Meeting of the minds

NCAA needs to provide leadership in the conference shuffle

Hold on a second, please. Before Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese blows another gasket and goes off linking Donna Shalala and her coveted University of Miami football team to the sluggish national economy or other money matters, somebody needs to call a long timeout.

From the sound of things, it’s almost certain that Miami, with Boston College and Syracuse trucking behind, is off to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Tranghese, presumably with a slight wink, calls this dastardly poaching on the part of the ACC. Others see it simply as a shrewd business decision in the big money game of college sports.

Pick your side in this verbal jostling, but what’s needed now is a leader to step into the fray. Not a voice directly tied to the resolution, or an emotional character blind to the big picture. Hey, what better time than for Myles Brand, new honcho at the NCAA, to cast himself into the scene?

Call a summit of college athletic leaders. Invite the conference commissioners and college presidents from the NCAA management council. And don’t leave out decision makers from the TV networks, the mad money behind college sports.

If nothing else, this is a great opportunity to sit down for a few days in Ponte Verda Beach, Destin or some other Florida coastal resort and talk about how best to realign conferences. See what can be done to tweak the crazy geographical alignments. Try to reduce the travel and time away from the classroom. Tinker with putting the basketball-only schools in separate conferences.

Do it now, before the next big round of TV contract negotiations.

What’s playing out now is about forging super conferences to position for postseason championship game revenue and, if lucky, another lucrative BCS slot. We’re watching mergers and acquisitions in the college game -- and don’t bank on it ending once the ACC fattens up.

Word is the Big Ten could again extend an invitation to Notre Dame. If the Irish decline, Pittsburgh figures to be a logical second choice. The Pac-10 is thought to be eyeing Brigham Young and Utah. And watch out, Mr. Tranghese -- Atlantic 10 commissioner Linda Bruno is on record saying her conference would aggressively court the Big East basketball schools if you lose Miami and the two sheep.

“Once the domino falls into place with the ACC and the Big East finishes positioning themselves with the media, whining, crying or whatever they are going to do, then you can throw everybody in a room," said Wood Selig, athletic director at Western Kentucky. “Get everybody talking and try to figure out what’s best for college athletics. We’re all bleeding financially. We need help academically with a reduction of missed class time. And the further flung your league is, the more class time you’re asking student-athletes to miss."

This is something the Knight Commission has pushed over the years. Yet judging from the conversation around college athletics these days, the No. 1 priority is making a buck. Or not losing too many.

If anyone thinks for a second the proposed ACC enlargement is about cutting travel miles and forging geographic rivalries, they’re wrong. Granted, Miami will significantly reduce its travel cost, though Boston College and Syracuse would be traveling in the opposite direction.

The honest assessment here, folks, is it’s about cash.

“What you’re seeing is almost a perfect example of the way money, particularly television money, drives these decisions," said Robert Hemenway, chancellor of the University of Kansas. “If there were not millions of dollars in potential television money to be earned, you wouldn’t see the ACC and Big East or any other conference realigning. Or you’d see very little realignment.

“But so long as we continue to have a product that is in great demand from television networks and the American public, you’re inevitably going to see institutions acting in their own self interest and conferences acting in their own self interest."

Hemenway, chairman of the NCAA Division I board of directors, sees value in a summit or some such meeting, even while acknowledging it might evolve into nothing more than a philosophical debate. Fact is, these are tight economic times on campuses, with cutbacks in state and federal funding, and CEOs like Shalala are obligated to do what’s best for their institution.

“If you were to gather folks and talk about this, you would not likely see conferences ban together and in effect tie their hands to any future changes, because most people want to be in position where they can do what is best for their institution or their conference," Hemenway suggested. “What would be interesting is a discussion of the economics of it and how much we’re driven by economics, along with the tension between economic issues and our traditional values as a universities. That is the kind of discussion that is probably going to extend over a period of years here are as we go through this."

In other words, money already rules the game. And since the new NCAA president hasn’t uttered a peep, we’ll assume a conference summit isn’t in the works. The marching orders in college sports sound clearer than ever, anyway.

As Tranghese should well have learned by now -- it’s just business, Mike.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.

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