ACC tourney competes w/ BE time slot, Championship Sat night

[dmac80]

I apologize if this is old news, I just realized it. No doubt ESPN made this move to go after Fox.

Another raid of the old Big East; ACC championship moves to Saturday night



GREENSBORO — Once upon a time, not so long ago, the basketball teams from Boston College, Louisville, Miami, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Virginia Tech all belonged to the Big East Conference.

Now they belong to the ACC.

Once upon a time, Saturday night belonged to the old Big East.

Now the ACC owns that, too.

And now, live from Greensboro, it’s Saturday night.

The ACC tournament, which began Tuesday with two real-live games — a time once reserved for walk-through practices and fan-friendly shootarounds — started off a five-day run to a made-for-TV championship game at 8:30 p.m. Saturday.

“The prime-time opportunity opened up with the conference changes that had gone on,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said. “We felt and our television partners felt that would be a good move to make. It’s kind of a back-to-the-future move for us, because for years and years our tournament ended with the championship game on Saturday night.”

The last of those Saturday night finales was in 1981, when Sam Perkins led North Carolina to a 61-60 victory over Maryland at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md.

Every ACC championship game since then has been played on a Sunday afternoon.

“Ironically, we moved to Sunday afternoon for television reasons,” Swofford says. “And now we’re moving back to Saturday night.”

Made for TV

So what’s the big deal? What difference does a day make?

Plenty.

There’s an extra day to sell hotel rooms, meals, gasoline and other hospitality to out-of-town visitors. But what those returns will be are speculative right now.

“Honestly, we don’t know yet,” said Henri Fourrier, president of Greensboro’s Convention & Visitors Bureau. “They’re starting Tuesday, and that’s definitely a shift. But we’re just not sure how that’s going to impact things. We’ll have to wait and see.”

The bigger impact will be eyeballs on TV sets. In Roanoke and the New River Valley, basketball fans will be able to tune in to either WDBJ or ESPN.

Consider this: Before it lost its struggle with conference realignment, the old Big East’s last championship game featured Louisville and Syracuse at Madison Square Garden in primetime on a Saturday night in 2013 and drew 3.4 million viewers to ESPN.

The next day, 2.2 million viewers tuned in to watch Miami beat North Carolina for the ACC title on a sleepy Sunday afternoon.

“Saturday night, that’s a key time,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “During the regular season, if you have two of your conference teams matched up on a Saturday night, the viewing audience and attention [are greater].”

It goes beyond the TV ratings, too. For years, ACC champions have been overshadowed by the drama that comes a few hours later — the announcement of the NCAA tournament pairings on live TV.

“This also gives everybody a chance to look at Selection Sunday as Selection Sunday,” Krzyzewski said. “It gives your champion, whoever that might be, a chance to really celebrate that. So it’s not, ‘OK, let’s get out of here real quick and find out where we’re going (in the NCAA tournament).’

“In every area, it’s better.”

Big East influence

Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, a former Duke assistant coach, said he, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Pitt’s Jamie Dixon pushed for the move when their teams left the Big East for the ACC.

“The Saturday night time slot is so important. Everybody watches it,” Brey said. “I firmly believe the championship games on Sunday, I just don’t know how many people are really into them outside of the building because they’re getting ready for Selection Sunday. The frame of mind has moved past a tournament championship game, which is a shame, especially in the ACC, which is The Tournament.”

Brey said the TV benefits go beyond a Saturday night finale because the semifinals on Friday also move to prime time.

Consider this: Last year’s ACC semifinals featured two fine matchups, N.C. State vs. Duke and Pittsburgh vs. eventual champ Virginia. They drew a combined 2.4 million TV viewers on a Saturday afternoon. But the quarterfinal games won by State and Duke in primetime Friday night drew 3 million.

“All I know is that in the [Madison Square] Garden on Friday night — and we were fortunate enough to get to four of them in a row — the atmosphere was electric,” Brey said. “The night-session semifinals on Friday and the championship on Saturday, I think, will add to already great excitement in Greensboro.”

There’s one concrete benefit for the teams that reach Saturday night’s final.

On the seventh day, they can rest.

“What people forget is, if you play Sunday afternoon then that also means you’ve played Saturday, Friday and maybe even Thursday,” N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried said. “You’ve had three or four days of games. And then you’ve got to turn around and get ready [for the NCAA tournament]. You have to take Monday off to get your team rested. And then you’re right into the tournament. So that extra day is really a good thing.”

Networking

The ACC’s move was welcomed by ESPN, said Nick Dawson, the network’s senior director of programming and acquisition.

Not only does it get a power conference’s championship game into prime time, but it helps the network offer better games earlier in the week.

Even today’s matchups between the ACC’s four lowest seeds feature four schools with name recognition to the average fan: Boston College, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.

“For the duration of the season, we build a marquee franchise on Saturday night with our ‘GameDay’ show and the games,” Dawson said. “From a flow standpoint, a Saturday night ACC championships makes a ton of sense for us.

