Former ACC Commish Corrigan: Expansion 'Has Everybody Scared'

When the Big Ten added Penn State as its 11th member in 1990, Gene Corrigan, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference at the time, admitted his league was caught dozing at the wheel. The ACC quickly gathered itself and added Florida State as its ninth member a year later.

The ACC reached a dozen members in 2005 with Miami, Virginia Tech and finally Boston College joining its ranks. While there have been other major and minor shifts across the country the past two decades, the latest expansion chatter has quickly accelerated and schools from coast-to-coast are paying wide-eyed attention.

"This has everybody scared to death," Corrigan told FanHouse Wednesday afternoon.

"My hope is whoever starts it doesn't do anything excessive. The idea of a 16-team conference just messes up everything. I hope that doesn't happen. I just think it would be ... it would end up being harmful to a lot of people."

The latest round of Big Ten expansion rumors prompted commissioner Jim Delany to reach out to league athletic directors earlier this week and relay that nothing has happened ... yet. The Big Ten continues to say that it's sticking to the original 12- to 18-month timetable laid out in December when it announced the expansion study.

The conference is looking at expanding from its current 11 members so that it can extend the reach of its lucrative cable network and add a league championship game in football.

Corrigan, 82, also former president of the NCAA and athletic director at both Virginia and Notre Dame, considers Delany a good friend, great guy and a shrewd businessman. And, at the expansion table, Delany, who has led the Big Ten through significant change and growth since being hired in 1989, may also have the perfect poker face -- one without any interpretable expression.

"When they took Penn State, there were athletic directors in that conference who had no idea that was being done," said Corrigan, who remains one of the most respected men in college athletics. "Jim has generally worked things through his (school) presidents. Presidents tend to be quiet and keep things close to the vest.

"I think that's why everyone is wondering what in the heck is happening.""No matter what happens, some conference is going to get hurt along the way."
-- Gene Corrigan, former ACC commissioner

This much is known: other major conferences appear not to be twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the Big Ten decision.

Most of the Big 12's athletic directors met with their Pac-10 colleagues at that conference's annual meeting in Phoenix last week. Among the topics: a television-driven alliance that would offer broadcast partners the chance to lock up most of the major media markets west of the Mississippi.

The ACC held its annual meetings in Amelia Island, Fla., near Jacksonville, this week. Commissioner John Swofford, who replaced the retiring Corrigan in 1997 and has doubled the ACC's annual revenue during his tenure, told the media on Monday that the ACC will have a plan in place should conference expansion again bulldoze the landscape.

"I think John is being as he should be, being cautious about the whole thing," said Corrigan, who resides in Charlottesville, Va.

"But you can't ignore the fact of what might happen. You always have to be ready to do the things to help your people -- you have that obligation. When I was working with the ACC, we were really surprised when the Big Ten took Penn State and we frankly felt we were kind of half-asleep. We started looking at expansion right away and that's when we added Florida State."

Of course, the obligation that Corrigan speaks of is focused squarely on the bottom line.

The Big Ten and the SEC are by far the nation's two most lucrative conferences. The Big Ten, according to tax documents, reported a total revenue of $217.7 million for the year that ended June 30, 2008, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported last March. The SEC reported to the IRS total revenue of $161.6 million.

It's believed one way for the Big Ten to make its television network even more powerful and more lucrative is to possibly spread into the heavily populated northeast, particularly New York.

Corrigan admits he's old school, believing the best number for conference membership is nine, though he was quick to add a historical note that the Southern Conference had as many as 24 members from 1921-32.

When the SEC decided to add Arkansas and South Carolina to become a 12-team league, many believed a dozen members was the magical number.

"I think a conference now seems to be defined by 12 (schools), so naturally I think the Big Ten needs to go to 12 and the Pac Ten needs to go to 12, so there's going to be some reaching out," Corrigan said.

"But there are a lot of pretty good schools that are not in these, what you'd call major conferences, and are going to have an opportunity to step in, I think. No matter what happens, though, some conference is going to get hurt along the way."

Many believe the Big East could see its membership again targeted.

The Big Ten athletic directors will meet May 17-19 in Chicago. They will be joined by faculty representatives, senior women's administrators and the head coaches in football and men's and women's basketball. The meeting is being described as routine and expansion isn't expected to be settled.

"You get into something like this, it gets a little scary," Corrigan said.

"It's an amazing time and the amazing thing is how little anyone knows. You have to give the Big Ten credit for keeping everything close to the vest."