How about an ACC vs HBCU Challenge?
When your job is cover college sports, especially one of the popular college sports such as basketball, you have to continually stay connected with coaches, scouts, administrators, players and even other media outlets to stay relevant and informed. You have to build sources. And those sources have to provide you with information that interesting and hopefully truthful.
Jeff Goodman has built up an impressive resume as a basketball reporter, analyst, and insider for over a decade with national outlets like ESPN, CBS, FOX Sports, and currently for Stadium as a Basketball Insider.
On Sunday June 14, he dropped the following basketball-related tweet that sent the HBCU Twitterverse on fire.
Jeff has sent out over 89K tweets since he joined Twitter in June 2009, so some tweets are going to register with the community more than others. This particular tweet had received nearly over 6,000 LIKEs and RTs in just over 48 hours. That's great engagement for one random tweet with no real follow-up in the hours following. In fact it's the best engagement he received in the past week.
We know the ACC is popular basketball conference, but that type of traffic most likely came from "HBCU Twitter", who had mixed reactions to the "very cool idea".
The elite Division-I conferences like the ACC annually support HBCU athletic departments by hosting non-conference home games in November and December against HBCU teams for a few hundred-thousand dollars an appearance. An appearance that the ACC/elite D-I team usually pencils in as a victory. Every blue moon a HBCU team will get a win against an elite D-I team in their arena as a double-digit underdog. Take for example Florida A&M's win over on New Years Eve this past season when they beat Iowa State as 25-point underdogs in Ames, Iowa.
Sometimes you say things out loud to yourself in the shower, or on the toilet, and think it's a great idea. (I'm guilty of that every morning!) But, once you've tossed that idea to someone like Jeff Goodman, you can only be trying to gauge the temperature in the room to see if you're crazy, or we're crazy for not thinking of it sooner.
That head coach surely didn't stop to think about how this would work. No way. Leave that to twitter and the bloggers to come up with a sound idea and when we have that meeting, the details can be presented to the group in more detail.
So what are the primary questions for something like this to actually happen?
Jeff Goodman has built up an impressive resume as a basketball reporter, analyst, and insider for over a decade with national outlets like ESPN, CBS, FOX Sports, and currently for Stadium as a Basketball Insider.
On Sunday June 14, he dropped the following basketball-related tweet that sent the HBCU Twitterverse on fire.
Jeff has sent out over 89K tweets since he joined Twitter in June 2009, so some tweets are going to register with the community more than others. This particular tweet had received nearly over 6,000 LIKEs and RTs in just over 48 hours. That's great engagement for one random tweet with no real follow-up in the hours following. In fact it's the best engagement he received in the past week.
We know the ACC is popular basketball conference, but that type of traffic most likely came from "HBCU Twitter", who had mixed reactions to the "very cool idea".
The elite Division-I conferences like the ACC annually support HBCU athletic departments by hosting non-conference home games in November and December against HBCU teams for a few hundred-thousand dollars an appearance. An appearance that the ACC/elite D-I team usually pencils in as a victory. Every blue moon a HBCU team will get a win against an elite D-I team in their arena as a double-digit underdog. Take for example Florida A&M's win over on New Years Eve this past season when they beat Iowa State as 25-point underdogs in Ames, Iowa.
How can this work?
January is typically the start of the conference schedule for all college basketball teams. But given the age of enlightenment America - corporate and white society in general - is in after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, connecting with HBCUs must have sounded like a good idea to the ACC head coach that wants to see the conference play HBCUs on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.Sometimes you say things out loud to yourself in the shower, or on the toilet, and think it's a great idea. (I'm guilty of that every morning!) But, once you've tossed that idea to someone like Jeff Goodman, you can only be trying to gauge the temperature in the room to see if you're crazy, or we're crazy for not thinking of it sooner.
That head coach surely didn't stop to think about how this would work. No way. Leave that to twitter and the bloggers to come up with a sound idea and when we have that meeting, the details can be presented to the group in more detail.
So what are the primary questions for something like this to actually happen?
- Are these games going to be played at ACC arenas, or do we travel to HBCU campuses gyms/arenas?
- If we host the game, would we still pay the HBCU teams like we do during the non-conference schedule?
- Is this playing strictly against Division-I HBCUs, or will the NCAA grant waivers if the teams were from Division-II?
