mike Tranghese’s of the world, UCF’s campus DOES look much better… ;>)
I don’t claim to know what occurred in the President’s offices on either campus, I just happened to be around when we made a couple of pivotal decisions. To some extent USF has lived a charmed life, but part of living a charmed life is taking advantage of it. Sometimes we’ve tasted that charmed life on the field, but off of it we haven’t and there’s nobody to blame but our past leadership.
I’m going to break this little saga up over a couple of posts, just to save ya’ll some eye strain. In the interest of time I’m not going to research actual dates, but the events and their sequence are what are really important anyway. Finally, I fully admit that this is just one man’s interpretation of those events, though one that’s been cultivated over many years of discussion with fellow old-timers (and usually over one or more adult beverages).
Stay tuned…
Hope as a Strategy (Part II)
There were 2 key university athletics decisions made by UCF’s 1st president, Dr. Charles Millican, ones that shaped the long process that leads to where we are today – the establishment of an intercollegiate athletics program, and the construction of our first major athletic facility.
When then-FTU decided to make its foray into college sports it initially did so at the club level, run out of the College of Education’s PE Department. We entered the Division II ranks a year or two later, and cemented our status in that division by co-creating the Sunshine State Conference (along with Rollins, Eckerd, Biscayne, Florida Southern & St. Leo) in 1975. That decision was completely in character with Millican’s education-first principles, staid Baptist-preacher personality and general laid-back modus operendi. We would remain D-II for another decade – with its attendant D-II operational, budgetary, facilities and booster mindset – until a desire to upgrade football to D-IAA in 1985 forced the rest of UCF sports to prematurely (belatedly?) move up to D-I to meet NCAA eligibility requirements.
To our west, USF decided early on to move to D-I – with its attendant D-I operational, budgetary, facilities and booster mindset – and by 1975 became a charter member of the Sun Belt Conference along with the likes of UNC-Charlotte, Western Kentucky and Jacksonville, all then strong basketball programs. They later would join the Metro Conference along with FSU, Louisville, Virginia Tech, Cincinnati and Memphis State – the Metro would later form the basis for what is now CUSA (notice the contrasts already?).
Also in the early 1970’s - relatively early in the athletic history of both schools - the state (Board of Regents, if I recall correctly) made the following limited-time offer: If local city/county governments were willing to fund its construction, the university system would donate the land and architectural services to build a 10,000+ seat arena on local campuses for both university and community use.
Established schools UF and FSU, and one young school (USF) leaped at the opportunity. Working with their respective local governments the O’Connell Center, the Tallahassee-Leon Civic Center, and the Sun Dome were built, and all completed somewhere around 1980.
Maybe being 7-years younger than USF played a role here, but for whatever reason UCF either chose not to pursue that option or was unable to convince the local fathers upon the need for such a facility. Our administration chose instead to request state funding for an 8,000 (IIRC) seat stand-alone facility. Through the course of subsequent budget cuts and design changes the capacity was reduced to 5,000, and then became the 1,800 seat Teaching Gymnasium attached to the Education Building.
“The House That Chuck Built” opened in 1977 for our Division II program, and became a decade-long symbol of our “aspirations.”
Meanwhile, USF leveraged their facility and D-I status into their early conference affiliations.
Hope as a Strategy (Part III)
Almost on a whim, Dr. Trevor Colbourn announced at his 1978 inauguration that he was gonna change the name of our little university to the University of Central Florida, and oh-by-the-way he just might like to start up a football program. A short time later the Orlando Chamber of Commerce held a phone-a-thon that raised $40,000 in start-up money, and – voila – we had ourselves a football program! We were playing D-III football at St. Leo less than a year later.
Colbourn (aided and abetted by search committees, to be sure) made 3 critical athletic hires during his 10-year tenure as UCF’s 2nd president – Bill Peterson, Lou Saban and Gene McDowell. As an Australian he had to depend heavily upon outside athletics expertise, and leaped when the search committee selected the likeable, legendary former FSU HC Bill Peterson as AD, and later former NFL HC Lou Saban to become the program’s 3rd FB HC. The combination of the two fueled phenomenally unrealistic revenue expectations, which were offset by the fact that they were also spendthrifts (I vividly recall sitting next to CK at the 1983 annual booster meeting when Peterson announced that they fully expected to have – and implicitly they developed their budget upon – 30,000 season tickets sold, based solely upon their personal attachments to the program). The resulting >$1M debt threatened to close the entire UCF athletic program.
