The emphasis has switched from adding more teams to adding more conference games, but expansion is still an important issue in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

When officials from the league's 12 schools and those from the Greensboro front-office headquarters began their annual spring meetings Sunday in Amelia Island, Fla., proposals to increase the men's conference basketball schedule from 16 to 18 games and the football in-league schedule from eight to nine games were likely to be the most important topics on the three-day agenda.

In both cases, the source of motivation -- television revenue -- is the same as when the league gradually grew from seven members at the end of 1978-79 school year to its current enrollment.

Georgia Tech, then Florida State and most recently, Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech, periodically were added for the primary purpose of making ACC football and basketball more attractive sales commodities to television.

In the cases of Georgia Tech and Florida State, the goal was to increase overall income. Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech essentially were brought aboard to keep the money flow steady.

Financially, the expansions succeeded in the sense that they achieved the overriding objective. More because of basketball than football, Georgia Tech turned Atlanta into a viable ACC television market during the 1980s. Florida State, which began league play in 1991-92, arrived as a competitive basketball team and a downright football windfall.

The additions of Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech weren't intended so much to increase revenue as to keep it at a status quo level. Under the current series of TV contracts, the ACC might have been forced to take a contract cut had its roster remained at nine rather than 12.

Now, the league must consider its national status as the next round of television negotiations are about to begin. Most of the current contracts will not expire until after the 2010-11 school year, but the most powerful college conferences start the process of hammering out new contracts two or three seasons in advance of contract expiration.

Therein lies the motivation for expanding what industry insiders popularly refer to as "inventory." That's just another word for games. More precisely, games of TV viewer interest.

And while the immediate reaction is to think that ACC coaches in both sports would vigorously oppose any movement to make them play more games against conference rivals, it's never a bad idea to follow the money in college athletics.

"Whether you think expanding conference schedules is a good idea or bad, it's impossible to completely avoid giving some attention to our financial demands," N.C. State athletics director Lee Fowler said. "I don't think it's a big secret that fans prefer most conference games to most nonconference games in both sports. I'm not saying we'll increase it in either sport, but it's something we need to consider."

So will other leagues, which the ACC understands completely. In the Pac-10, all schools play nine league football games and 18 in basketball. The Pac-10 basketball coaches don't much care for the policy. Then again, they are just like coaches in other big leagues in that TV income is largely responsible for their multi-million dollar contracts.

For the most part, coaches are pragmatists. North Carolina's Roy Williams and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski detest 9 p.m. basketball games. Yet, they accept the lion's share of late ACC starts, in part because they need those games in order to promote program visibility and their own financial value to their schools.

"If I could make the schedules, we'd never play later than 7 or 7:30 and certainly not at home," Williams once told me. "But I'm smart enough to understand that's it not just about us."

There are drawbacks

That's exactly why expanded league schools' schedules eventually could be adopted in both sports. There are drawbacks, not the least of which could relate to the ACC's chances of qualifying enough football teams to fill its eight bowl obligations.

"The bowls are important to everyone," Wake Forest AD Ron Wellman said. "Getting a bowl bid is just as much about exposure for the program and recruiting as adding some money to budget."

That could be resolved, however. Given a nine-game football schedule, most ACC teams would come up with a non-league scheduling equation of two games at home and one on the road. That combination would be imperative in the inevitable years when the given ACC team would have four home and five away league games.

But that's just for now. If the present drift continues, it might not be very long before the ACC, plus other leagues, are forced to go to 10 league games in football.

In basketball, any move from 16 to 18 league games probably wouldn't have a huge impact beyond Duke and Carolina. For those two, it would make things more difficult, and it's logical to expect that Krzyzewski and Williams then would opt for softer non-league schedules.

But until other ACC basketball teams appear or re-appear as national top-20 fixtures, going from 16 to 18 would be no more than a marginal move. It would improve the league TV inventory to some extent, but market ratings in games that didn't involve Carolina and Duke would depend almost entirely on regional appeal.

Eventually, nothing can be ruled out. The time easily could come that the ACC, and other top leagues, might need to play round-robin schedules in both sports in order to max out their marketability to TV.