As I write this, it is college basketball conference tournament week. There are dozens of conferences with hundreds of college and university teams across the country competing for regional championships, an opportunity to play for a national title and bragging rights.
Here in North Carolina, that translates to ACC tournament time and, while that doesn’t carry the gravitas it used to, it still means an awful lot to many of us - especially those of us old enough to remember how it used to be, but young enough to recognize how it might be later.
This week used to be a holiday. Maybe not an official holiday like Christmas or Independence Day, but it might as well have been. I associated holidays as a child with a break from schoolwork and the gathering of family. The ACC Tournament provided both of those things.
You could miss class or school during the ACC tournament and you wouldn’t even have to make up an excuse about being sick; teachers understood. Even if you did go to school, a few of your instructors would inevitably roll the TV cart into the classroom and allow you to watch the game.
Nobody, not the teachers or the students, cared about the Pythagorean theorem if North Carolina was playing Wake Forrest at noon on a Thursday. That’s because we have priorities in this country!
By the way, you may think that the Tar Heels and Demon Deacons matching up in the ACC tournament doesn’t sound like anything worthy of excitement, but when guys like Randolph Childress and Tim Duncan were playing in the mid-90s, it was cause for all sorts of emotions. This included angst as I have never forgotten what Childress did to my beloved Tar Heels in 1995. I am realizing now that memory is almost 30 years old and I’m not feeling great about that.
The ACC tournament was also one of the few things that almost everybody I knew was interested in. My mom cared, my brothers cared, my friends cared, my teachers cared and my pastors cared too. Yes, maybe they root for Virginia, but if God can forgive them, I can too.
Over the years, conference expansion brought in more schools to the ACC and, while that increased overall viewership and financial gains, it seems to have watered down some of the rivalries.
Carolina versus Duke is clearly still a big deal and so is UNC versus N.C. State here in North Carolina, but the Tar Heel rivalry with Wake Forrest or Georgia Tech isn’t close to what it used to be. Then again, maybe that’s because those programs aren’t what they used to be either.
I feel like I write every few months about the rapidly evolving landscape of college athletics and during this week - still one of my favorite of the year - I wanted to take a moment and appreciate watching the ACC tournament while I still can.
In the future, the conference may not exist or my favorite team may not be playing in it.
David Friedman is a long time sports writer, columnist and lifelong Tar Heel fan. He and his son currently reside in Wilmington, NC. David can be reached via e-mail at fourthandlongcolumn@gmail.com
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