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Angela Tincher (center) drove Hokies to Women's College World Series.
Lane Stadium sports new facilities thanks to Frank Beamer's successes.
Hokie Nation has long supported the football team. Now, they have other equally successful programs to root for.
Seth Greenberg is landing better recruits now that Tech is in the ACC.
Queen Harrison, Hokies have already won two ACC track and field titles. |
THE (NEWPORT NEWS) DAILY PRESS
BLACKSBURG--
Weeks after commencement, on a blustery May afternoon, the Virginia Tech campus exhales. Except for the athletic complex.Bulldozers break ground on a basketball practice complex; the softball and men's and women's track teams prepare for NCAA championships; administrators tout the department's latest academic efforts.
It is a spring like no other in Hokies history.
It is a spring that Atlantic Coast Conference membership made possible.
Five years ago yesterday, in a reversal many of the principals still find stunning, the ACC voted Virginia Tech into the league of Hokie Nation's dreams.
Five years later, Virginia Tech sports prosper like never before.
"The best thing that has ever happened to the university both academically and athletically is the invitation from the Atlantic Coast Conference," athletic director Jim Weaver said. "There is absolutely no downside. None."
Better students, athletes and coaches. Record revenue, attendance and television exposure.
More subsequent ACC championships than seven conference colleagues; improved graduation rates and grade-point averages; continuous facility upgrades and larger recruiting budgets.
"I don't know that anyone would have predicted this for Virginia Tech," said football coach Frank Beamer, class of '69.
CONSOLATION CANDIDATE?
In May 2003, no one would have predicted ACC membership, much less excellence, for the Hokies.
Seeking to upgrade its football and enter lucrative television markets in South Florida and the New York-Boston corridor, the conference publicly targeted Big East schools Miami, Syracuse and Boston College.
Virginia Tech pleaded for inclusion and was rebuffed.
National rankings? Postseason tournaments? The Hokies were concerned more with survival. Panicked that the Big East might crumble, Virginia Tech joined a lawsuit to prevent ACC expansion.
But intervention by then-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and subsequent infighting among the ACC's nine CEOs--University of Virginia president John Casteen was a pivotal figure--forever altered the landscape of college athletics.
During a June 24 conference call, 18 days after the lawsuit's filing, ACC officials extended offers to Virginia Tech and Miami.
One year later, the ACC embraced Boston College to complete the current 12-school alignment.
The evening of the invitation, Weaver rose from bed--he learned the news from university president Charles Steger after 11 p.m.--and uncorked a bottle of champagne with his wife, Traci.
"That's as clear in my mind as the day my little guy was born," Weaver said.
No wonder. The Hokies had been pining for ACC inclusion since its founding in 1953. This was the conference that connected them to their Carolina neighbors. This was the conference that moved them into the same pricey neighborhood as their fiercest rivals--the Virginia Cavaliers.
A MAJOR STEP UP
After a lame-duck year in the Big East, Virginia Tech officially joined the ACC on July 1, 2004.
On Sept. 18, Blacksburg hosted its first ACC football game. Virginia Tech defeated Duke 41-17 en route to the conference championship.
Few questioned the Hokies' football pedigree. They had played in the 1999 national-title game, won the Big East three times and hadn't suffered a losing season since 1992.
Sure enough, Virginia Tech has earned two ACC championships in four years. The Hokies are 15-1 in conference road games and are 4-0 against Virginia.
But other than football and geographic convenience--seven league schools within 300 miles--what did Virginia Tech offer the ACC?
The women's basketball program was an NCAA tournament regular, but the men's basketball team had endured three head coaching dismissals and made only two postseason appearances in the previous 18 years.
Olympic sports such as soccer, track, softball, swimming and baseball were underfunded woefully. Graduation rates for athletes lagged far behind most ACC schools.
"I always dreamed of being in the ACC," swimming coach Ned Skinner says. "It made me nervous. This was a big step up."
How big was evident in the Directors' Cup, the all-sport standings compiled by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
From 1994-2004, the Hokies' average ranking among Division I schools was 91st. Their best was 63rd, below all ACC schools and eons away from top-30 staples Virginia, North Carolina and Duke.
Since joining the ACC, Virginia Tech has finished 58th, 45th and 48th. Final standings for 2007-08 won't be unveiled until tomorrow, but as of last week the Hokies were 39th, fifth among the ACC.
"We're not just content with being a football school," Weaver says. "We have the ability to be broad-based, and we're showing it."
