DeCock Nails It – Quote of the Day

Luke DeCock wrote a good article today about the hot topic of ACC scheduling/expansion.

The following quote really resonated with me as a point that I’ve been trying to make for a while:

The ACC’s dominance and success was built on rivalries like N.C. State and North Carolina, not the television markets delivered by ex-Big East schools or the money delivered by ESPN. Dilute those rivalries, and you risk destroying the product for which ESPN has paid so dearly.

Long-term decisions being made by conferences based on much shorter-term cycles is going to backfire in some faces. I certainly hope that it isn’t the ACC’s.

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ACC College Basketball

33 Responses to DeCock Nails It – Quote of the Day

  1. 66pack 02/05/2012 at 1:50 PM #

    The product is already destroyed.The quality from top to bottom has never been worst in the last 40+ years.Other than ncsu there are no games i even care to watch.we already know who will win the regular season and this has been the same for years.

  2. TOBtime 02/05/2012 at 1:54 PM #

    An interesting comparison could be made to what has happened to the ACC and NASCAR. NASCAR likes to say they were a regional interest therefore had to move to other venues for the fans. There were NASCAR fans all over the country even in the 70’s. The model NASCAR chose to spread with wasn’t based on anything but greed and since it’s a monopoly why not? Stcik a track (preferably a flat, D-shaped one) anywhere you can and milk the masses who will pay to fill it. Those tracks don’t fill now and Danica isn’t going to make it happen. The ACC will pay a similar price I fear and it isn’t a monopoly. As we have seen recently schools can and will jump ship. Tick off the locals who built you into a powerhouse and then have to depend on national power brokers (ESPN) to bail you out financially when your own fans won’t show up.

    You know it’s bad when Vitale is spewing at a basketball game over regional rivalries going away for the sake of football.

  3. 61Packer 02/05/2012 at 2:02 PM #

    All the league bureaucrats, and that’s what they are- bureaucrats, want is MO MONEY. To hell with us fans who buy season tickets.

    If we can’t have 2 conference games vs our rivals, it’s time to get rid of the worthless non-conference games against teams like NC Central, Elon, Western Carolina, Campbell and Northeastern and replace them with the teams Swofford and his gang would deny us having at home, like UNC, Duke, UVA, Clemson and Maryland each season. Play them as non-conference games. Will Swofford next tell us who we HAVE to schedule?

    If this doesn’t work, then the state legislature should get involved like they did when we (and UNC) were forced to play ECU. I know that if this mess continues by making our home conference schedule look more like a Big East schedule than one from the ACC, my days in the WPC will be numbered. I’ll be damned if I’ll spend my money paying for football tickets against the likes of Syracuse, BC and WF each season with one game every 5 years vs Duke, UNC and VT. I know we play UNC each season, but just you watch what happens in football soon. And I absolutely will not buy in to a b-ball season ticket that features ACC opponents BC, Pitt, VT, WF, Clemson, Miami, FSU, GT and UVA.

    Don’t think it won’t happen, plus we all know that as long as Swofford’s in charge, we’ll be seeing UConn and Rutgers eventually bump two more longstanding rivals off our home football schedule.

  4. ldr of the pk 75 02/05/2012 at 2:33 PM #

    Hate what money has done to college athletics. The ACC doesn’t resemble the ACC I grew up with, when other than UCLA there wasn’t much continual strength in Basketball other than the ACC. Seems I remember Super Bowl Sunday about ’74 or ’75, State and Md played, a game between what were the top 2 or 3 teams in the country. It was an EVENT nationally.

    And who van forget the game between State and UCLA played at a neutral St Louis site. Other than Duke/Carolina, have there been any event games in the last 20 years or so. Certainly not for State. Remember the days of the Dixie Classic or the Big 4 Challenges of a few years later? And, it was the ACC that was the forerunner of the Conference Tournament, at a time when one team from the conference got to play in the dance.

    Getting to the dance today is much like getting to a bowl in Football, just be able to fog the mirror when you breathe on it. The ACC Tourney was an event, but no more. It’s just an endless run of preliminary games that generate revenue all the way up to the “One Shining Moment”. That we will not be playing our natural ACC rivals, UNC and Duke, Home and Away in Basketball every year, is as crappy as not playing each other in some years of football.

