It's a slow weekend for the ACC, with one Saturday game - Wake vs. Clemson -
and two Sunday tussles - Duke and UVa, and Tech at UNC. Oooooh!
After the recent problems in Chapel Hill, UNC
seems to be working overtime to get past the bad PR. Ol' Roy Williams
has gone from wanting to jump out of an airplane to telling anyone who will
listen how much he loves his kids, and how his own kids have disappointed him
more than once. Thanks, dad!
The center of all this of course has been
Rashad McCants - or, as our friend Arnie Schecter has taken to calling him,
Rashad Mc Cancer. To be fair, that's a joke, and it's not a bad one, but
it is a joke. McCants says he's misunderstood, and we'll certainly admit
we don't understand him in the slightest. But it is striking to see
the furious counter-spin. We noticed it the other day when Mick Mixon - a
genuinely good guy and an asset to the ACC, not just UNC - commented on the
various issues. He pointedly declined to psychoanalyze, but more or less
said there were issues to be worked out and that they would be worked out sooner
rather than later. UNC seems to have taken an institutional stance that the
recent unpleasantness cannot be allowed to continue. Time will tell.
ACC expansion was driven by football, but it's a two-way street and Miami
is going to have to learn how to play basketball, too. Our guess is
that the ACC will catch up in football before Miami does in basketball. At
least Miami is in the South, though. B.C.
will have some major adjustments to make, both pragmatically and culturally.
Florida State is still trying diligently to get Diego Romero's eligibility
restored, and the ACC is
now going to help.