WINNING ISN'T CHEAP
That ability is rooted in money.
For the 2003-04 academic year, the Hokies' last in the Big East, Virginia Tech reported $38.9 million in athletics revenue on U.S. Department of Education disclosure forms. For 2006-07, the university reported an ACC-best $65.5 million.
That's $10.9 million more than any Big East school--Louisville took in $54.6 million--and a 68 percent jump in three years. Credit, in part, the ACC.
For example, Virginia Tech's share of conference television contracts and NCAA basketball tournament appearances was $11.7 million in 2006-07. The most the Hokies ever received from the Big East, Weaver says, was $5.1 million.
ACC membership also fueled donations to the Hokie Club, Virginia Tech's athletics fundraising arm.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2003, six days after the invite from the ACC, the club collected $14.4 million. Three years later, the amount was $24.7 million, a 72 percent increase.
The dividends have benefited every Hokies team.
Higher salaries attract and retain quality coaches. Additional scholarship money allows those coaches to recruit more ambitiously and aggressively.
Expanded academic support systems help athletes in the classroom. New and renovated facilities impress prospects.
"If you don't compete with the best in a lot of areas--on the field, in recruiting and with stadia--you have to accept the fact you're going to be in the bottom [of the conference] every year," men's soccer coach Oliver Weiss says. "Virginia Tech chose not to accept that."
ADJUSTMENT PERIOD
During Virginia Tech's inaugural year in the ACC, two of the school's 21 teams--football and wrestling--managed a winning conference record. The Hokies' combined league mark was 59-94, and four squads finished in last place.
The football championship, a surprising fourth place in men's basketball and lingering ecstasy over ACC membership masked Weaver's overarching aim.
"We have a goal for our people to be in the upper echelon of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the top four," he says. "We're striving to do that in all of our sports."
It's an admirable if unrealistic target, one that no ACC school reaches.
Virginia Tech has yet to approach a break-even ACC record during an academic year--the best was 72-95-4 in 2006-07--and its baseball, women's tennis, women's lacrosse and women's soccer teams continue to struggle.
But in 2007-08, eight Hokies squads met Weaver's top-four standard, nearly triple the three of that difficult first year. Virginia Tech's four ACC championships this academic year--football, softball and women's indoor and outdoor track--trail only Virginia's six.
Softball advanced to the Women's College World Series, men's soccer to the national semifinals. Football finished ninth in the Associated Press rankings, women's track 10th at the NCAA indoor championships, men's track 20th outdoors.
In four years of competition, one cycle of recruits, Virginia Tech has won nine ACC championships: one in men's golf, two each in softball, football, women's indoor track and women's outdoor track. That's more than seven of its conference rivals.
According to golf coach Jay Hardwick, the dean of Hokies' head coaches, ACC competition lured rising senior Drew Weaver of High Point, N.C., to Virginia Tech. Last year, Weaver helped the Hokies to a share of the league championship and became the first American to win the British Amateur since 1979.
"If Virginia Tech was still in the Big East, I'd say there's no chance I'd be here," says Charlie Campbell, a rising junior from near Chicago and a starter on the men's soccer team. "The ACC is just second to none in soccer."
While off-Broadway programs such as swimming, golf and soccer often determine a school's Directors' Cup ranking, the franchise teams of football and men's basketball always dictate athletic department solvency and image.
Here again, the ACC has elevated the Hokies.
In four Big East basketball seasons, Virginia Tech was 17-47 in league play and never sniffed the NCAA tournament. In four ACC seasons, the Hokies are 31-33 in conference play, better than Virginia and fifth-best overall.
PROFITABLE MOVE
Virginia Tech reported a $600,000 shortfall for men's basketball in 2003-04, a $3.9 million profit in 2006-07.
Virginia Tech football has used the ACC move and subsequent championships to redefine its recruiting base. Rather than scatter to Florida, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York, Hokies coaches now mine the talent from D.C. to Atlanta.
Football's bottom line also has soared since joining the ACC.
The $40.6 million in revenue Virginia Tech reported in 2006-07 ranked 15th nationally and towered over the conference--Clemson was next at $32 million.
That's a 68 percent increase from the Big East farewell year of 2003-04 and translates into a $14-million-profit.
The men's and women's swimming programs are scheduled to occupy their new digs later this year, men's and women's basketball in 2009.
The baseball and softball stadiums were spruced up recently, a soccer stadium completed in 2003, lights added to the lacrosse practice field last year.
Norm Wood contributed to this story.
