As a sports fan, and in particular a fan of the Big East, I have been troubled by a nagging question for a number of years now. I imagine you probably have too.

What the hell is a Hokie, anyway?

I’m referring, of course, to the nickname of the sports teams at Virginia Tech, which, as a football powerhouse and the school that gave us Michael Vick, has put the name Hokies on the map.

I’ve heard people use the term hokey to describe something dated and corny, and I seem to recall my mother pushing around a little floor sweeper thingy back in the ’70s that I believe was called a hokie. It seems an odd nickname for a sports team, though.

Recently I’ve been in a real quandary over the whole Hokies issue, because Virginia Tech has just thrust itself back into the national limelight for the first time since Vick’s departure for the NFL.

The Hokies made news by accepting an offer starting in 2004 to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, which has decided to expand in the hopes of one day staging a football playoff and reaping the financial benefits a postseason would provide. The NCAA mandates that a league should have 12 teams before undertaking a playoff system, and the ACC had just nine teams prior to adding Virginia Tech.

If it seems odd to you that the Hokies are joining the ACC, you are not alone. When the ACC initially talked about expanding, the schools the league was aiming for were Syracuse, Boston College and Miami, a school that ultimately decided to join the ACC as well shortly after Virginia Tech made its decision.

That initial idea, however, was many, many permutations ago. Since then, the ACC has considered all manner of scenarios, all involving the pilfering of teams from rival conference the Big East.

The initial scare involving BC, Syracuse and Miami did ruffle enough feathers, though, to cause the Big East’s five other football-playing schools to file a lawsuit against the ACC. Those five schools would be Rutgers, Pitt, Connecticut, West Virginia and, last but certainly not least, Virginia Tech.

Yes, that’s why you are not alone in thinking that Virginia Tech’s defection seems a little odd. It is a little odd. It remains to be seen if the Hokies will join their ACC counterparts as defendants and actually sue themselves.

Still, I was getting nowhere in my quest to have the term Hokies defined for me, so I decided to consult a dictionary and see if it was any help.

There was nothing for hokey, hokeys, hokie or hokies, but I found two words that led me to believe I was finally on the right track. There was a verb, hoke, usually used as the phrase “hoke up” something, which means to fake something. And there was a noun, hokum, which means nonsense.

Fitting, isn’t it? For if I were left to my own devices to come up with a definition of Hokies based solely on Virginia Tech’s actions, I’d get something like this: A hokie is a back-stabbing, traitorous, greedy and, yes, fake prostitute that talks plenty of nonsense and would sue itself in its single-minded pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I suppose the same argument could be made regarding the Miami Hurricanes, but they were the object of the ACC’s affection from the start and not a plaintiff in a lawsuit against said league. Virginia Tech was a scorned and bitter stepsister who got asked to the prom at the last minute and decided she didn’t hate men as much as she thought. Besides, everybody knows what a hurricane is.

The loss of the Hokies and Hurricanes will actually bolster the Big East’s standing as a basketball conference; the two teams were among the worst in the league last season. This will be particularly true if the Big East adds Louisville and Cincinnati to take the place of Virginia Tech and Miami, as it hopes to do.

In football, however, the loss of its two premier programs leaves the Big East more or less dead in the water. Even with Syracuse and Boston College sticking around, the conference suddenly lacks any national title contenders or television cachet.

This being the case, it’s likely the Big East will lose its automatic Bowl Championship Series bid, relegating it to a have-not in the world of college football. That, naturally, will create a serious dent in the Big East’s coffers, and that will be tough to swallow.

Because as the Hokies have shown, even in so-called amateur athletics, it’s all about the money.