    As an ACC fan and more importantly a Wolfpacker, I cannot and won’t ever be excited about matchups with the likes of Syracuse, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Miami, etc, etc. We may as well be named, Conference #3, #11 or whatever. There is nothing left of the ACC that is unique or special. And, in all honesty, the conference is weak nationally, in Football certainly, but Basketball has lost it’s lustre.

  5. Avid109 02/05/2012 at 2:33 PM #

    I get the feeling that the top brass in the ACC don’t think that the 14-team conference will be a long-term solution. I think that they plan to add two more teams sooner rather than later and go to 4 pods with 4 teams each. If they put State, UNC, Duke and Wake into a pod, the thinking goes….

  6. ldr of the pk 75 02/05/2012 at 2:35 PM #

    Wow, ESPN just switched to their Super Sunday Basketball match for today, Villinova/Pittsburgh. I’m sure the nation is on the edge of their seats.

  7. BassPacker 02/05/2012 at 2:47 PM #

    Amen 61Packer !! Well Said !! If you want me to continue to purchase season tix and LTR, WPC better have a say in who we play at home, and I don’t mean the Elon, Western Carolina, Akron, Delaware St, Liberty and South Alabama’s. Go to UNC, Duke and other ACC as non-conference games.

  8. choppack1 02/05/2012 at 3:34 PM #

    Why bail swofford out? And thats what u do if you play unc twice.

    I think history will look unfavorablely on his tenure…remember, this is the same guy who wanted acc expansion without Va tech….now think for a second how bad acc football would have been the last 5 years without the team that forced his hand.

  9. tuckerdorm1983 02/05/2012 at 6:25 PM #

    I look at a lot of the games and look to see how full or not full the arenas are. I see lots of empty seats, even on the sidelines. The dean dome and cameron are usaully full. However, when we played miami at miami and bc at bc it looked like less than 50% attendance.

  10. BJD95 02/05/2012 at 6:49 PM #

    Thing is…nobody in power really cares about butts in the seats. As long as the football money goes up, that drives everything. And you can’t really unilaterally disarm. Yet another reason to be in the strongest possible football conference. It’s the safest place to ride out the realignment storm.

    On the positive side – see, we totally can beat Duke in Cameron. We are more physical than Miami.

    There’s a whole lot I don’t like about Swofford. But I don’t think he had much choice here. We had to be proactive and expand (or be picked apart). At 14, this is the only sensible scheduling arrangement.

  11. LRM 02/05/2012 at 7:16 PM #

    I remember about 15 years ago, right before the wild proliferation of college football on TV began in earnest, when the Big 8 and remnants of the SWC merged, and national media folks were calling it the end of college football as we know it because the Nebraska-Oklahoma annual Thanksgiving Weekend football rivalry was coming to an end (because the Big XII didn’t have primary partners and didn’t want interdivisional games to end the season).

    I don’t like all this expansion anymore than the rest of you, and it certainly dillutes traditional basketball rivalries in the ACC, but college football is as good as its ever been and is more popular than ever. The cozy ACC we grew up with will never be that again, and unfortunately for those of us who remember how epic the ACCT Friday used to be, basketball is nothing beyond an afterthought. The money is overwhelmingly in football.

  12. MattN 02/05/2012 at 7:48 PM #

    This is the worst ACC I’ve seen since I even knew what basketball was over 30 years ago. And it’s not going to improve with continued dilution.

  13. Howler 02/05/2012 at 7:58 PM #

    The pod with the big four would be nice but I don’t think it will ever happen. If it did, I could just pretend that it is our own little conference, and live happily in my own little alternate reality.

  14. Rochester 02/05/2012 at 8:03 PM #

    If we’re only going to get one shot a year at Duke and UNC we might as well move to the SEC, or any other regional conference, and schedule each as a non-conference game in November/December. What’s the difference? We might even get better officiating if it were a non-conference contest.

    The ACC has been ruined. Thanks, Swoffy.

  15. Howler 02/05/2012 at 8:09 PM #

    It is really something when you realize that you have lived through the golden age of something (in this case, ACC basketball) and that it will never be the same again. The names Valvano, Smith, Driesell, Holland, Cremins, Thompson, Sampson, Jordan, Gminski, are part of my childhood. I used to study the teams until I knew all of their starting fives, and by the time ACC tourney Friday rolled around, I was in heaven. Our teachers used to wheel TVs into the classrooms so we could watch. Now, I care about the Pack but really nothing else.

