Syracuse will look to play some basketball games in New York City, chancellor says
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/home_away_from_the_dome_syracu.html
Syracuse, NY -- Syracuse University hopes to play some of its biggest home basketball games in New York City after SU joins the Atlantic Coast Conference, Chancellor Nancy Cantor said Tuesday.
Cantor talked about playing in New York City in a phone conversation two weeks ago with ACC Commissioner John Swofford as the conference considered SU’s application, she said. “That was something they were indeed very interested in,” Cantor said.
In her first interview since the move, Cantor laid out the fast-paced chronology that led to the announcement Sept. 18 that Syracuse was leaving the athletic conference it helped found in 1979.
The action started Tuesday, Sept. 13, when ACC officials voted to accept new members. The conference had planned to stay at 12 teams, but that week decided to expand because other conferences were moving in that direction, Swofford has told reporters.
The next day, the ACC called Cantor to see if SU was interested in applying. She called Swofford back the next morning, Thursday, and had a lengthy conversation that included the New York City dimension that SU could offer, she said. That call was the only chance SU had to make its case, Cantor said. More than 10 schools had applied.
“I wasn’t making a pitch,” Cantor said. “We were just really having a two-way conversation about the opportunity.”
The next day, Friday, the executive committee of SU’s board of trustees voted to approve the move if the ACC offered. That Saturday, while Cantor was in California for SU’s football game against Southern Cal, Swofford called her to the ACC had accepted Syracuse and Pittsburgh. SU and Pitt had not worked together, Cantor said.
The next day, the ACC announced the news publicly. In the news release that announced SU’s move, Cantor said, “We look forward to bringing ACC games to the Big Apple.”
The new conference means SU will play basketball powerhouses North Carolina and Duke in home conference games. Those three teams have won the national championship five out of the past 11 seasons. But Central New Yorkers might have to travel on occasion to see the showdowns.
“We haven’t gotten that far, but we absolutely have plans to do that – absolutely,” Cantor said of moving some SU home games to a New York City arena, such as Madison Square Garden.
“I wanted to make sure that (the ACC was) interested in playing competitions in the New York City area, because that’s very important to us,” Cantor said. “We see ourselves as New York’s college team.”
That doesn’t mean fans won’t be able to also catch the North Carolina and Duke games in the Carrier Dome some seasons, she said. “I’m really looking forward to the day we get 60,000 Central New Yorkers in the Carrier Dome for Duke or North Carolina,” Cantor said. SU remains committed to keeping those games at the Dome on a regular basis, she said.
She also talked to Swofford about having the ACC basketball tournament rotate into New York City, she said.
Syracuse already plans to play some home football games at the New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. They include Southern California next year, Penn State in 2013, and Notre Dame in 2014 and 2016.
SU was prepared to apply when the ACC called because it had done so in 2003 and was denied, Cantor said.
The incentive for making the move this time was partly financial – the ACC’s payback to its members is higher than the Big East’s, she said. She would not give a comparison. One factor in SU’s decision was that the ACC had a TV contract with ESPN — $1.86 billion over 12 years – and the Big East was still working on one that would take effect after its current ESPN contract expires in 2013, Cantor said.
SU had voted to accept a TV deal that the Big East turned down in August. That played in to SU’s thinking about the ACC, Cantor said. “Certainly, we had hoped it (the TV deal) would go through,” she said. “Obviously, when you think about the stability of what was offered with the ACC, that was attractive to us.”
SU must pay a $5 million exit fee to leave the Big East. That penalty will be made up by the increased revenues in the ACC “in not too long a time,” Cantor said. SU hasn’t calculated how long, she said. SU will abide by the requirement in the Big East’s bylaws that it must give 27 months’ notice before leaving, Cantor said. It’s up to conference officials to reduce that time, she said.
Other chancellors or presidents at Big East schools have been supportive when they talked to Cantor, she said. She spent time at Saturday’s football game with men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim, and they talked about the decision. He told her he was OK with the move, she said.
“We talked about how this was going to be a really good fit,” Cantor said. “Obviously, there are sentimental ties, and strong ties, loyalties to the Big East, but things change.”
The switch was a chance for SU to improve its stability in all sports, she said. “Looking forward, we saw an opportunity to go and we felt this was a tremendous fit for us, and we felt that from a fiduciary standpoint the right thing to do in terms of stability of the conference,” she said. “It seemed like the right time to go. And you never know if you’re going to have opportunities, so you want to grab them.”
The move to the ACC will mean a higher level of competition for all of SU’s sports, not just football and basketball, she said. Lacrosse, field hockey, tennis and soccer will also benefit, she said. And jumping to the new conference will give SU better footing in recruiting students from a wider area, Cantor said. She hopes it will bring greater “geographic diversity” to the student body.
“We have a much greater presence now on the West Coast, and this gives us the Atlantic Coast, up and down, and that’s very important for the student body of the future, those population centers,” she said.
