The ACC’s Basketball Schedule Has Problems, But Something Good Can Come Of It Too.

Problems can also create opportunities and with the ACC’s again-frustrating conference basketball schedule which only has two home-and-home games for each school and some schools not playing others at all, well, there’s an opportunity there. Stick with us for a minute.

Duke, UNC, NC State and Wake Forest should have home-and-home games. That this needs to be said is ridiculous because the state of North Carolina drives the ACC and always has. With 18 teams though, a round-robin schedule is not going to work because coaches want to get outside of the conference and play some lame-ass gimmes.

However, there’s a significant opportunity for those four schools and while we’ve mentioned variations of this before, it’s a bit different now:

Bring back a variation of the Big Four Tournament. Only now, with teams needing tournament credibility and NIL a factor, it can be much more than it was. And lest we forget, with the new conference rules where money doesn’t have to be split equally, the Big Four could just keep their sharer to themselves. Pow! Clemson. Ka-Bam! Florida State. Take that!

That said, the NIL is the key part to us here, which would help in recruiting.

You could have games in different venues, but for now, let’s say they’re all in the Greensboro Coliseum.

Start the event with with either Duke vs. Wake Forest and UNC vs. NC State or switch it to Duke vs. State and UNC vs. Wake Forest. Either way is fine, as long as the teams that don’t get home-and-home games get another crack.

Let players from all four teams get a certain cut of the gate, whatever that works out to. For the sake of neatness, call it a guaranteed minimum.

Now, let the two teams that advance get another cut with the winning team getting yet another.

This would serve several purposes:

• All the players would get a solid return and an incentive to play really hard.
• The fans would get rematches to look forward to, not to mention the players, who would know each other better. With the new schedule, everyone has forgotten the magnificence of a revenge-based rematch.
• All four programs would have a chance to help their NCAA arguments (consolation games would be a good idea for this reason).
• The ACC would get a nice little showcase.

Given the stupidity of the modern ACC schedule, getting extra games in, even if they don’t count in the standings, just seems like a smart idea.