    The comparison to NASCAR was spot-on. I used to care about that too.

  16. Rochester 02/05/2012 at 8:21 PM #

    Just saw Henson’s dunk in yesterday’s game. He has about as much class as Carolina’s football team attends. None.

  17. UpstateSCWolfpack 02/05/2012 at 9:14 PM #

    The permanent partner game is a joke anyway. There are two teams that ESPN cares to see play twice a year and we all know what that is. The other teams constant home and home are not important to anyone. This being the case, 10 soon to be 12 teams, that ESPN could care less about, then they should not have done a permanent partner at all. Rotate everyone every year. The years that dookie and the holes only play once then so be it. Swofford is a money grubbing tar hole and must go.

  18. mak4dpak 02/05/2012 at 9:40 PM #

    So regardless of who we play, or how often, at the end of the season the ACC will give the top teams a chance to compete with each other. I for one can live with one game against our supposed rival. When is the last time we have been able to hold our own against them. So I would rather have 1 loss a season, than 2 to the boys from Chapel Hell. Until we prove we belong, and we are a legitimate rival, in the true meaning of the term ‘rival.’ At least we have a winning percentage against our designated rival, WF.

  19. Rochester 02/05/2012 at 10:40 PM #

    Heard a rumor ESPN tried to talk ACC into UNC vs Duke 16 times on the schedule, but Swofford was afraid they’d split and both wind up way out of contention for the league title at 8-8.

  20. john of sparta 02/05/2012 at 10:58 PM #

    basketball pays for itself. football pays for everything else.
    there’s a title 9 conflict brewing as well as pay for play.

  21. blpack 02/05/2012 at 11:31 PM #

    The old ACC is gone. Swoff sold us out. He will now concentrate on who to add to the mix.

  22. JSRy2k 02/06/2012 at 12:23 AM #

    Well said, DeCock.

    Devil’s advocate:
    If Swofford – or any other hypothetical commish – hadn’t gone with expansion, I believe you’d now be calling him “Fowlup” for lack of foresight.

  23. wolfie91 02/06/2012 at 1:15 AM #

    What if, when Williams and K are gone, UNC and Duke make really poor hires, Gottfried strings together several top 10 classes, and Bz (or whoever replaces him) gets Wake rolling. Then the UNC/Duke rivalry becomes a shadow of its former self, and the State/Wake home and home become the biggest ACC games of the year. Very little chance of that happening, but wouldn’t it be ironic?

  24. Gene 02/06/2012 at 5:28 AM #

    Expansion sucks, but what are you going to do?

    Either the ACC is dissolved or it turns into a mash of teams. For now, I’d rather have the ACC intact than try to see where we’d land up, as the ACC got picked apart and traditional teams got replaced by lesser schools.

    Do we really want to absorb a USF (or ECU in our case) type school to balance out our conference?

    I can’t fault Swofford for expansion. This stuff that’s going on is beyond his control.

    I can fault the holy crap out of ESPN for turning college athletics into this sort of freak show, where winning a new and bigger contract from them is the most damned important thing a conference needs to worry about.

    I forget where I read the quote, but someone in a league office said expansion was about providing the inventory ESPN needs to fill out its programming schedule. They need to show ‘x’ number of basketball games or football games and so you expand to make sure you get as big a cut of that ‘x’ as possible by making sure as many games from your conference get broadcast.

    If anyone needs a kick in the nuts, it is ESPN. I’d throw in the other broadcast networks into this as well, but ESPN seems to have the most conference tie ins and thus pushes the “need” for conferences to have “inventory” for ESPN to broadcast.

    “Nebraska-Oklahoma annual Thanksgiving Weekend football rivalry ”

    That was truly one of the great rivalries on college sports. If that can go away, I don’t think any rivalry means much beyond the money it generates for the schools.

  25. Master 02/06/2012 at 8:32 AM #

    I would not blame this on Swofford. He is only dealing with the hand he was dealt. The dilution of sports started with the explosion of ESPN in the 80’s and is reaching it’s obvious conclusion. With so much sports on TV, the games must be hyped in order to draw eyeballs. ESPN can’t broadcast all those games for free. So now, every Duke vs. UNC game has to be the game of the century, just like any big game in SEC football. Those are the games that pay for the rest of the games to be shown.

    The only way to turn this arounsd is to limit the amount of sports on TV and no one on this site would agree with that outcome

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