ACC's "The Tournament"

[TheCatInTheHat]

Just finished watching the 4 episodes of the program on the ACC Network. There were moments with some pretty crappy old film, but overall, it was well done. It started out with Everett Case at NC State in the early 50's getting the Wolfpack going, and also "volunteering" to host an ACC tournament at the then-new Reynolds (the tobacco company) Coliseum. It went on to show the growth of various programs in their league, with the ultimate measuring stick being performance in their tournament. It finished up with the big rivalry between Maryland's Lefty Driesell and NC State's Norm Sloan in the mid 70s. Very nicely done, and a perfect contrast to what the Pac-12 Network doesn't do.

[EastCoastCat]

How would the Pac 12 do that when for a long time they never had a conference Tourney?

I guess they could do one on UCLA’s dominance and the occasional upset by Oregon, USC and Stanford but otherwise there’s not the same historical context.

[TheCatInTheHat]

I was taking a slightly broader perspective. I assume you watched the show, which essentially used the evolution of the ACC tournament as a lynch pin to tell the stories of Everett Case building the NC State program, Bones McKinney building Wake Forest with Billy Packer, Frank McGuire and later Dean Smith at North Carolina with Charlie Scott as an ACC integration pioneer, Vic Bubas at Duke, and Lefty Driesell at Maryland. So it's actually the early history of the ACC. There's zero doubt that every current Pac-12 school has extensive archival motion footage and still shots collecting dust that could be woven into Ken Burns style documentaries in football and men's basketball. Despite all of the ridiculous money Larry Scott pumped into lavish Embarcadero-area studios and salaries, I believe I've seen one very short and weak attempt at doing something like that for football. The Pac was the PCC prior to 1960 with very different membership, but the Pac still claims that as part of its history, just as many ACC members comprised the Southern Conference and they claim that as their heritage. It would be no problem to similarly claim the histories of current members from their affiliations prior to the current composition of the Pac-12.

[EastCoastCat]

I didn’t see it TheCat so was making some assumptions.

My point would be yes the Pac could do something similar, but probably more so for football than basketball. Much bigger historical coaching personalities and stories compared to basketball.

My dad was friends with Howie Delmar who coached at Stanford but besides being able to throw down 3 martinis before the appetizers came out not sure how interesting a story that would be.

[TheCatInTheHat]

LOL...well, that's martini drinkers for you (including me at times, but I tend to stick more with beer, wine, and the occasional good scotch.) I think it's just good use of a conference network to be a commercial for the league at all times, and not just the dumping ground for the games the bigger networks don't want. In the ACC's case, it drums up even more interest in their tournament (as if that was necessary) right before it begins. A reasonably skilled filmmaker can clean up what available video there is, pan/scan/zoom on still shots, have a dramatic narrator, add a musical score, cut in some interviews with old-timers, and you can turn old film and stills in some school's library archive somewhere into really good stuff (and save it before it crumbles to dust.) HBO did a nice one years ago on the 1950's CCNY point shaving scandal called "City Dump." I'd just like to get more mileage out of the Pac-12 Network, but I suspect Kliavkoff is more into cutting costs until he can consolidate along the lines of the Big Ten/SEC/ACC network model.