Making Sense of the Nonsensical
Dean Smith had lost to Norm Sloan eight straight times when his Tar Heels grabbed a six-point lead in overtime in Reynolds Coliseum on Jan. 18, 1975. Monte Towe and Moe Rivers applied a suffocating press and turned freshman Phil Ford over a couple of times, igniting a late rally to an 88-85 victory.
My transportation at the time was a 1965 Ford LTD that my brother Tom Collins had picked up for $500 to get me through the winter with my job and sanity intact. It was as loud as it was fast, and it was very fast.
So I was tooling back to Chapel Hill after the game on Wade Avenue when, suddenly, my rear view mirror was filled with blue—not a blue light but a light-blue Cadillac. Seeings how this driver was in a bigger hurry than me, I pulled over to the right lane first chance I got.
And here came Smith blowing past me all alone, his hands gripped on the steering wheel, a cigarette hanging from his lips and smoke billowing out of his ears. It’s an image I’ll never forget.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a blessing or a curse to have been around long enough to remember how much games between these rivals really meant, back when the league itself allowed them to mean as much as they did. I’ll remain forever convinced that we all lost too much when the day—or in this case, the season—arrived that Wake Forest did not visit Chapel Hill, or the Tar Heels did not visit Winston-Salem. Now it’s been established that North Carolina and N.C. State will not play each other twice a year. There will be seasons the Tar Heels will not visit Raleigh.
And the sad thing is, it really doesn’t have to be this way.
Jonathan Bennett of the Macadamia Nut Gallery wondered what my opinion would be of cranking the Big Four back up. I’d love it, of course, but I can’t see it happening. The coaches won’t go for it. All coaches like to have as much control over their schedule as possible and the move to the 18-game conference schedule will cause many to cede more than they would like.
But there’s still a way to retain the rivalries that have made the league what it is—or at least what it was before expansion. I wish I could say the idea was mine, but really I stole it from my buddy Al Featherston, the long-time ACC writer and historian. Like is said in songwriter circles: amateurs borrow, but professionals steal. Featherston’s proposal is to divide the conference into seven-team divisions, as is done for football. That would allow at least most of the rivalries to remain intact.
Each team would play teams in its division twice, of course, for a total of 12 games. And each would play the teams in the other divisions once, for seven more games. That’s 19 games, if my public school education hasn’t failed me.
The one flaw in the system could become its biggest selling point. The seven games against the other division would leave some teams with 10 home conference games and others with only nine. That is, unless one of the games against the other division was played at a neutral site.
So the way to make it all work for everybody—the fans, the media, the league and of course the television networks—would be to set aside a long weekend between mid-December and Christmas when all 14 ACC teams would congregate at a neutral site. One year it could be Greensboro, the next Atlanta, the next Charlotte, and the next Madison Square Garden. And over those three days the odd game against the other division could be played. It could be marketed and sold as an Early Bird Special of what fans can expect to see over the next 2 1/2 months and it would build up tremendous energy and enthusiasm at a time of the year any league—even the ACC—could use all it could get.
Some coaches would balk because, again, another required conference game would give them less control of their own schedule. But it would be one game for the integrity and well-being of the conference as a whole, and not the two games that would be necessitated by a return to the Big Four.
John Swofford has not called me recently to ask my opinion, but my line is open. And if he were to call, I’d tell him Al Featherston has it figured out.
Problem is, for you, for me and for Al, it probably makes too much sense.