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The ACC is going all-in for football, which doesn’t bode well for ACC basketball
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Bill Belichick’s arrival has already had a profound effect on North Carolina and the ACC.
On one hand, it has given the Tar Heels’ football program the kind of national attention it has always craved but has never come close to achieving. Belichick’s surprise return to coaching has become such a hot topic of conversation that even the Today Show discussed it.
But equally important, his arrival has provided a distraction to help divert attention from the sorry state of basketball across the ACC.
It was another lost weekend. The kind that is becoming all too familiar for a league that still likes to think of itself as the nation’s best.
Clemson, NC State, Louisville and Syracuse all had opportunities to at least slow the bleeding from a disastrous ACC/SEC Challenge by facing high–profile opponents Saturday.
And all failed.
The Tigers lost in overtime to Memphis. The Wolfpack joined Triangle neighbors UNC and Duke in losing to Kansas. The injury-depleted Cardinals dropped their in-state rivalry game against Kentucky, and the Orange fell to their old Big East nemesis Georgetown.
Only newcomer SMU was able to salvage a shred of respectability by knocking off LSU.
For those of you keeping score at home, the ACC is now a dismal 4-28 against the SEC this season. It’s 3-8 against the Big 12 and 2-5 against the Big East.
And there’s still time for things to get worse.
The decline didn’t just happen. The snowball has been rolling downhill for a few seasons. It’s just finally picked up enough speed and grown big enough to become an avalanche that has buried the conference deep in the NET rankings.
Losing Hall of Fame coaches Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim has contributed to the ACC’s plight. Tony Bennett’s preseason retirement didn’t help. Neither has watering down of the league through expansion and other external factors brought about by NIL and the transfer portal.
But it took Belichick’s introductory press conference in Chapel Hill on Thursday for someone to finally hit on the root of the ACC’s basketball predicament.
Although UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham was speaking specifically about his school when he said “we see the future of college athletics as very dependent on a successful football program,” it rings true for the entire conference.
Former commissioner John Swofford realized it when he began steering the conference in a more football-centric direction a decade ago. His successor Jim Phillips and the rest of the league’s current leadership have accelerated the process.
The ACC didn’t exactly sell its soul to the devil by going all-in on football. It was simply a matter of survival amid the changing landscape of college athletics.
Football drives the economic bus more now than ever. With the reality of revenue sharing lurking, the cost of the ride will only increase. As UNC Trustee David Boliek told WRAL.com: “If we don’t get into that game, we’re going to get left behind.”
The Tar Heels have put their skin in the game by investing $50 million over the next 5 years in a new, old coach. Thirty million of which is guaranteed.
But that’s just the opening bid in a high-stakes game of poker. There’s also a $10 million allocation for assistant coaches and staff, along with an agreement to more than triple the school’s NIL spending to a reported $20 million annually.
And don’t for a minute think that the folks in Chapel Hill are the only ones ready to up the ante. Like the man said, you’re either all-in or you’re out.
Somebody has to pay that price tag. And passing around the hat among the donors can only raise so much.
The rest will inevitably come at the expense of other sports.
Including men’s basketball.
That’s where the disparity in revenue between the ACC and its primary rivals comes into play. In the SEC, there’s enough to go around for everyone, which is why in addition to funding the most dominant college football conference in the country, the league’s schools have enough left to make an equally strong commitment to hoops.
That’s how the SEC has also become the current gold standard of the hardwood as well.
A title that used to belong to the ACC.
But not anymore, Just in case you were too distracted to notice.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
