March 08, 2007

LET'S PLAY 'JUST THE TIP-OFF,' JUST TO SEE HOW IT FEELS

So there's a big college basketball tournament in Tampa: the Atlantic Coast Conference championship.

This is a big deal. Really.

I can't say that I'm a diehard b-ball fan these days. I get into it when the Gators play, but I couldn't tell you much beyond that. College ball is an even bigger mystery. I just don't have the time, you know?

Which is quite a change from how I used to follow the game.

1984NCAAEastRegionalBasketballChampionshipTicketAtTheOmniInAtlanta.JPG

Back in 1984, I and my buddies Mike Stack and Paul Ezzo decided to drive to Atlanta from Tallahassee to see the NCAA east regional playoffs. We were going to Florida State University at the time and, well, school would always be there, but Michael Jordan and the University of North Carolina would not.

We piled into his Volkswagon GTI and booked it north for about 4 hours to The Omni in downtown Atlanta, which back then was relatively new. We all pitched in for gas money and then decided to pool our resources for scalped tickets we bought outside the arena.

1984NCAAEastRegionalBasketballChampionshipBracket.JPG

I don't remember much about the games. I do remember being excited to see Michael Jordan play and legendary coaches Dean Smith and Bobby Knight on the sidelines. Jim Boeheim was the coach at Syracuse, with the star player Rony Seikaly on the floor. Indiana's big man, Uwe Blab, had a pretty solid couple games game.

I also remember an indellible moment when I saw Jordan take an Indiana player by his jersey, throw him out of bounds under the basket and get away with it, even though the ref was standing right there watchig it all happen. As much as it sounds like overstatement, it was my baptism into the world of reality. Not all things are fair, even when they look like it. You just have to move on and keep playing the game.

We drove from Tallahassee to Atlanta for the first day of the two-day event, then drove back home. Total round-trip mileage: about 548. Then we did it again the next day, figuring it at least would save us the cost of a hotel room. Thank god the Volkswagon got great mileage.

Anyway, the ACC games coming to Tampa have brought all that back.

And it has inspired Willie Drye, author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and commentator on the History Channel's "Nature's Fury: Storm of the Century" episode of the series "Violent Earth,", who is a son of North Carolina and a nut for basketball.

Hhe sent me this e-mail earlier this week, before the games started in Tampa:

Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:05 AM
Subject: tourney time

Hey guys:

Two questions: Do you think Tampa will notice that the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament is in town this week? And will the well-heeled, privaleged fans who always show up in Raleigh or Charlotte or Greensboro in their motor homes and fill up the towns' best hotels and restaurants follow the tourney to Florida?

I'm beginning to have my doubts. First, Alan Snel -- one of the shrewdest observers of the human condition I know -- thinks football-crazy Tampa will largely ignore college basketball. And I think he's right. There's no established audience for basketball, college or pro, in Tampa. The University of South Florida may become a Big East powerhouse one day, but that's years down the road and Tampa's focus on Bulls basketball will have to grow with their success.

And as for whether the league's usually loyal following will head down to Tampa, well, I was astonished last night when I saw about 25 ACC Tournament tickets for sale on a website called Stub Hub. I assume this means that, not only are some ticket holders willing to give up their tickets, they're willing to let them go at face value.

You have to understand that this is a shock to me. Here in North Carolina, the ACC Tournament is sort of like our Mardi Gras, only it doesn't have public nudity and you have to have a ticket to get in, only there's no public sale of tickets. Each school gets an allotment, and dibs on the tix always go to the biggest donors to member schools' athletic departments. I hear -- but I've never verified -- that it takes a minimum six-figure contribution to the Rams Club -- UNC's athletic booster club -- to just get on the waiting list for tournament tickets. I assume it's not any cheaper at the other schools.

I'm wondering if some of those tickets that showed up on Stub Hub came from Boston College backers. It's a long way from Chestnut Hill to That Arena in Tampa Whose Name You Don't Like to Mention.

The tournament started in 1953 in N.C. State's Reynolds Coliseum, which at the time was the biggest arena in North Carolina and three or four surrounding states. In those days, only one team from each conference went to the NCAA Tournament, and only two conferences -- the ACC and the Southern Conference -- held post-season playoffs to determine who went to the NCAA.

We didn't have much in the way of homegrown entertainment in those days, and so the winner-take-all ACC Tournament quickly became an annual obsession in Virginia and the Carolinas. After more than 50 years, North Carolina literally still comes to a standstill for three days in early March, and passions run high. People bring TVs and radios to work, and bosses know they might as well look the other way at gametime. If you're in a public place while the tournament is going on, it's almost impossible to be out of earshot of a radio or TV broadcast of the games.

People change while they're following their teams. Little old ladies who go to church every Sunday and never use an expletive stronger than "land's sake" cuss like sailors if their team blows a big lead. Grads of UNC or NC State who happen to be Methodists may stop speaking to their minister for a few days if he or she went to Duke Divinity School. Picture Aunt Bee telling Floyd the barber to stick it where the sun never shines during a Duke-Wake Forest game, or Barney taking a swing at Andy during a UNC-NC State matchup, and you have some idea of the intensity.

I've always thought that getting a ticket to the ACC tournament is a bigger deal than getting a ticket to the World Series. It's my perception that tournament tickets are as difficult to obtain as certain controlled substances, and more expensive. You have to go to wherever the tournament is being played and find a scalper who'll sell you tix for 10 or 20 times their face value.

That was the case in 1985, when I got to go to the first round of the tournament in Atlanta. I was working at the Macon Telegraph, which received tickets and press passes from the conference to cover the games. But the tickets and passes came with a caveat -- your newspaper had to have someone present at all of the games, or you forfeited your tickets.

AtlanticCoastConferenceTicketTheOmni1985.JPG

It so happened that all of the Telegraph's sportswriters were busy on the opening round, and it looked like the newspaper was going to lose its credentials for the rest of the tournament. So someone had to go to Atlanta to hold the Telegraph's place for the remaining games.

It was a tough and thankless assignment, but I volunteered. It helped that I was the first reporter to hear about the sports department's problem, and had snagged the tix before anyone else in the newsroom heard about the situation.

I was forced to spend about eight hours sitting on the floor beneath the basket at The Omni. I was in a daze when I left the arena around midnight. I was so over-stimulated that it would be a couple of days before I came down. I still have the ticket stub from that day.

So, when the 54th tournament tips off at noon Thursday, will Tampa appreciate what's happening in The Arena Whose Name You Don't Like to Mention, or it be just another day on the bay? How about letting me know.

Later,

Willie




Posted by Jeff at March 8, 2007 09:43 AM | TrackBack
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