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Message: [QUOTE="WoadBlue, post: 3459399, member: 1145"] Part 2 Probably the most important person in the history of conference realignment is Roy Kramer. This is so because Kramer was a Central Michigan/MAC guy who knew to never trust the BT, and not long after he became Vandy AD in 1978 he began explaining that to SEC people. The basic SEC attitude has been about the games, not business. The SEC guy wants to lace 'em up and play. He loves the sport as sport, and he assumes everybody else does too. What Kramer taught, slowly to unwilling learners, is that the standard BT attitude was nearly opposite that, that the BT was all about business, all about money and media. The Kramer story that first made the impact on Vandy people was about the MAC trying to organize a MAC radio network that would have stations across the midwest, including towns that were not even in the same county as a MAC school. As that was the TV age, MAC people probably assumed that the BT could not care because the BT had huge money and coverage on TV. But, Kramer stressed, the BT did care, and the BT made it clear to MAC schools that they saw such a radio network as harming BT interests and if the MAC persisted, the BT likely would have to stop all games vs. MAC teams. If you've wondered how a non-charismatic Vanderbilt AD became SEC commissioner, now you know. Over time, Kramer convinced SEC people that the BT was not like the SEC, that the BT was behind the scenes working a corrupt system to its advantage, that the BT wanted monopoly and could not be trusted. I've heard 2 slightly different versions of a story about Kramer finally overcoming the naive SEC opposition. What matches in the two versions is that Kramer was making his case that the SEC had to break away from any TV deal in which the BT was involved, even if that meant breaking up the NCAA (which he knew would not happen, because everybody but the BT and Pac wanted major changes to CFB deal for TV). The chief antagonist had grown up in the St Louis area. Kramer asked him to think back to his youth and CFB on TV. How many games were BT games, Kramer asked. The man paused, and then the light hit his eyes. He recalled complaining about St Louis TV showing some crappy BT game when he wanted to watch Mizzou at K-St or Ok ST at Nebraska. And that happened many times each season. When the BT realized that the Georgia-Oklahoma law suit would end the BT's near-monopolistic control, it began trying to figure out a way to retain as much of its ill gotten TV gains as possible. And that meant that BT leaders who until then had held great contempt for Penn State suddenly developed an interest. They knew that the Big East had been created to highlight northeast CBB, which had been left out of TV for the most part, and that it had worked brilliantly. They knew that the BE did not want PSU because it had no BB history worth having and the campus was not near any metro area. And that made Joe Paterno furious. At first, JoePa tried to talk up an Eastern League for football, but nobody was interested, especially as he usually presented it as PSU and its little helpers. By the time JoePa won that 2nd National Championship (the one made possible by the pederast DC), he knew that PSU required a conference for all sports, and he knew that he could not form one of just northeastern schools. PSU would have to look west or look south and join what existed. Gene Corrigan confirmed that JoePa never talked even unofficially to anybody with the ACC or with ACC schools' athletics department or President's office. JoePa was BT or bust. And BT ADs knew that having PSU would mean that the BT would control all of TV of CFB across the northeast. So the BT ADs invited PSU, and PSU accepted immediately. But the BT Presidents did not want PSU, which required a retraction of the offer, publicly. JoePa and PSU were made to seem like begging fools. The BT Presidents eventually gave in, and PSU joined the BT, to save part of the BT's ill-gotten TV market. The BT move to expand for TV market meant that the SEC would follow suit. By that point, the SEC brass had become so alarmed by what it had learned from Kramer that it demanded that the SEC act as aggressively as the BT. Once the SEC learned that a nearly unknown NCAA rule - for D3 specifically - allowed a conference championship game if the league has at least 12 teams - the SEC decided to expand back to 12 (GT left the SEC in 1964 and Tulane left in 1966) and do so at the expense of a neighboring league rather than add 2 Southern independents. The SEC began probing both the ACC and the SWC. They wanted Texas and Texas A&M most, but they thought they could break up the ACC easier. They found that no meaningful boosters from UNC or UVA had any interest in even talking. They then found that while Texas boosters were not interested, some A&M boosters were. They then learned that many Arkansas boosters would love to jump ship away from Texas. That gave them leverage. They told Texas and A&M that they wanted both. They also said that if Texas chose to try to save the SWC, they would take Arkansas, and the SWC would die anyway, because the SWC required all 3 of those schools. Texas said no, and A&M felt pressured to say no, and Arkansas jumped whole hog on the SEC. The SEC moves persuaded the ACC that it must expand, for football. Corrigan said that the ACC came close to going to 10, offering Syracuse with FSU, But as the vote for a 9 member league was unanimous, they picked FSU. The SEC had by then told FSU that it would be the 12th member, once all the paperwork with Arkansas was completed. The ACC swept in over a weekend and won over ever FSU HC, including Bowden, and the ACC obviously was preferred by the administration and faculty. FSU became the ACC's 9th. The SEC then looked very briefly at Miami before deciding between SoCar and WVU. It took SoCar primarily to get back at the ACC for taking FSU. All those changes, especially PSU to the BT, frightened all 3 of the BE's D1 football schools: Cuse, BC, Pitt. They informed the BE that if it did not form a football division, they might have to look elsewhere to protect their football. The BE acted to keep them. Miami had campaigned to be the ACC's 10th, but the ACC wanted no part of that then out of control program. The BE added Miami for both sports. Then the BE added WVU, VT, Rutgers, and Temple for football only. And so the landscape seemed to settle. INTERMISSION 2 [/QUOTE]

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