“But the other piece to this is our entire ‘Championship Week’ schedule overall. Backing it up and letting ACC games fill for the week makes sense for us. We feel like we’re in a great spot all week, building drama through the week.”

It’s a TV oddity, too, because for most sitcoms or drama series, Saturday night is not a coveted timeslot. Far from it.

But sports are different.

“My gut reaction is,” Dawson said, “you look at what’s been built with college football on Saturday night, both on our network and other networks. Sports play better into the social aspect of a Saturday night. A lot of people are out on the town or gathered at their friends’ homes. Sports plays into that sort of social situation better than a sitcom or other regular TV show.”

It’s a primetime slot the ACC tournament is eager to own.

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/colleges/ ... 91932.html

[redmen9194]

The ACC tournament in Greensboro had 9,003 fans and a curtain closing off the upper level. That included a team (Wake Forest) whose campus was 40 minutes from the arena, a bubble team in Miami, and a school from a neighboring state (Virginia). The Big East Tournament had over 13,000 yesterday. with a team from a neighboring state that was also about 40 minutes from the arena, and three other teams from Chicago, Milwaulkee and Omaha. AND we will get a better percentage of teams in the NCAA than the ACC after matching them last year. ESPN needs to spin something.

[dmac80]

The ACC tournament in Greensboro had 9,003 fans and a curtain closing off the upper level. That included a team (Wake Forest) whose campus was 40 minutes from the arena, a bubble team in Miami, and a school from a neighboring state (Virginia). The Big East Tournament had over 13,000 yesterday. with a team from a neighboring state that was also about 40 minutes from the arena, and three other teams from Chicago, Milwaulkee and Omaha. AND we will get a better percentage of teams in the NCAA than the ACC after matching them last year. ESPN needs to spin something.

I agree that the early rounds of the ACC are pretty pathetic when you think about it. The BET definitely has a much better location going on, I'd like to see the numbers up a little bit higher. We capped out around 15,500 last year so let's see if this deeper conference will make that number jump up a bit as we go into the weekend. I hope Creighton fans traveled somewhat, was glad to see them survive and advance for at least 1 more game.

[billyjack]

Once again the ACC gives up a piece of its soul to try to be like us. The ACC brain-trust is so shortsighted and reactionary.

Nothing beats the Saturday postgame experience in metro-Greensboro... the fun of searching for your car in a 1500-acre parking lot at 11pm in 40-degree damp weather... and driving that car to the local Stuckey's... but Stuckey's has a 90-minute wait for a table because other ACC fans beat you to the restaurant... so you pick up McDonald's and drive back to your Motel-6 near the interchange and sit in your hotel room and watch highlights on TV.

Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville and Notre Dame fans are still trying to adjust to the culture shock.

Guys, what the 10 of us Big East teams have as a conference is absolutely amazing. Nothing beats MSG and midtown Manhattan. The buzz, the crowds, the city, the whole experience. Even on TV the atmosphere is incredible. Our Creighton-DePaul 7-vs-10 game last night was great to watch.

[redmen9194]

billyjack's on the money. Our president's planned accordingly, made the right decision to leave at the right time, invited the right schools, didn't go crazy trying to jump to 12 or 14 or 16. Got the name. Got the Garden. Got the history. Got the TV deal. And Sunday we will get the bids. We made our own league - we didn't join someone else's conference and have to deal with their traditions. It's a lot of fun.

[NJRedman]

Yesterday during the Miami/VT game Bilas once again stated talking about the ACC moving to MSG in the future and how great for the league if they could play there every year. Of course he completely forgets to mention that the Big East plays there every year for the next decade.

[MUPanther]

If Bilas is saying how great it would be for the ACC to play at MSG, are they saying it sucks in Greensboro, which is the heartbeat of the ACC.

[JOPO]

billyjack's on the money. Our president's planned accordingly, made the right decision to leave at the right time, invited the right schools, didn't go crazy trying to jump to 12 or 14 or 16. Got the name. Got the Garden. Got the history. Got the TV deal. And Sunday we will get the bids. We made our own league - we didn't join someone else's conference and have to deal with their traditions. It's a lot of fun.

Amen!

[MUPanther]

billyjack's on the money. Our president's planned accordingly, made the right decision to leave at the right time, invited the right schools, didn't go crazy trying to jump to 12 or 14 or 16. Got the name. Got the Garden. Got the history. Got the TV deal. And Sunday we will get the bids. We made our own league - we didn't join someone else's conference and have to deal with their traditions. It's a lot of fun.

The coverage on FS1 is great. I love the "inside the huddle" feature. Big East Conference, the soul of college hoops!

[dmac80]

billyjack's on the money. Our president's planned accordingly, made the right decision to leave at the right time, invited the right schools, didn't go crazy trying to jump to 12 or 14 or 16. Got the name. Got the Garden. Got the history. Got the TV deal. And Sunday we will get the bids. We made our own league - we didn't join someone else's conference and have to deal with their traditions. It's a lot of fun.

Agreed. It's on us as fans to pack the garden each and every year.