AJ: UNC’s Statement!
AJ: UNC’s Statement! Without knowing how much, or little, Bill Belichick will win at North Carolina, one absolute
AJ: UNC’s Statement!
- Thread starter andrew jones
- Start date
This may not be relevant, but did not UNC have a chance to awaken the sleeping giant in 1955when they hired Jim Tatum. It failed because he died shortly there after of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever?
It's had a chance to nearly a century. a new chancellor who is a money guy helps, as does a deep fear by many boosters that UNC could be falling behind in everything really fast unless a change of course occured.
They finally saw the light and got scared. Thank God!. Now that they have given BIG money in football, they can never go back.
Even before America's entry into WW2, there was a growing movement across college athletics to stop the path toward professionalism in college athletics. And almost the entire focus was on football. The resaoning was that because football was So MUCH BIGGER than basketball, if you could rein in football, basketball would follow quietly. They certainly were correct about how much bigger football was, as it always has been and always will be. But being Modernist, they failed to grasp basics about human nature.
And that is how and why the ACC got screwed up from before its very beginning of play in 1953. The reason for schools leaving the SoCon was that the 'small schools' had captured power over the SoCon democratically and had voted to ban members from playing in bowls. The various administrators and academics at SoCon schools that were seceeding who believed that football must be reined in thus felt they must find a way to get around the reason for this creation of new conference - they must redirect the energies of the movement to pour water all over that football based secession. Their logic was quite simple: the students and alums demand Big Time sports competition and titles, and we must stop professionalism by reining in football, therefore we must provide them another sport to be the centerpeice of the conference.
Even then the only other real possibility was basketball, because back then even Texas did not have a large baseball following. And they had a perfect man already in place to design the whole con game: Everett Case. Case had been the most brilliant and successful HS basketball coach in IN history. And IN easily had the most tighty organsized, amd thus proto-professional, HS basketball in the world. The IN state tourmnamnet was more detailed and much larger than the NCAA tournament. Moo hired Case because it felt that he could build its basketball into the dominant SoCon team (he did), and that Moo should make that decision because it likely never was going to become a SoCon football power.
So Case was the main mind behind the creation of this new ACC basketball tournament. Case felt that the perfect basketball tournament number was 8, which means the ACC would be 8 members - period. He also felt that because his first job was NCSU, he must make this new league's basketball focused on Raleigh in every way. One thing that meant was the tournament would be on his team's home floor. It was the largest gym in ACC country. That meant that not only would Moo have the court advantage, but all NC teams would have advantage over everybody else. And to secure that, Case made certain that teeny Wake would be made ACC rather than left in the SoCon - half the league in NC would mean that the basketball tournament would remain in Raleigh. Best of both worlds for Moo and Case. And almost as good for UNC, Dook, and Wake. The state of HC would rule that basketball tournament and thus RULE the ACC.
Naturally, the resentment of the 'Big 4' by most hardcore fans of other ACC schools was fierce well before 1957. And it has never gone away, even at 17 members.
The Case Plan worked perfectly right from the start. In the ACC's first year, 1953, Maryland won the National Championship in football, and the ACC office ignored that almost totally as it was advertising the coming basketball tournament. Everything was about basketball. Football was tolerated.
And that led eventually to UNC hiring Frank McGuire. Making basketball king sport of your school and/or conference, and thus holding down football, does not tamp down a bit the desire of your fans to compete and win at the top level. It just shifts it to a sport that will profit you much less. So because Case ruled the ACC, UNC determined to hire the most 'professional' college basketball coach it could sign. And that was McGuire.
NYC college basketball had been professionalizing steadily since the 1920s. Right after WW2 ended, it was clear that organized crime had created and owned the very big winning CCNY program. And many games across the area were fixed every year. The St Johns progam was fully clean compared to CCNY, but it was equaly professionalized. It was a big business. And UNC wanted Frank McGuire to make UNC basketball professionalized to further keep at bay the calls to win big at football again. UNC joined with Moo, and the ACC as a whole, in focusing on professionalizing basketball as much as possible to make mediocre football more palatable.
And now all but the most retarded true believer basketball-first damned fools are forced to see that football is 9 or 10 times bigger than basketball - literally. SEC 100% football schools literally can buyout ACC basketball. Every damned bit of it. Hopefully you all have figured out why ESPN promotes even SEC basketball over the ACC all the time. Basketball-first always loses big to football. ALWAYS!
The pursuit and hiring of Frank McGuire was when UNC went all in on professionalizing its basketball. The firing of snake oil salesman Mack and rounding up huge money, SEC and BT levels of money, to successfully pursue Belichick is that moment for football. Never again can 'they' get away with saying that they simply cannot find the money to try to keep up with the football Joneses of the SEC. They can and they have. And they did so because they know how necessary it is that UNC football get up to ACC Champ and playoff level quickly. Failure to do that will mean a cutting of non-revenue sports before long.
As it was in the days when Thomas Wolfe and then Walker Percy were students, football again will be King of the UNC campus. And that will save all UNC sports and be necessary to saving the ACC.
