Some thoughts on the ACC Basketball Tournament
The old, gray tournament ain't what it used to be,
I’m going to talk about the ACC Tournament in a minute.
But first I want to say a few words about Irwin Smallwood, who died over the weekend at 98 years of age.
Unless you are of a certain age and lived in the Triad and read the Greensboro paper, the name probably doesn’t ring a bell. His bye-line hasn’t been on anything for a long time.
But Smallwood was one of the best sportswriters this state has ever seen. He later became an editor par excellence. He helped establish the International Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, built around the Woolworth’s diner that was the scene of the first student sit-ins.
Smallwood was the ambassador of the Greensboro Coliseum for decades. Don’t know if that was an official title or not. But if you were attending an ACC or NCAA Tournament in Greensboro, Smallwood was there and knew you.
He seemed to know everyone. It seemed like he never forgot a name, a face, a ballgame, a tournament. Encyclopedia.
Irwin and I were on the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame for 20 or so years and I can truly say a nicer human being never crossed my path. He was quiet, soft-spoken, didn’t draw attention to himself. But he always had a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye and lit up every room he entered.
And the stories the man could tell.
The world is a worse place today for his absence.
There’s a segue here. On a spring day in 1953 the Southern Conference went into a hotel meeting room in Greensboro and came out hours later as two conferences.
Smallwood was covering the meeting and as the years went on he gradually became the last witness standing and an invaluable source of information to people like me.
Talk about institutional memory.
Football was the driving force behind the establishment of the ACC. I’ve called the 1952-’53 Southern Conference a bloated, 17-team monstrosity.
You can imagine how I feel about the current and future state of affairs.
At least the old Southern Conference made geographical sense. That 1952-53 Southern Conference had teams from South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, D.C., Maryland and West Virginia.
The Southern Conference determined its conference champion in a post-season tournament. But only the top eight teams made the tournament. Scheduling was a mess. Nothing resembling a round-robin or even coherency. In 1953 for example, teams played anywhere from 14 to 21 conference games. Of course, the top teams made sure to schedule enough games against the bottom feeders to ensure top-eight status.
Washington and Lee went 1-17 in 1953. They sure seemed to be popular.
The ACC started with South Carolina, Clemson, Maryland and the so-called Big Four from North Carolina. Virginia joined later that year. The inaugural ACC season saw Virginia play five conference games. Duke played 10, Wake Forest 12, NC State eight.
So, it made sense to pick that first champion through a tournament.
But why keep doing it?
Everett Case had a lot to do with it. Case came to NC State after a long career in Indiana hoops and if you’re seen Hoosiers--and if you haven’t, shame on you--you have some idea how exciting that event was. Case thought the nascent ACC needed that excitement.
Duke AD Eddie Cameron agreed. So did darn everyone. The Southern Conference continued its tournament. So did the CIAA.
But the ACC was distinct among major conferences in using a post-season tournament to determine its champion and sole NCAA representative.
The ACC Tournament helped put the league on the map.
And for the record, I was one of those kids in the Carolinas who was allowed to bring a radio to school and listen to Thursday’s first-round games, at least the first two. No TV. Not yet.
Yes, I’m that old. But the myth is not a myth. The ACC Tournament really did stop time in North Carolina for three days in March.
Figuratively.
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