If you're going to go to 14 teams, obviously you either have to expand the tournament or leave a few at home. Since the ACC still gives at least lip service to a family concept, no one is staying home, which means that the tournament will soon go one extra day, from Wednesday to Sunday. And that's a problem.
Let's face it, Thursday, first as a play-in game and lately with a full roster of four games, has always been weak, and expecting people to spend five days at the tournament is asking a lot.
Apparently the bottom four teams will be in action on Wednesday in a pair of play-in games. Getting decent crowds for 11, 12, 13 and 14 isn't going to happen under normal circumstances, which means the ACC is going to have to be creative. So here's a suggestion (you may have heard variations of this here before).
You're going to have no more than 10,000 people on Wednesday. Let's say the tournament is in D.C. Why not make Wednesday Kid's Day? You could take it a bit further and market it a year or a year and a half ahead of time and tie it to academic performance: if you reach a certain level academically, the ACC will treat you to a night at the tournament. You can bring one adult with you.
This would accomplish at least three very useful things: 1) it would put a lot of highly enthusiastic fans in the bottom bowl of whatever arena the tournament is in, and 2) it would help to sell the conference to a younger generation. And 3), it would provide some incentive for academic effort.
The tickets are going to go to waste anyway. Why not do something useful and decent with them?
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