The first negotiating session took place on a winter day in Boston. Oliver Luck remembers this because everyone wanted to cease haggling by 6 p.m. to make the Patriots playoff game.
It was not misplaced priorities but acceptance of reality: West Virginia was leaving the Big East, and fine print inevitably was going to offer directions to the nearest exit.
So what seemed like halting, angst-riddled, tectonic movements actually moved somewhat fluently. West Virginia accepted a Big 12 invitation in late October 2011. The school and the Big East sued one another. They hired a mediator. A pair of two-day sessions wrapped up in February. Then the lawyers, presidents, boards and even governments had to sign off.
And so, just after Valentine’s Day, the Mountaineers officially ended one relationship and headed for another, $20 million or so later enjoying a guilt-free breakup.
“It added a layer of complexity to everything, but ultimately, certainly for us, it was the right thing to do,” said Luck, the school’s athletic director. “From one day to the next, I could say to my coaches: Hey, we’re in the Big 12. There’s no ramp-up. It’s sort of like getting divorced and getting remarried the next day. And I think ultimately that’s good.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would do the same thing, which is kind of to go from one day to the next in a new conference. I just think it’s the best way to do it. You make the decision, you never look back and you move on.”
When Notre Dame announced Sept. 12 that all sports except football and hockey would join the ACC, it encountered the acutely similar logistics and legal wrangling that West Virginia, Missouri and Texas A&M; have navigated during the recent tumult of conference realignment.
As he wrapped up that frenzied, historic day, athletic director Jack Swarbrick said, “It’s in everybody’s interests to try to move it along.” Big East Commissioner Mike Aresco confirmed to the Tribune last week that Notre Dame has broached the idea of an early departure in “very preliminary” discussions.
“Our approach is businesslike and cordial,” Aresco said. “We want to make sure everything remains at the right level.
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“Our goal, then, when you actually get into the talks about the actual departure, is obviously (to) protect the rights of the conference and adhere to the bylaws governing that departure. If the party wants to leave early — it did become a bit contentious in the past with some schools, but we hope we can avoid that in the future.”
Based on precedent, Notre Dame will contend with logistical challenges in everything from scheduling to travel to signage in a process that could cost $20 million, just to start. The schools clearly figure it’s worth it to ensure the future and eventually recoup their initial investment.
“It has been a hefty undertaking from a time-on-task standpoint, as far as time and effort is concerned,” Missouri athletic director Mike Alden said. “That has been a challenge for a lot of people. It also can be tough emotionally.
“You’re talking about more than 100 years of history, and you’re making a cultural shift. Not only is that going to take a lot of work, I don’t think you can divorce yourself away from the human component, the emotions that go along.”
As he spoke on a recent Friday, Alden eyed a flight to Central Florida for a football game that was a specific byproduct of Missouri’s move to the SEC. Missouri dumped two games and then scrambled because of how its new conference slate lined up, and a home-and-home series with the Knights was one of the limited available answers.
The price of an unexpected nonconference road game was hardly the only one exacted.
Immediately, Missouri forfeited $14.1 million in revenue distribution that represented its Big 12 exit fee. The travel budget increased by $800,000. And signage changes involved everything from SEC patches for uniforms to tearing up FieldTurf at the football stadium — can’t paint over logos on FieldTurf, it turns out — which added roughly another $1.5 million to the tab.
“In total, you’re probably looking somewhere between, I would guess, $17 (million) to $20 million to be able to make a change,” Alden said.
That’s merely the financial investment. Time and effort outlay might exceed that.
Notre Dame already has begun to reassess future football schedules to accommodate the five-game commitment to ACC teams, canceling games with Michigan from 2015 through 2017. The Irish also seem to have one game too many for 2014, though officials from Rice, Northwestern and Temple say Notre Dame has not begun discussions about canceling or postponing scheduled meetings.
It’s a familiar burden. Alden faced it, hurriedly getting Central Florida and Syracuse on his 2012 schedule. New Texas A&M; athletic director Eric Hyman has two FCS schools on the 2012 slate as a direct result of SEC-forced shuffling. It’s a complicated process when time does not permit complications.
