What needs to happen is for the state to open the check book and buy its ACC seat like SMU
Speaking of SMU, here is an article about how SMU plotted to get into the ACC. It reminds me of how TCU got into the Big 12: forward thinking, a plan, determination and never giving up. It's a long article, but here are a few key paragraphs. What comes across is the sense of urgency. It makes me wonder what UConn does.
"David B. Miller always does things big. He is, after all, a 6-foot-8 former SMU basketball player. He won a SWC championship as a senior in 1972. He became a billionaire through an oil and gas company he co-founded, which he followed by founding a private equity company. He has been an SMU board of trustees member for 16 years and the board’s chair for the last two. He has donated more than $100 million to the university through the business school and other areas. His name is on the basketball court.
SMU is a small private school (around 7,100 undergraduates last year) with a wealthy and proud alumni base. So when Miller and Hart gathered a handful of other millionaire and billionaire alumni to explain how much a power conference move could cost, there wasn’t a hesitation to chip in.
Leaders saw the Big 12, Pac-12 and ACC as possible new homes, and they knew this might be their last chance to pitch the school’s value proposition centered around academics, athletics and access to Dallas. Pretty quickly, SMU sensed that the Big 12 wasn’t very interested.
The school hired former college administrator Oliver Luck (who had assisted the Big 12 in its round of expansion that brought in Houston, Cincinnati, UCF and BYU) as their own consultant and began a three-pronged plan of attack. Hart, Turner, Miller, Luck and a media consultant put together a dashboard of information on schools in the conferences they had targeted: presidents, board chairs, athletic directors, who made the key athletics decisions, how often to contact each person, how to pitch them, which schools would be key votes. They learned how each school worked and how best to make their case.
Hart took the ADs. Turner took the presidents. Miller took the board chairs. Luck facilitated many of the connections, especially for Miller. It helped to have a billionaire. If someone wanted to meet, Miller would jump on his personal plane and visit them the next day. “It’s better than a phone call,” Miller said.
SMU kept raising its offer of how many years it would forgo ACC TV revenue, to seven and then nine.
An ACC straw poll had the three schools one vote short of expansion, as Clemson, Florida State, North Carolina and NC State were against the move. SMU officials knew NC State was the best chance for a flip. Miller called up NC State’s board chair, Ed Weisiger, and pitched him again.
“At another time, I’ll tell you how we got North Carolina State to flip,” Miller teased. “That’s a whole other story.”
SMU's ACC move is an unprecedented college sports investment from people who have a lot to spend.
www.nytimes.com
