The Omnigeek

Full Disclosure: I’m a born and bred Kentuckian. I’ve lived here in the heart of the Atlantic Coast Conference for 10 years. I have no loyalty for any school’s athletics in the ACC. I respect UNC/Chapel Hill and Duke’s basketball program for the success that they have earned. UNC and Duke have had success in non-money sports like Soccer, Lacrosse and Baseball and those programs deserve respect as well.

All opinions expressed herein are of course tainted.

What I can’t fathom is why that people here worry about how the conference is seen as a whole. Growing up in SEC land and spending a lot of time around Big 10, Big 12 and Big East teams and fans, listening to news casts and talk radio hosts in these markets, I don’t ever remember much more than a passing mention about how the conference was fairing against other conferences. But that seems to dominate the fans and local media in in ACC land. Maybe these other conferences are secure in their standings?

What should be important and discussed is one simple question “Is my team going to kick your team’s behind next week?”

What I’ve learned since living here is that the ACC has an ego that pretty much isn’t present in other conferences and its bruised. No one at Florida cared how the ACC teams did this past week. They didn’t care how the SEC teams did as a conference either. Its just “How good is Tennessee and Alabama and will they be in our way to a national championship?” Maybe Florida cared how the Miami-Florida State game fared, but beyond that practically no one in Gainesville could even tell you that the ACC was 5-7 on opening weekend.

This morning while driving in to work, 850 the Buzz (WRBZ 850 AM) and Adam Gold made it to my radio. It was so much fun listening to him complain about the ACC’s embarrassing opening weekend. He suggested (and I saw a similar suggestion in Caulton Tudor’s column in the News & Observer) that the ACC should play conference games on opening weekend. What? That has to be one of the craziest suggestions I’ve ever heard.

Why you ask?

The ACC is struggling with football mediocrity. They opened the season 5-7 and had what seems to be several embarrassing losses. But this suggestion would guarantee that every year they would start out 6-6. Isn’t 50-50 the very definition of mediocrity? You want to bring your self-esteem up by insuring that you can never be better than average?

Well when you loose games to “piddly Division I-AA teams” I guess that should be a concern. But lets look at reality. Using the Jeff Sarigan computer rankings (since it gives us a look at the whole 200+ teams in Division I football), this is how things looked going into this past weekend’s opening games:

*NOTE: I don’t feel like analyzing all the schools. These are the key ones for the Raleigh-Durham market. You shouldn’t really care that Virginia (46th) lost to William and Mary (117th).

*NOTE 2: Actually this may have been the biggest embarrassment for the conference. A 46th rank team shouldn’t get their behinds handed to them by a team ranked 117. Maybe we should care about that game after all?

Based on rankings, the above results were almost perfect except for Florida State loosing to Miami. South Carolina (31st) beat NCSU (60th). In fact, NCSU improved in the rankings to 58th in this weeks ratings. The Tar Heals killed the Citadel which a team some 90 ranks above should do. The AP had UNC in the top 25, though Sarigan has them well out of the top 25 at 52nd. We will see what happens when UNC plays a stronger opponent.

There has been a lot of tears spent on the Duke loss to Richmond. There shouldn’t be. Richmond was the computer favorite coming into the weekend. The difference between Division I-A and I-AA is 15 scholarships. A well coached I-AA team with some talent will best a weak-to-mediocre I-A team with surprising frequency. I like the Duke football coach David Cutcliffe. In time he will build a program that wins more games that it looses; however to look past an opponent because they are in the Championship series when they are ranked above you is a grievous mistake.

The Virginia whoopin’ and Miami beating Fla. State are the two real black marks on the weekend. Everything else happened as it should. The one game the ACC should want back is the Wake Forest / Baylor game. Wake Forest was ranked significantly higher (30th vs. 82nd) than Baylor and lost to a surprisingly good Baylor team. Amazingly Baylor jumped to 27th in this weeks ratings and Wake Forest improved as well, rising to 21st in the Sagrigan rankings.

Gold went on to say that the Miami-FSU game saved the weekend for the ACC. I don’t think so. There is no doubt that it was a fantastic game; an instant classic. But the ranked FSU team lost to an un-ranked team at home. How can this be anything other than an embarrassment in Tallahassee and at the ACC offices over in Greensboro? Great game or not a conference striving to be seen as a strong conference can’t have their stars loosing.