- Will our ESPN partner get behind this?
- Will ESPN get behind this financially?
I think if these five questions can be answered, there is a chance this ACC vs HBCU matchup could happen. Forgot one thing... which HBCUs are we playing?
Once it's been determined that this is a D-I vs D-I matchup, or ACC versus any HBCU, because there are some interesting candidates to consider from Division-II, you can more easily identify matchups that have a regional interest. The conference with the best geographical match to the ACC is currently the MEAC. But, there are some matchups from non-MEAC schools that have regional synergy.
Forgot one more thing... has anyone thought about how competitive these games COULD be? Okay, don't think about that for now. Moving on. Let's see those contests.
Proposed Games (D-I vs D-I)
Duke vs North Carolina Central - Two teams from Durham, NC. Two well respected coaches. Two conference champions.
UNC vs North Carolina A&T - It would be fun to see this game in Club Corbett.
Florida State vs Florida A&M - Tallahassee, FL neighbors who haven't played each other in nearly 30 years.
Miami vs Bethune-Cookman - Someone just needs to travel on I-95 in Florida for this contest to happen.
Virginia vs Norfolk State - Two of Virginia's state supported schools who have had very good teams over the past few years.
Virginia Tech vs Hampton - Lots of VaTech supporters in the Hampton Roads area around the Chesapeake Bay. As members of the Big South, Hampton is already playing teams in cities near Blacksburg.
Clemson vs South Carolina State - Two of the Palmetto State's best institutions for football should surely have to play each other on the hardwood.
Notre Dame vs Howard - There may be more talk about how great academic institutions these two schools are instead of actual analysis of the game being played.
Syracuse vs Coppin State - Carmelo Anthony, a Syracuse legend after leading the Orange to a championship in his only season of playing, was recruited right in Coppin State's backyard of Baltimore, MD.
Pitt vs Morgan State - The pride of Pittsburgh against the pride of Baltimore. Sounds like a preview to a classic NFL AFC North battle.
Boston College vs Delaware State - Best matchup featuring the two of the northern-most teams in their respective conferences.
Louisville vs Tennessee State - Two schools from border states located four hour apart on I-65.
Georgia Tech vs Alabama State - There are no D-I HBCUs in Georgia, so playing one of the Alabama schools makes the most sense given the attention that new ASU coach Mo Williams will draw given his NBA background.
I didn't forget about North Carolina State and Wake Forest from the ACC. If this were to be a D-I vs D-I type of event involving ALL of the ACC schools, a couple more SWAC schools would need participate. Who's paying for Southern or Prairie View A&M to travel east in mid-January?
If Division-I and II teams were eligible to play each other at this point of the season there are a few matchups involving some D-II schools that would be better fits than the matchups listed above. For example:
- Georgia Tech vs Morehouse (D-II/SIAC) - Two Atlanta area-school located withing 5-10 minutes of each other.
- Wake Forest vs Winston-Salem State (D-II/CIAA) - Winston-Salem State probably has a greater basketball tradition than their crosstown neighbor Wake Forest.
- North Carolina State vs Shaw (D-II/CIAA) - Two Raleigh, NC schools that probably have a history that cuts deeper than many outside the are don't know.
The Reality Check
If it don't make dollars, it (this idea) don't make sense. If ACC teams/programs want to cut a check in support of HBCUs by playing these games on national TV on MLK Day, then by all means HBCU Nation should support this game wholeheartedly. I think a nice percentage of fans will want to see this happen under those circumstances. The other half will be thinking about that last question I posed, how competitive will these games be, and would the day of basketball on MLK Day be better served another way.
Remember, the idea came from an ACC head coach, not a television network executive. So imagine if such an executive cared as much as this coach and suggested televising a series of games between MEAC and SWAC schools, or CIAA vs SIAC schools. I can't think of a greater way to spotlight the traditions and culture of a HBCU Basketball game on MLK Weekend/Day.
Maybe you even take a couple of ACC teams and match them up against a couple of D-I HBCU schools just to see what might happen. That's the type of reality this idea needs.
Let's see what happens as conversations continue. I guess all that's left to question now is who is this ACC head coach with this great idea. Inquiring minds want to know.
Comments
Post a Comment