ShareThisBy CAULTON TUDOR
Raleigh News & Observer
Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Atlantic Coast Conference's basketball coaches will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the bank deposit window before they accept an expanded league regular-season schedule.
But just as sure as hearts and hopes get crushed on Selection Sunday, an 18-game ACC format is inevitable _ although unlikely for at least four more seasons.
The powerful coaches lobby is fighting a superior force: television. Specifically, television revenue.
Where sports are concerned, television gets what it wants.
And the league's television corporate partners want a bigger inventory of conference basketball games.
ACC league games simply do better in the ratings than most non-conference games. Were it up to television executives, Duke and North Carolina would play six regular-season games annually, all in prime time, and as many as possible during the February sweeps period.
That's not going to happen, but the pressure for ratings eventually will force the 12 schools to feed more frequently on each other.
It's not that an 18-game schedule would necessarily increase the size of the TV check after the league's current contract expires after the 2010-2011 season.
But going to 18 should be enough to keep the ACC from having to accept a less lucrative contract during the next round of negotiations.
What worries the coaches as much as the number 18 is what would come next. An 18-game schedule would work for a while, but then what? A 20-game schedule, that's what. Then at some point in the future, 22.
For ACC head coaches, it's a double-edged sword. Television income is a big reason why most of them earn more than a million dollars a year. But the need for that TV money eventually will create two more difficult games to win each season.
And winning conference games in the ACC isn't easy. The perfect example last season was Duke, which lost 11 games overall but only twice to non-conference opponents.
Lose enough ACC conference games and anyone could become the next Matt Doherty or Pete Gillen.
Other prominent leagues are moving in the same direction. The Big Ten and Big East soon will go to 18 games, and as much as the Pacific-10 coaches have clamored for a reduction from 18 to 16, league ADs haven't jumped aboard.
ACC fans will embrace the concept. Increasing the league schedule could make it possible for Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and Wake Forest to play home-away sets each season. There would probably be more league games in December and maybe one or two in November, another ratings sweeps month.
But there's give and take with any change. The ACC/Big Ten Challenge might have to end or be scaled back.
Duke and Carolina, which face the most difficult conference schedules and regularly catch the brunt of the 9 p.m. (Eastern) game starts, probably would soften their non-league schedules. Last season, UNC faced Winthrop, Gonzaga, Tennessee, Ohio State, Kentucky and Arizona. Against an 18-game conference schedule, two of those outside opponents _ probably Kentucky and Arizona _ would have been dropped.
And as much as the fans may like an 18-game schedule during the regular season, they may not be so thrilled when NCAA bids are extended.
The ACC has been down for the past two seasons, but a recovery is expected. For the majority of ACC teams, a 9-9 regular-season league record, coupled with a Thursday loss in the conference tournament, would create a lot of anxiety.
But 18 is on the way. It's just a question of when.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