Why is the ACC a great basketball conference? Because Duke and UNC kick everyone elses behinds and those two stars get to shine. The SEC is strong because Florida, Alabama and LSU dominate the rest of the conference. Sure Georgia and Ole Miss throw in the “tough games” to help out in schedule strength. But at the end of the day, the Kentucky’s and South Carolina’s are there to be win’s in the other team’s record books. BTW: Kentucky (47th) killed their opening day opponent, the other Miami(OH)(126th) 42-0 I’m just sayin’.

My advice to those pimpin’ the ACC as a whole: Stop. Spend time trying to make your school better and let the conference take care of itself. Once the teams do their job the rest will fall in line.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Leave a comment below!

We’ve all heard the description of this basketball rivalry.  Two teams who in recent years seem to stay at the top of the college basketball pack live a mere 9 miles apart and is considered to be the best rivalry in all of college basketball.  They play each other twice during the year with a potential 3rd meeting in the ACC playoffs and a possible 4th run-in during the NCAA championship.

But today at the Dean Dome (Dean Smith Center named after the Evil Overlord himself — remember I’m a Kentucky fan!) the powder blue clad Tar Heels host the Blue Devils or as they are known affectionately as the “dookies”.   Today’s game will determine who wins the ACC regular season title.  This title doesn’t mean much other than seeding for the ACC tournament later this week.

In an interesting twist, because of the ACC’s quest to be a football conference and the growth to accommodate their BCS dreams, all basketball teams do not play each other twice during the season.  This has created some very interesting scenarios for the sports geek to ponder with the ACC Tie breaking system.

If UNC wins today, they win out right, two games head of Duke.  Duke is a game behind UNC going into today’s contest and if Duke wins, they will be tied since they have split their head-to-head match ups.  The tie breaking scheme is basically one of looking at head-to-head match-ups until one of the teams has an advantage.

The process is complex and given that I don’t give a squat about the ACC or its member teams, I’m not going to delve into it any further than saying today’s game should be a good one with the title on the line. If you’re interested in more details go see this forum post.

Now Kentucky has struggled and as much as I like Billy Gillespie, the coach, they are on the outside looking in at the moment and may not make the NCAA tournament.   If I were writing the contract for the coach as Kentucky, this would be a reason to fire clause.  The other two are never loose to Tennessee or Vanderbilt.  But I’m not the AD, so I don’t get my say in these matters.

At the end of the day, UNC will probably gain another 4-6 wins on Kentucky before the season is out, halving the lead the Wildcats have.    Therefore I need Duke to win today.

So why for the life of me, when I went to get a glass for ice water this morning and I was looking at a plastic cup did I make the conscious decision to choose a baby blue cup from a UNC game over one from a Carolina Hurricanes game?

Am I loosing it?  Could I actually start liking UNC?  Or is it a case that I really loath Duke and UNC is the lesser of the two evils?  Why am I so tortured by this? I swore when I moved to NC that I would not become a NASCAR fan and well hell would freeze over before I ever cheered for an ACC school.

I’m going to watch NASCAR and ponder this….

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife received a pair of free tickes to see the UNC Tarheels play the Virginia Cavilers at the Dean Smith Center on the UNC Campus.  The arena is named after their retired Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith.

No one can argue that Dean Smith was a great coach.  He has a national championship under his belt, coached the likes of Michael Jordan and James Worthy.  His famed “Four Corners” offense, where he intentionally tried not to score is directly responsible for the “shot clock” in College Basketball.  Even as a Kentucky fan, growing up in the Adoph Rupp era, attending the University of Kentucky during the Joe B. Hall era, you have to appreciate his accomplishments, even if he is the Evil Overloard  of Tarheel nation.

But free tickets are free and it was an experience my wife, the “Queen of Free” wanted to have while we live here.

Now we have been here in ACC hell for nearly 10 years.  I call it ACC hell because this has to be the most arrogant conference in all of college sports.  And you ACC fans who hate Billy Packer, the long time color commentator for CBS for the ACC being as strong as it is.  It could be game between Indiana and Notre Dame and all Billy Packer could do is pimp the ACC.

With the exception of UNC everyone else’s basketball programs are no where near the level the fans believe them to be.  Duke has its moments and has probably benefited most from Packer’s free advertising.  But UNC has always been there near the top and from a Kentucky perspective, they are the enemy, the biggest threat to our way of life

All teams ebb and flow through the years.  Some coaches will do well, others will not.  Some recruiting classes are stronger than others and this is to be expected.  But to be a top program you have to be there, every year.  You need multiple national championships and you need them in different eras and you constantly have to be posting strong winning records.

