The man who started the conference expansion boom of the 1990s doesn't recognize the conditions under which the Atlantic Coast Conference is attempting to woo Miami and two other members away from the Big East.

"The landscape is so different today than it was 10 years ago," Roy Kramer, who retired as Southeastern Conference commissioner last year, said from his home in Tennessee. Under Kramer's leadership, the SEC expanded to 12 teams by acquiring Arkansas and South Carolina and found the loophole in the NCAA Manual big enough to accommodate an SEC playoff at the end of the football season. The SEC expansion precipitated the land-grab nature of the early 1990s, when the Big East brought in Miami, the Southwest Conference fell apart and the Big 12 formed.

	Roy Kramer started the expansion boom in the '90s and created the conference title game.

Even with the passage of time, however, the difference between what the SEC did 13 years ago and what the ACC is attempting to do now is stark. Just listen to Kramer.

"One of the things we looked at was homogenous institutions," he said. "We wanted schools with a strong fan base that traveled well. TV wasn't a dominating factor. Our people were interested in fan base and a broad-based program. That drove our deliberations a lot more than TV markets…. I don't know what the ACC is looking for. I suspect that they are looking for TV markets and a football image."

The ACC wants to use Miami and two of its Big East friends to bolster the image of a league that marks autumn not by filled stadiums but by the start of basketball practice on Oct. 15. Kramer didn't profess an opinion about the wisdom of luring Miami to take the leap, but he brought up the ephemeral nature of success in Saturday's America.

"Miami brings significant stature in football," Kramer said. "Syracuse and Boston College are similar to the Virginias and the North Carolina States. Schools change so much over a 5- to 10-year period. It's hard to look down the road and say, 'This makes you a stronger conference.'"

Five years ago, Miami had just finished a 5-6 season. Boston College still operated under the shadow of its 1996 gambling scandal. Now they are the keys to the future prosperity of the ACC. While it's a good bet that Miami will continue its dominance in football, you could have gotten the same odds five years ago on Nebraska, which had just won its third national championship in four years. The Huskers went 7-7 last year.

Some benefits that accrued to the SEC will be available to the ACC, Kramer said, especially the excitement that divisional play induces.

"I don't think anybody anticipated it. Two years ago, we went into the first week of November with eight teams having a shot at going to Atlanta (for the championship game). It has captured the interest of fans in the late season. All of a sudden, Florida-Kentucky had meaning. In the old days, a lot of the championships were decided in mid-October. We created some rivalries that hadn't been there: Tennessee-Florida, LSU-Arkansas. That added to the status of the regular season.

"Does expansion do that for everybody?" Kramer asked. "I don't know. Do you create a rivalry with Boston College and North Carolina? I don't know how that works out. You put South Carolina in the mix with Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, there's a certain geographical interest there. Do you get that same type of thing when you spread out? You have to speculate whether it will."

The ACC has succeeded to this point because of its Tobacco Road tradition, because there is a geographical connection. Even as it has expanded southward, it has done so in steps: the addition of Georgia Tech pushed south of Clemson in 1983, followed in 1992 by the move further south to Florida State. The gamble the ACC is making in inviting Miami, which is south but hardly southern (Miami wants to bring along Syracuse and Boston College because of its alumni base in the northeast), is that it can do a better job at being a sprawling conference than the Big East.

"You have to stand back and look at that," Kramer said "I can't speak to it. I haven't looked at it."

Expansion and a football playoff turned the SEC into a financial behemoth and serves as his legacy, along with the multiple probations that SEC schools brought upon themselves toward the end of Kramer's stewardship. Whether the ACC can create the rewards of that legacy will be decided in the weeks ahead.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.