GREENSBORO, N.C. -- At least this time, flat-lining was OK.

Tax returns from 2004-05, the ACC's one awkward year with two new members but no championship football game, revealed little change in revenue distribution to the nine holdover schools from the previous year.

The time of milk and honey and champagne and caviar, figuratively speaking, is coming, which means treading water doesn't look so bad.

The conference had two more mouths to feed in 2004-05, but it didn't yet have the full financial benefit of expansion because with 11 members, it was unable to play a lucrative championship football game under NCAA rules. With 11 schools, the revenue distributed to the nine consistent members dipped 1.75 percent.

Virginia Tech and Miami each received a previously negotiated sum of $6.25 million as base compensation, and they each received a pro-rated share of the league's budget surplus. Worst-case scenario accounting policies assumed a discernible decrease in income, and when those expectations were surpassed, everybody got a little bit of a windfall.

"We were very pleased with the financial situation following the completion of our only year as 11 members," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said. "The ability in the first year of expansion to keep our schools more than financially whole without the revenue from an ACC football championship game is a tribute to our member schools and the value they bring to the marketplace as a collective group."

Future financial statements will show a different picture, one that should more than compensate for the addition of a 12th member after Boston College joined July 1, 2005.

Only when BC came on board could the league conduct the title game and reap the financial payoff from ABC and ESPN. That game has elevated the league's annual football revenue to a reported $40 million -- the exact figure will be known when the league releases its tax return from the current tax year.

In other words, when forms from the current tax year are filled out, analyzed and made public in about another year, the public will learn roughly how much the member schools missed out on when bizarre political machinations suddenly pulled BC's entry off the table during the 2003 expansion talks.

Other developments from the 2004-05 tax year:

n Tax records indicate the ACC spent $2,374,197 on attorneys' fees over the three fiscal years encompassed by litigation with the Big East over the departure of Tech, BC and Miami.

That figure is unusually high -- the league spent $38,097 on counsel in 2001-02, the final year before the expansion process began -- but it comes from more than litigation. While dealing with the Big East matter, the league negotiated new TV contracts, protected new trademarks and made other one-time outlays.

n The 2005 ACC Tournament at Washington's Verizon Center, the first one with 11 teams and the first to be played in an NBA arena with modern luxury suites, generated $6,261,560, the second-largest total in league history. Only the 2001 event at Atlanta's Georgia Dome ($7.5 million) surpassed it. The dome had a seating capacity of 36,000 for the event.