So as I was picking out my clothes to wear today, I called down to my wife “I don’t have anything Navy and Orange do I?” since that would be the Virginia colors.  “Do I have a UK cap?”.  It brought a chuckle to her, but I couldn’t dare wear anything close to resembling light blue.  So I found a Navy sports shirt with red trim.  She went with a very neutral white color.

We traveled to Chapel Hill to a park-n-ride spot on Highway 54.  If you feel you must ever attend one of these evil events, I highly recommend using park-n-ride.  Its $5 per peep, but you don’t have to deal with traffic at an on-campus arena with no practical parking.  The UNC campus is a bunch of twisty passages all alike.  Being dropped at the door and picked up at the door is a very handy option.  For the $10 we paid, we were handed lovely Tyvek green wrist bands, which I found out later is how you find the right line to get into to find the right bus.  So far, this is a positive event.

Once we arrived at the arena, it was a short climb of steps through people holding up various numbers of fingers, people begging for tickets. Why can’t they just go to the ticket booth?  There were quite a few open seats in the upper deck corners.  Now at this point, I was tempted to sell out gift tickets, pocket the money and call it a successful day.  But I didn’t want to deny my wife her experience.

The entry lines were dividied into people with bags and people without.  Since we packed light, we headed into the non-bag line and was quickly ushered into the arena.  Once inside, the small concourses caused the sea of powder blue lemmings to pack together like penguins huddling to keep warm.  The line for the ladies room was at least 50 people deep.  As we moved from gate A around to find our seats, there was plenty of chances to look down upon the hardwood and see the pre-game activities.

We took a full tour around the arena as we were looking for a co-worker of my wife’s who was working a concession stand.  We never found him, but we ended back in to the Blue sardine packing company again.  We grabbed a bite to eat and headed to our seats.  Now at this point, I was feeling a bit of awe about the building, but it was only a tinge.

Our seats were upper deck on the asile and for the most part had a pretty good view when the man in front of me sat back in his seat, but he leaned forward most of the game and his melon blocked about 1/4th of the court.

The game for the 1st half was pretty boring and we spent most of the time checking out the people than the game.  The endzone students who bounce the whole game was better in person than it appears on TV.  The section of students besides the band who stand the whole game was a nice touch.  The band sounded good and though none of the dancers, grouped into 4 groups along each edge of the floor were in sequence with their dance steps, they at least were well cooridinated with the music.

Half time came and they were honoring members of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  The problem I have with this is that they were inducted years ago.  How many times are they going to honor James Worthy or Billy Cunningham or the Arch-devil overlord himself, Dean Smith?  The latest inductee was several years ago.  Now supposidly there is a new banner or something, but the banner was already revealed and it was something to show on the big TV screens and get these UNC legends some more face time.  Seriouslly, WTF was that about?  Someone explain it to me.

Now Coach Roy Williams, one of the HOF inductees, must have had a “Come to Jesus” talk with the players at the half because they came out and made Virginia look like a pickup team.  We enjoyed the two “line changes”, where they brought in their subs late, to get about a minute of play time each.    (This is why we like hockey.  Everyone pretty much has to play…..)

After the game, we went down to the floor level and actually stepped out onto the hardwood.  I was hoping I would get a feel of emotion from being there.  It was cool, but that overall feeling of greatness just wasn’t there.

We colleted a set of the nice plastic cups, 4 small and 4 large.  It should serve at torture for my NCSU loving son and my die-hard Duke co-worker.  Free game, free glassware!  On the way out, one of the concession stands had left a bunch of hotdogs on the counter, more freebies.

We met a parent of a hockey player who played with our older son so the line for the shuttle bus passed quickly as we reminised and caught up on our kids.

My soul did not rot and there is no risk of me becoming a UNC fan anytime soon.  I would go back again should more free tickets come our way.

That said, here is my list of sports venues tha speak too you based on their history and feeling of the ghosts watching over you.

1. Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY.  Home to Kentucky’s Legandary basketball program.
2. Joe Lewis Arena, Detroit, MI. OMG what a feeling you get when you walk into that building.
3. Hershey Arena, Hershy Park, PA.  Wilt Chamberlain’s scored his famous 100 points here, but it was the hockey ghosts of minor league hockey that spoke out there.
4. Wrigly Field, Chicago, IL.  While the Cubs are championship free, you know some major baseball love has been felt there.
5. HSBC Arena, Buffalo, NY.  While very new in the scale of arena’s go, you feel it when you walk through the doors.

Now I will admit, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, the old Chicago Stadium and the Boston Gardens should be on this list, but I’ve not had a chance to visit them.

But I’m glad I went.  It was a good experience.