TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – With Miami officially added to the Atlantic Coast Conference roster, T.K. Wetherell believes now is the time to tackle another football power.

“We need to go after Notre Dame, and we need to do it quickly. As far as I’m concerned, it ought to be No.1 on the agenda,” said the Florida State president this week.

Wetherell knows the football-independent Fighting Irish – with their $9 million-per-year broadcast deal with NBC – won’t present an easy target, but he is at least willing to give it the ol’ college try.

“In my mind, the recruiting of Notre Dame has already started. I don’t know about the rest of (the ACC presidents), but that’s who we should be going after . . . We ought to be sending coach (Bobby) Bowden and anyone else who wants to go to talk to them.”

The additions of Miami and Virginia Tech in the past week will expand the ACC to an 11-team league beginning in the 2004-05 athletic year.

FSU athletic director Dave Hart, in Chicago for a Bowl Championship Series meeting, said the conference’s goal is to add a 12th team but that the ACC presidents would have to decide on a timetable for further expansion.

“I would hope we would not wait too long and be too comfortable at 11,” said Hart. “I would hope that we would treat that as a very high priority for reasons that are obvious.”

The main reason would be to stage a conference championship football game, which is limited to leagues with at least 12 teams by a NCAA bylaw. Both Wetherell and Hart expect the ACC to petition the NCAA to change the rule, but they aren’t optimistic that will happen.

“I’m not sure, at the end of the day, the various championship committees would want to set that precedent set,” said Hart.

With the Big East now forced to replace Miami and Virginia Tech to remain a viable football conference for a BCS berth, Hart said most conferences are expected to increase their exit fee. That’s another reason Wetherell believes Notre Dame will be courted by the ACC.

Big Ten and Big East. The Irish already compete in the Big East in all sports but football.

“I think Notre Dame has to be sitting around thinking what they are going to do. If it was up to me, I’d put a team together and go up there and start talking to them immediately,” said Wetherell.

Hart is just glad that the wait for Miami ended on a positive note after a weekend of negotiations between the two conferences.

“It was a very, very difficult process, but it has culminated in a very positive step,” he said. “It means a lot both to FSU and to the conference to have Miami and Virginia Tech as members of the ACC. We did not intend to end at 11, but we still accomplished a lot of the things we set out to do in terms of raising the profile, particularly of our football programs.”

Yeah, but it could be better, argues Wetherell.

“If we had that 12th team, and if it was Notre Dame, I don’t think anybody could touch us,” he said.

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(c) 2003, Tallahassee Democrat (Tallahassee, Fla.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

AP-NY-07-02-03 1733EDT

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