The Board of Regents conducted an investigation, and came to two conclusions:
- The UCF Athletic Program would be under their thumb for a 5-year period and that the deficit had to be zeroed in that time.
- Our “model” for the establishment of a football program was well, less-than-satisfactory, and that:
- BOR approval must be obtained before any other university started up one of their own, and
- Those universities must demonstrate sound financial and organizational foundations prior to obtaining that approval.
Separately, Peterson and Saban left the university about that same time and Gene McDowell became both AD (foregoing that salary) and HC. He delayed the move to I-AA and cut expenses in order to eliminate the deficit – and left all other sports to “compete” in D-I with D-II budgets. Other than a $1M (over 10 years) contribution from crony Wayne Densch to support a new (now the old) athletic building and the annual “Night of Knights” auction/social bash, there were no major big-donor fund-raising efforts ever conducted to support the athletic department’s financial situation.
Out from under BOR scrutiny and the deficit gone, Colbourn and McDowell immediately moved football up to D-IAA (with accompanying increases in salary, recruiting and scholarship expenses), while all other sports chafed against meager budget increases. In 1990 UCF joined the America South Conference, which merged with the Sun Belt Conference (USF had long since departed) a year later. McDowell quickly realized that that was a very expensive decision, and had to make a choice between throttling back a planned move to D-IA football and increase other budgets, or get out of the Sun Belt. Using a legal disagreement over UCF’s contract with the Sunshine Network vs. the Sun Belt’s contract with Florida Sports Network as an excuse, UCF left the Sun Belt and joined the low-budget TAAC, which is now of course the Atlantic Sun.
Ironically, in 1995-ish USF petitioned the Board of Regents for permission to start a football program using those procedures developed by the BOR to prevent near-disasters like the one they’d previously faced with UCF. USF had NFL Hall-of-Famer Lee Roy Selmon lead that effort, and they raised $5M in start-up money.
Hope as a Strategy (Part IV)
With much media build-up (read: sports columnist Larry Guest of the Orlando Sentinel), just-named UCF President Dr. John Hitt named Steve Sloan as the Knights’ next athletic director in 1993. He had national prominence, and as a result gave our program much needed credibility. He was also a likeable guy and became a good ambassador for UCF.
Sloan was hired to provide a smooth transition from D-1AA to D-1A, and use his coaching fraternity contacts to schedule big-dollar, high-visibility FB games against big-name programs. He did that, and he did that well.
Early in his tenure, the University was hit with a potentially damaging Title IX lawsuit filed by a lady lawyer with no affiliation with the university whatsoever. Sloan successfully brokered an agreement with the US Government that, while it prevented severe sanctions, also required additional women’s sports and scholarships that once again restricted available budget resources to existing programs. But several other flaws marked the Sloan era:
He never articulated a plan, much less a vision for the future of his program. And if there was one, it seemed to be limited to “Aw shucks, just win football games, people will become boosters and season ticket holders, and the rest of our program will reap the benefits.” I’m sorry, but hope is not a strategy for success.
Marketing and major fundraising programs were foreign to Sloan. Increases in budget were the result of increased student fees, and booster contributions rose slowly, and then stagnated after the Daunte-era. Hey, our entire non-football athletic program stagnated! Having his non-football budget rank in the middle of the Atlantic Sun Conference must have been an acceptable situation for Sloan.
Finally, even us dumb-assed sports fans saw The Great Conference Realignment coming – if Sloan saw it coming he sure didn’t prepare us for its arrival. That we didn’t adequately prepare for its coming may mean we get shut out of the BE, perhaps permanently. TGCR has come a year or two earlier than anticipated, and we’re at least that far away from being fully ready to take advantage of its opportunity.
I do want to give McDowell and Sloan their due credit in their respective AD roles. McDowell was dealt a really harsh hand to begin his term. He literally saved the program in that 5-year period, and got us out of debt. For his part, towards the end of his UCF career Sloan began the building binge we now enjoy with JBF, the softball field and the beginning of the new athletic facility. But both were so consumed by the expense side of the equation that they lost focus of the things that would increase revenue (other than winning) – marketing, booster relations, corporate relations, etc.
