Greensboro Fights Back Against The Proposed ACC Relocation

As you may have seen here recently, the ACC is considering moving out of Greensboro. The conference is selling it as doing their basic due diligence, etc, but presumably some fancy pants think that Greensboro is too sleepy and they need to get to a fancier burg (or boro).

The first thing anyone should say is: Larry Scott? Hello?

Scott moved the Pac-12 headquarters to San Francisco at considerable expense (he apparently even had a private chef).

One of the nice things about Greensboro, sleepy though it may be, is that it’s relatively cheap and that is a definite plus.

And to everyone’s credit, Greensboro is pushing back. It’s been the home of the conference for decades and has a lot to offer aside from being a reasonably inexpensive place to operate. Jim Boeheim might not like the restaurant selections, but as Matt Brown, managing director of the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, said this: “I think they need to look back and think of what Greensboro’s been for them. Is there not a better example of when they needed somebody and they turned to Greensboro when they had to find another site instead of going to Washington, D.C.? Who did they call? Greensboro.”

Someone should also mention NASCAR in this discussion.

In their zeal to expand, NASCAR shut down a lot of legendary smaller tracks including North Wilkesboro.

And in doing that they lost fans and if they didn’t lose fans they certainly lost fan intensity.

You can’t move universities too often - Wake Forest is the only one that has moved in recent decades - and moving the headquarters doesn’t have the same emotional impact as closing a track or moving a professional franchise to a different city.

But it does in Greensboro and with the founding ACC members. It’s a short drive for the four North Carolina schools, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Clemson and not horrible for Georgia Tech. It’s pretty much in the middle even with expansion.

On the other hand, if it has to be moved, they could always consider Louisville. That would make it a lot cheaper to investigate the scandals as they happen.