Originally posted by NJTerp
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The BE was forced to try football because its 3 members (in that first phase) that played 1A football all informed the BE office when PSU beaded to the BT (and PSU rather quickly informed them it would play them OOC sparingly) that unless the BE created a football division, they would have to explore other options. The BE response, knowing that the ACC saw the Miami football program as too out of control to be paired with FSU in the ACC, was to offer Miami full BE membership (the 10th BE member) if Miami would help it get 4 other schools for football only. VT, WVU, Rutgers, and Temple were not in BE basketball, which was the real BE.
Miami, from almost year 1 of BE football, was very open that if the ACC came around to its way of thinking, it would be gone in a split second. That and the lack of prized BE basketball status for half of BE football made it something beyond shaky, no later than its 3rd season (which I think was the first in which all teams played 7 BE games). The BE responded to that by eventually allowing VT, WVU, and Rutgers to play BE basketball. VT was not allowed to play BE basketball until 2000. Temple was never allowed.
The situation of BE football was so totally unstable that in 1998 Mike Tranghese went public offering the ACC BC, Pitt, Syracuse, and Miami for football only. The BE office was willing to kill BE football in order to keep BE basketball intact. The ACC did not try to kill the BE. The ACC expanded to 12 about 7 or 8 years too late, in part because it did not want to gut BE football, because that would leave the leftovers with either nothing or else a conference severely reduced in status and quality.
Notre Dame in the ACC was not about ND whoring for the most money. That would have come from ND joining the BT.
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