Texas football coach Mack Brown calls it a simple fact of life in a superconference.

"It's great for the ADs," he said, "and tough on the coaches.

"For the athletic directors, financially, it's a bonanza. But it makes it harder to win for coaches because there are more good teams."

In the Big 12 Conference, the league members should divvy up more than $100 million in revenue from 2003-04, an all-time high. The Big 12 football championship game, won by Kansas State, generated $9 million.

Oklahoma played for the national championship in football, and K-State gave the league a second Bowl Championship Series team. Oklahoma State reached the Final Four in basketball, giving the Big 12 five Final Four teams in the last three years. Texas played for the national championship in baseball.

"The exposure is better, with more national TV games," Brown said. "Recruiting is better, with kids wanting to come and play in the big games. The championship game gets national attention.

"But a bigger conference means more tough rivalries. It's so competitive, it's scary. The ACC will learn."

The ACC won't be a 12-team superconference this year. Virginia Tech and Miami have joined the league, but Boston College must wait until 2005. That's when the ACC will officially join the big leagues - along with the Big 12 and Southeastern Conference - and become eligible to hold its first football title game.

Brown once was a part of the ACC as football coach at North Carolina. Dave Odom coached basketball at Wake Forest before leaving for South Carolina and the SEC. Todd Turner was athletics director at N.C. State before going to Vanderbilt.

Each has his own perspective on how their former ACC brethren will operate in the ACC's drive to be bigger, better - and richer.

"It will turn out right for the ACC, but it will be different," Odom said. "To pretend it won't be different would be fooling themselves. It's up to the people in the ACC to make 'different' better, so to speak."

Odom said there were few secrets in a close-knit ACC. He jokingly noted that if Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams had a tee time, the other eight coaches probably knew about it. When Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins conducted his weekly media teleconference with water splashing in the background, Odom noted, "we all knew Bobby was in the bathtub."

"There was a healthy intimacy," he said. "There was a familiarity with each other.

"In the SEC, to a lesser degree, we have the same relationships, but they're not as intimate. When I wake up on (national) signing day, I'm not sure who Mississippi State or LSU will sign. The most excited that people at South Carolina get about playing Mississippi State and LSU is the week we play them. I might see the Arkansas coach only at the Final Four and when we play them.

"They say distance makes the heart grow fonder, but that's not true in a 12-team league. It can create unfamiliarity."

But it also can create added revenue. The SEC became a 12-team conference in 1991 after the addition of South Carolina and Arkansas. The league had $20.6 million in total revenue that year. It had $109 million last year, including $12.5 million from the football championship game.

The Big 12 came into being in 1994, when Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor joined the existing Big Eight. In 1996-97, the conference distributed $54 million in total revenue. Last year, the total was an estimated $101 million.

"In the long run, it's going to be a big financial plus for the ACC," said Turner, recently named AD at the University of Washington. "Again, so much revolves around football. Just adding the championship game can mean an extra $10 million. And the ACC will add to its bowl alliances.

"The SEC enhanced its basketball by bringing in Arkansas. And look at the success of Florida and Mississippi State. And we typically have five or six teams in the NCAA Tournament.

"The pluses are many and the effect felt across the board. The Olympic programs, in particular, will feel it."

It's felt in the gymnastics office at Auburn, where Jeff Thompson has been the Tigers' coach the past five years and the SEC program is fully funded.

"Football and basketball is where the money comes from in the SEC, and we understand who butters the bread," he said. "Those sports get most of the exposure and marketing. So be it.

"But all the revenue is spread equally among the schools and not just kept in football and basketball. I have enough recruiting money. I have a full-time assistant and a courtesy car. Our salaries have gone up. That's the benefit for Olympic sports."

Arkansas also was a key addition in gymnastics. The SEC has long been ruled by Georgia and Alabama, but Arkansas also has a top-20 team, stiffening the competition.

"If you can pick up almost $1 million per school from a (football) championship game, that can help fund a lot of Olympic sports," Odom said. "Corporate sponsorships are bottoming out. You need other ways to find those funds, and a larger league broadens the financial base."

Scheduling will be different. With two divisions in football, all schedules no longer will be equal. And while a stronger ACC could mean a second BCS berth some seasons, scheduling could put a further strain on the coaches.

"There were years where we were slotted against, say, Colorado and Nebraska from the other (Big 12) division," Texas' Brown said. "It's not always smooth."

It may not be smooth for N.C. State this season, with both Miami and Virginia Tech on its schedule in addition to Florida State. In effect, the Wolfpack has traded Duke for Miami and Virginia for Virginia Tech.

"But you know what, that's why we went into this venture," NCSU coach Chuck Amato said of expansion. "People are talking about the ACC in football now. Recruits are calling us, and they mention ACC football because of who's going to be in the league now."

Turner, a Raleigh, N.C., native, grew up watching ACC football. Each ACC team faced the other league schools, either home or away.

"In the seven years I was at Vanderbilt, we never played Arkansas in football," he said. "We played LSU just once. Those things can happen in a 12-team league with divisions."

A bigger conference can make for longer road trips, whatever the sport. It can mean building bigger, better facilities.

"Adding Miami and Virginia Tech ... that's a home run for the ACC," Turner said. "But it will make people invest even more than they are now, both in travel budgets and infrastructure."

There's one other truism about being in a superconference: paranoia about the strength, financially and competitively, of other superconferences. The ACC now has two Florida schools. Think there's some squirming going on in the Gators' football offices with FSU and Miami in the ACC?

"The people in the SEC are wary of the ACC," Turner said. "Coaches are wary. ADs are wary. The ACC is seen as an emerging power, believe me."

Contact Chip Alexander at chipa(at)newsobserver.com

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com.)