Ending a seven-week courtship, Miami accepted the ACC’s invitation Monday, rejecting a better financial offer from the Big East to stay put.
“Ready or not, here we come,” Miami president Donna Shalala told Clemson president James Barker.
Miami’s decision to join Virginia Tech in defecting from the Big East dramatically alters the balance of power in the conferences. The ACC adds two of the nation’s strongest football programs; the Big East is left with a big void.
“It has been a bizarre, strange, and goofy process,” Shalala said. “But it has allowed us the opportunity to give ourselves some distance, so that we got a view of who we are, where we are and where we want to be.”
The presidents and chancellors of the six remaining Big East football schools — Boston College, Syracuse, Connecticut, Rutgers, Pittsburgh and West Virginia — vowed their conference would become “even stronger.”
“Although we are certainly disappointed with the actions taken this week by the ACC, we as a conference will now turn our attention to the future and the challenges that lie ahead,” Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese said in a statement.
Nonetheless, a lawyer for four of the Big East schools that sued to block the ACC’s expansion said they would continue their court battle.
Miami and Virginia Tech will begin playing in the ACC as soon as the 2004-05 season. Both remain Big East members for 2003-04, since schedules have already been made.
Each school will pay the Big East a $1 million exit fee and the ACC a $2 million entrance fee. If Miami had made its intentions known after Monday, its exit fee could have doubled.
Virginia Tech president Charles Steger said last week his school was joining the ACC, and formally accepted the offer Monday.