In 2000 – four years after their first kickoff, after playing just one D I-A team, and having never been to the D-IAA playoffs and with a $4M price tag – USF was granted FB-membership to the conference they helped found.
Hope as a Strategy (Part V)
So here’s the glass-half-full part. As of this writing rumors are swirling of two attractive all-sports invites (CUSA & MAC) and one BCS FB-only invite (with rumors of rumors of a later all-sports invite). This is what we’ve hoped would happen for the past 5 years. We now have an aggressive AD in Steve Orsini with an articulated vision:
- He wants every sport to have the opportunity and ability to win a national championship.
- He wants to have all sports in one conference.
- He wants every sport to have a new or upgraded facility within 5 years, including a new arena.
- He wants to add 2 new women’s sports
- Etc, etc…
We HAVE a new athletic facility. Coaching salaries ARE being increased. The softball facility IS being completed. The Convocation Center IS out for bid. Hell, our basketball team won TWENTY-ONE games last season!! Regardless how this whole conference thing shakes out, our athletic program is no longer stagnating.
Still, there’s what if? What if we developed a D-I mindset from the start? What if FTU had decided to work together with USF from the outset (as some suggest we are today) instead of Rollins, Florida Southern, et al? [Well, for one thing there wouldn’t have been “Dribblings”!! ;>) ] What if the ACC hadn’t been coerced by the Governor of Virginia to bring in Virginia Tech and stuck with their original plan? They were our biggest ally for all-sports inclusion in the Big East NOW, despite the obvious disparity of our basketball program. What if we had been able to build our basketball program over the past decade rather than allowing it to languish? Would the Big East have stayed true to its assertion that it didn’t want to further decimate CUSA and chosen us instead?
With today’s situation the Big East needs to add a FB school that plays competitive basketball now in order to appease the BB-division schools. That’s not us right now. But they also may need 1 FB-only school to round conference FB scheduling. That might be us. And who knows – the rumors of rumors just might be true also. The one that says that once the conference’s current NCAA Tournament payout has concluded in 3-5 years the BB-only schools will split away, giving us a shot at that time. We can use that time to build the Convocation Center, and the balance of our athletic programs.
Frankly, I’m astonished that USF – a program in its 3rd year of D-I and just 3 conference games to its credit – gets the call. But it wasn’t a FB decision. Give them credit – they put themselves in a position to be at the right place at the right time.
And no, our record so far this season has nothing to do with all of this.
Hope as a Strategy (Part VI)
[Originally posted in Fall 2003]
The more I delve into this the more boggled I am how much of a charmed life USF has enjoyed in their athletic history. The following is an outline of a Virginia Tech message board post compilation of the formation of CUSA – I’ll post it after this series is complete. It’s simply mind-numbing how The Bulls have repeatedly been an afterthought in the plans of 4 different conferences over the past 3 decades, and yet have ridden all of that to a BCS all-sports invite. Meanwhile we remain in non-BCS Purgatory…
I’ve summarized USF’s conference history in a couple of paragraphs below, and it is in turn followed by that (very, very long) Virginia Tech piece:
- ~1970 – USF begins its athletic program with club-level soccer and baseball teams, and shortly afterwards becomes a Division I program.
- 1975 – USF becomes a charter member of the Sun Belt Conference.
- 1991 – after FSU and South Carolina leave the Metro Conference, and in order to shore up Virginia Tech’s membership, USF, UNCC and VCU are added to the Metro Conference as limited rights members. Those 3 programs burn their bridges with the Sun Belt at the same time.
- 1994 – The FB schools from the Metro and Great Western conferences want to merge, and kick out the BB-only/weak sisters of each (including USF), creating an all-sports CUSA. VT screws that plan up by remaining a FB-only member of the Big East, and in a series of convoluted events the result is that USF and UNCC get a shotgun marriage into the new CUSA. Remember that if the original plan had worked, USF would have nowhere to turn, having previously screwed the Sun Belt.
- 1995 – USF announces they will begin a FB program, based upon a $5M foundation built on BOR regulations instituted after UCF’s financial disaster.
- 2000 – Four years after their first kickoff, after playing just one D I-A team, and having never been to the D I-AA playoffs and with a $4M price tag USF was granted FB membership in CUSA (though not until after a 2-year waiting period).
- 2003 – In their seventh year of FB, in their first year of conference play and a 5-3 record (3-2 in conference) The Bulls get an all-sports BCS invite into the Big East.