“It’s a work in progress, and there’s still choppy weather ahead as far as the scheduling,” Hyman said. “I would think 2013 may be a little bit of consternation, but after that, things will stabilize a lot more.
“There are still some nuances we have to work through. It’s a spirit of cooperation. It’s some of the sacrifices you have to make when you make a transition. There are sacrifices by some of the schools in the SEC and sacrifices by Texas A&M.;”
Still, for Notre Dame — a school with $94 million in athletic revenue, according to the latest Department of Education figures; a school that handed Charlie Weis $6.6 million in the first buyout payment not to coach the football team — the issue is not necessarily how much, but when.
In that, West Virginia offers the most relevant parallel: a team that decided to leave the Big East and did so as soon as possible. The Big East initially said it expects Notre Dame to abide by the 27-month waiting period required by conference bylaws, and Swarbrick said in September the school would “meet our obligations with the Big East.”
But West Virginia faced those same hurdles in vacating the same conference.
Asked if everything is negotiable, Luck responded: “Short answer, yes.
“What we tried to do is basically be up front from the moment we decided to leave and say to the Big East, ‘We’re leaving, we’re gone.’ We also in that regard set a model for Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Notre Dame, honestly. It basically was that the Big East was willing to sit down and negotiate these things.”
Swarbrick did not return messages seeking comment for this story. Aresco said Notre Dame, in its communication with the Big East, remained unsure of when it wanted to make the switch. But it’s possible matters could move swiftly enough to allow the Irish to hang ACC banners for 2013-14.
It took West Virginia about four months to exit, and Luck characterized that as “a relatively short time period” for such a transaction. An angry Big East was not angry enough to stand inexorably in the way, nor does it seem like it will under Aresco’s leadership.
Aresco said his long-standing relationship with Swarbrick “can’t hurt.” And the Big East’s only sticking point appears to be that a school must leave, as Aresco put it, “on terms that are agreeable to us.”
“They were cordial but tough conversations,” Luck said, noting that West Virginia negotiated with the previous Big East administration. “At the end of the day, everybody was very adultlike.”
Alden and Hyman — who presided over TCU changing conferences four times during his tenure as athletic director there — characterized their talks similarly. Alden left the legal squabbling to the lawyers but said the feedback he received portrayed the talks as “professional” and “more of a businesslike function.”
“Because we had cast our allegiance to other institutions, the overriding thought — in a professional way — was, ‘All right, go ahead and go on. We’ll see you later,’ ” Hyman said of TCU’s talks. “And rightfully so. I understand why a league would feel that way because you’re really not that much of a benefit to the league anymore.”
And once that hard work is done, the tedious work begins.
Schools that book travel sometimes 18 to 24 months in advance must figure out how to get to Ames, Iowa, or Starkville, Miss., or Clemson, S.C., and where to stay when they get there.
Missouri had to flip its home and visitors basketball benches to align with SEC rules that dictate the home team must sit near the student section.
Texas A&M; had to work through SEC rules that prevent fans from taking the field for a certain period of time after a football game and mesh that with its tradition of freshman in the Corps of Cadets chasing Yell Leaders around the field after victories and tossing them into Fish Pond.
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But inconveniences pale next to Missouri and West Virginia selling out the entire home football schedule for the first time. Or the benefits of West Virginia finalizing the construction of a baseball park to catapult its relatively flagging program to Big 12 standards.
Or, in Notre Dame’s case, the expected push to build a new basketball practice facility to level its programs with those in the ACC. The grunt work, the dirty-fingernail stuff, is inevitable. But the point is to grind through that to begin a relationship for better, not for worse.
“It’s a work in progress,” Hyman said. “The scheduling, the nuts and the bolts of the league — there are a lot of things that have been worked through. It just takes time to be able to do it.
“But the psychological part with the transition — it’s almost like you’re dating somebody for years and years and years, and you switch, and now you’re dating somebody else.”
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton