They were regarded as villains. Outcasts. Pariahs. Reprobates. When they played at Notre Dame, someone printed T-shirts that read "Catholics vs. Convicts." Sold like lottery tickets.

Nobody but the polls had a good thing to say about the Canes. If they showed up at your door, you kept them outside on the porch. When they left, you counted the good silver.

But now look at them. All dressed up, with maybe someplace to go. The Miami debutantes.

The Atlantic Coast Conference is wooing them as if they were prom queens.

The Big East can't bear the thought of losing them.

Miami's football program was once portrayed as Sodom and Gomorrah. Now it is considered the key to the future of two leagues. A rather odd position for a team that has trouble selling out its home games.

But they are now respectable, behaved, admired, and always near the top of the polls. If the Hurricanes leave for the ACC -- taking Syracuse and Boston College with them -- Big East football turns into a sideshow. Or collapses.

If Miami moves, the ACC hits the jackpot, though it takes some effort to imagine a traditional conference rivalry between, say, Clemson and Syracuse.

Times have changed. Once, nobody would join the Hurricanes for a walk around the block. Now, Syracuse and Boston College will follow them anywhere ... even if it's to Wake Forest.

The college landscape waits to see which direction the Hurricanes will smile. They can sort through their offers, punch a few numbers in the calculator, decide where the milk and honey is. They are like a free agent pitching ace.

The Big East can only hope. This is the unsettling world of college alliances, where a basketball team from Connecticut will have its future affected by a football team from Florida.

Not that Miami and the ACC have ever shown much eagerness to meet on the field. Take away Florida State, and the Hurricanes have played only three games in 15 years against ACC teams. They haven't seen Clemson since 1956, North Carolina since 1963.

This would be a marriage conceived by financial officers, and consummated by bowl payouts.

Tranghese is a little touchy at how his league is in threat of being burgled, pointing out that most other famous conference expansions did not involve a raid.

"Go back through history," he said. "Penn State (to the Big Ten) was an independent. Miami (to the Big East) was an independent. Florida State (to the ACC) was an independent."

And he is appealing to Miami's memory. He has brought up a vow reportedly made some time ago by university president Donna Shalala that her school was committed to the Big East.

But then, Shalala was in Bill Clinton's Cabinet for eight years. Secretary of something or another. Once you've punched a clock in Washington, D.C., changing your mind to follow the cash becomes easy.

Miami figures to make an additional $1 million a year if it jumps the ACC. Maybe more.

"Is that worth providing a body blow," countered Tranghese, "to a group of schools who were there when nobody else wanted Miami?"

He's kidding himself, of course. This is college athletics. Money talks, and history walks.

And the Miami Hurricanes, once loathed as fighters, now get fought over. The most popular fellows in college football.