Just friggin’ amazing…
Hope as a Strategy (Epilog – Summer 2006)
OK, so now it’s almost 3 years later – let’s see what’s transpired in that blink of an eye. First, the predictable:
When this series originally concluded it was becoming quite obvious that USF was going to get that all-sports bid to the Big East, and we were going to be extended an invite to become an all-sports member of CUSA. It was also clear that the Convocation Center was finally going to become a reality. There were also credible rumors of meetings taking place that would result in a FB series between the 2 schools (USF’s CUSA buyout agreement helped “encourage” their support). Those things have since happened, to almost no one’s surprise. Frankly if that’s all that had happened since then, most UCF fans would still have felt pretty damn good about the past 3 years.
But that’s not what happened at all…
In fact much, much more than that happened, and the unexpected has been dammed shocking!! Let’s just put into context the list of the unpredictable and remarkable events that have occurred to our alma mater and our athletic program during that very short span of time:
- UCF is now the 2nd largest school in the state, and the 8th biggest in the nation.
- The University gained a medical school, further blurring any perceived differences the general public has between UCF and USF.
- Dr. Hitt was named Central Florida’s Most Powerful Person (for good reason), and is now the University System’s highest paid president.
- The independent UCF Athletic Association was created to oversee and streamline our athletic operations.
- In part as a result of that, the Convocation Center has blossomed from a stand-alone project into a $200M+ student/student-athlete development containing 5 high-rise dormitories, retail malls and 3 parking garages.
- Kirk will be coaching in that state-of-the art basketball facility in 15 short months.
- The Alumni Center is done, and standing proudly in the very heart of that athletic complex (thanks, Manny!).
- The state’s only indoor football practice facility has been built, and its use has already paid off in big game-day dividends.
- Another new softball complex has been built, is in use and serves as a construction model for another major on-campus sports venue…
segue…
- And now a $45M on-campus football stadium is under construction as we write, and is scheduled to open in 2007 against (can you believe it?!) the 2005 National Champion University of Texas on ESPN national TV!! (none of which I ever expected to witness in my lifetime!)
- Both schools lost very popular ADs, surprisingly gaining even better ones in the process.
- We hired George O’Leary, and a staff of ACs comparable to any in the state.
- A year after a winless swan-song football season in the MAC, UCF wins the CUSA Eastern Division, hosts the conference championship game and we go to our first-ever bowl game (as does USF).
- Kirk’s basketball team earned trips to The Big Dance two times.
- Tom Schuberth realized his dream of becoming a D-I HC.
- Every major sport now has a Director of Operations.
- Contributions to GKC have more than tripled, surpassing the $2M mark for the first time.
Whew!!
Although he wasn’t fully responsible for all of these results, Steve Orsini’s legacy will forever be that his vision has been largely achieved:
- Every sport now has the opportunity and ability to win a conference (if not a national) championship.
- All sports are in one conference.
- Every sport does (or will shortly) have a new or upgraded facility.
But I don’t think even Steve O. could have imagined so many successes and improvements (especially to his salary) in such a short period of time.
So it all begs the question – what does the future bring? Not to denigrate new AD Keith Tribble’s inaugural theme one whit, but we do need to – and will – “Finish” our current facilities infrastructure by the end of 2007. Apparently there’s also a soccer stadium improvement also in the works, and hopefully soon there’ll be some kind of baseball stadium upgrade that will bring it up to NCAA Regional Host standards as well. Then what?
Sure there are the usual personnel questions/arguments/potential replacements – like Bergy’s eventual retirement, and Kirk’s and Gail’s and other HC’s suitability as HC’s in CUSA (and it shouldn’t be a surprise that I think they are). Then there’s the continual professional improvement of GKC, Sports Marketing and the Ticket Office (the former has been improving for years, and the latter two now finally show signs of advancement). There’s also our relationship with ISP – they’ve never really produced the media network they promised from Day 1. But these are the issues of day-to-day AD management.
When he arrived, Steve O. for the first time in our 30-year sports history articulated a vision for our athletic program. So to what Star do we now Reach, and how does Keith Tribble lead us to Reach that Star?
The only acceptable Star toward we should Reach can only be membership in a BCS conference (and personally I don’t like the geographical makeup of the BE). Period. That can only happen through a BCS-level fan base, national prominence and money. That means a BCS-level fan base, national prominence and money that either helps CUSA gain BCS status, and/or lifts us to BCS conference membership. That (and national championships) is all that counts in today’s major college athletics. And that’s Keith Tribble’s (and ours’ as fans) challenge.
CUSA as a league of universities can’t declare or demand BCS status – we as a conference must earn that by adding to, rather than becoming a drain upon BCS revenues and prestige. Period. Failing that, UCF individually must earn that by adding to, rather than becoming a drain upon a BCS conference’s revenues and prestige as a potential member. Period. It’ll never again become a beauty contest.
It’s that simple, and it’s going to be that incredibly difficult.
Hope as a Strategy (a related side article – the formation of CUSA)
(that looooong Virginia Tech message board post I cited, written sometime between 1995-99, link no longer active)
The Metro Conference began to fall apart in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s when South Carolina left for the SEC and Florida State left for the ACC. This was about the same time that the Big East football conference was being formed, and Virginia Tech was considering joining the A-10 under WVU’s sponsorship, and in fact had intimated that it would join if invited. I Virginia Tech did in fact leave the Metro, the conference would lose its automatic bid the NCAA Tourney, having fallen below 6 members. The other Metro members begged Virginia Tech not to leave for this reason, and in a decision that puzzles Hokie fans to this day, Virginia Tech agreed to remain in the Metro Conference, spurning the A-10 invite that WVU had worked so hard to get us. Ironically (to say the least), the following year Memphis State and Cincinnati, two of the members that had urged the Hokies to remain in the Metro, left the Metro Conference to help found the Great Midwest Conference. So the Metro lost its automatic NCAA bid anyway, and became even lamer.
On April 3, 1991, the Metro Conference then added 3 new schools: UNC-Charlotte, Virginia Commonwealth, and South Florida. These three schools were not added as equal members, however. They had limited rights to vote on expansion, and they could be expelled more easily than the other four Metro members (VT, Louisville, S. Miss, Tulane). Additionally, they were all plucked from the Sun Belt conference, ruining that conference and burning their bridges to it (this would become more important later).
Also, to attempt to avoid another rash of defections, the Metro instituted a provision that a team leaving would have to pay the conference $500,000. With the exit fines and the unequal memberships, the seeds for a very ugly breakup were planted…
Lo and behold, football started getting more influence, and basketball-based leagues like the Metro and the Great Midwest started feeling they needed football. Neither conference had enough I-A football teams to make a goodfootball league, so in 1994, the unaffiliated football teams from the two leagues decided to rejoin forces into a league that would have football. From the Metro, this was Louisville, Southern Mississippi, and Tulane. These three schools’ original plan was for the four original Metro members (including VT) to boot USF, UNCC and VCU, and for the Great Midwest to boot UAB and Dayton, and form a conference of ten teams: Marquette, Cincinnati, DePaul, Memphis, St. Louis, Louisville, Tulane, Southern Mississippi, Virginia Tech and Houston.
Virginia Tech and Louisville were to be the crown jewels of the football alignment. However, Virginia Tech threw a monkey wrench into these plans by saying that its football team was committed to the Big East and was not interested in the new conference, which would not even be half as good as the Big East. Virginia Tech DID want to play all other sports in the new conference however, having been snubbed by the Big East for all sports in march of that year. But the new league didn’t want any members playing football elsewhere, as the whole point of the new league was football driven. Also, there was the little matter of those $500,000 exit fees that the Metro had imposed.
So the schools decided to form the new league around the Metro. Two of the reasons for forming the new conference around the Metro were that Louisville, S. Miss and Tulane didn’t want to pay the exit fines, and those schools thought there was a chance Virginia Tech would be forced to join the new conference to avoid having to pay the $500,000. And Tech did refuse to resign from the Metro, partially because of the $500,000 exit fine. After all, why should Tech pay an exit fine when the realignment of the Metro was being engineered by the other three schools’ desire to form a new league, and in the past Tech had given up it’s a-10 bid for the sake of the Metro (and one could argue this had cost Tech a shot at Big East full membership). Another reason for not resigning from the Metro was because that would cause Tech to lose its share of the Metro’s revenue from its NCAA tournament points. This amounted to $1.2 million a year in revenue to the conference. So Tech did not want to resign from the Metro. However, Tech also refused to play football in the new league, as its football team was already in a much better situation in the Big East. This was a stalemate.
If Tech had gone along with the new conference, the four schools originally from the Metro (including Virginia Tech) would have been ideally suited to kick out the three new members (maybe paying a minor penalty) and forming the new conference while keeping all of the NCAA points and not having to pay $500K each. However Tech ruined this plan by saying their football team was committed to the Big East. Furthermore, without Tech joining the three other football teams, the Metro Four if you will, lost their voting block. So the remaining Metro members (VT, VCU, UNCC and USF) initially planned to stay together and collect the exit fines from Louisville, Southern Miss and Tulane, and keep the NCAA tournament revenue.
Since UAB had a football team and vowed to move them to Division I-A in a timely fashion, they were added as the 10th team of the new conference, and Tulane, Louisville, and Southern Miss appealed to the other schools in the new league to help them buy out of the Metro. When they refused, the remaining Metro Three, knowing that Tech was not going to help them, came up with the idea of adding both South Florida and UNCC to the new league in order to get a block of votes from the Metro.
Most of the schools were not in favor of this, as neither school was particularly rich in terms of name recognition, basketball history or numbers of alumni nationally. However the Metro Three told them that either the schools help them by contributing to the exit fees to buy out of the Metro or admit both USF and UNCC. USF and UNCC were told to either abide by whatever the Metro Three decided to do about the Metro or be left to fend for themselves as either independents or members of a lesser conference. At this point both USF and UNCC were limited in terms of choices. They’d burned their bridges with the Sun Belt, there wasn’t going to be a Metro, and none of the greater conferences were going to take them.
So, USF and UNCC gave a presentation during the 1994 NCAA convention to the other schools that were forming the new conference, and were accepted. That left Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth standing alone in the Metro Conference.
When Virginia Tech and VCU got wind of what was happening they first waited for the other five Metro schools to do the right thing, and resign from the conference. When the other five schools refused to do this, Tech and VCU began attempting to operate as if the league was going to stay together, i.e. beginning to plan the 1995 conference schedule. However, whenever Tech or VCU tried to schedule a conference game with the other schools, they were told that the other schools would not be in the Metro next year, and they would not schedule the games. So Tech and VCU were left completely in limbo for 1995 and beyond – they obviously didn’t have a conference anymore, but since no one else had resigned they couldn’t start the process of joining new leagues without fear of having to pay the $500,000 fines.
This lead Tech and VCU to inform the other five Metro schools that, by announcing their intention to form a new league and refusing to schedule conference games for 1995, the other five schools had in effect resigned from the Metro and now owed $500,000 each in exit fines. Tech and VCU pointed out that according to the Metro Conference constitution, two schools are all that was needed to form the conference, and Tech and VCU intended to keep the Metro name and continue playing together as a conference. Of course this was a bluff and everybody knew that once the other schools were out of the Metro, Tech and VCU would repeal the exit fines, pocket the $2.5M, (most importantly) keep the Metro Conference’s NCAA tournament revenue sharing points, and go to the A-10. But according to the Metro constitution, Tech and VCU were within their rights.
The other five Metro schools responded to this announcement by holding a quickie meeting and voting to expel Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth, informing them of this by a fax from the UNCC AD. Then they would be free to form the new conference around the Metro and avoid the $500,000 exit fines. And they could keep the NCAA revenue points. Unfortunately for them, the Metro constitution specifically stated that a member school can only be expelled for cause, and there was no cause for expulsion.
So on January 17, 1995, Tech and VCU filed a lawsuit in Richmond district court, alleging breach of contract by the Metro schools, and interference with a contract by the other schools that were to be in the new league, and demanding the $2.5million.
At this point a mediator was called in, and the whole thing was settled. The Metro Conference would be dissolved and no one would use the name, but the new conference would get the Metro’s NCAA revenue sharing points. The other five Metro schools paid Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth $1.1million each for their “equity in the Metro Conference, and for the value of their share of the NCAA revenue sharing points.
But things did not go well for the new conference in this breakup. They got stuck with USF and UNCC and STILL had to pay off Virginia Tech and VCU, albeit less than a straight resignation would have cost them. It went better for Virginia Tech, which became $1.1 million richer and joined the A-10, where the Hokies are thriving. VCU didn’t do quite as well; the A-10 didn’t want them. So they went to the Colonial Athletic Association, $1.1 million richer, but in a much poorer conference.