The ACC’s unnecessary hand-wringing over the location of its headquarters has been, for almost a year, the ACC’s own stupid problem.
Now, with the release of the proposed Republican state budget on Tuesday and $15 million of taxpayer money for the ACC, it’s suddenly our stupid problem as well.
The ACC will get all that money for, essentially, nothing: The budget asks surprisingly little of the ACC in return, only to remain within these borders and host roughly the same number of championship here as it would have anyway. As with the ACC and Notre Dame football during the pandemic, there was a harder bargain to be driven.
If the ACC really wanted to waste 10 months (and counting) and millions trying to figure out whether it should leave Greensboro, and where to go if it did, fine. At a time when college sports faces unprecedented upheaval, you’d think new commissioner Jim Phillips and the league’s presidents would have better ways to spend their time, but university leaders haven’t exactly distinguished themselves with their strong stewardship of college athletics in recent years. Bill Friday isn’t walking through that door.
Where the conference office is located is an absolute nothingburger, almost completely irrelevant to the ACC at large and affecting only the 50-some ACC employees who would be forced to relocate from a place they can afford to buy homes on ACC salaries to somewhere they probably cannot. There are ephemeral sentimental and concrete fiduciary reasons to remain in Greensboro; given that almost all of the league’s meetings happen somewhere else, the case for moving is thin until you factor in the egos of the presidents who run the league.
Flirtation with Orlando yields NC action
The ACC flirted with Orlando in a maelstrom of obtuse hypocrisy. The conference that joined the NCAA and NBA in taking a principled stand against North Carolina over HB2 — the so-called bathroom bill that made the state, briefly, a national outcast — was now willing to be wooed by the filthy lucre of the “Don’t Say Gay” state. Wiser minds have apparently prevailed, which has left the conference wavering between moving to Charlotte and staying in Greensboro for some months … and months … and months.
The dalliance with Disney did deliver this dainty little nugget for the ACC. No one really thought the ACC would leave North Carolina – Charlotte was always the most likely destination – but the threat provoked a backroom shuffle to figure out ways to keep the ACC in state. Economic development funds can only be used for obtaining new jobs, not retaining current ones, if there were even enough jobs on the line here to make it worthwhile. That left the government at large, more or less, powerless to react to Orlando’s offer.
There were rumors at the time that legislative leaders Phil Berger and Tim Moore were putting together some package of legislative relief to get around that hurdle, and Tuesday there it was in their budget.
So what would we get for our $15 million?
Most notably, a guarantee that four of the next nine ACC tournaments will be played in North Carolina, which if anything undershoots the target. Two of them are supposed to go to Greensboro, which is probably one more than Greensboro would have gotten everything else being equal, but that only matters to Greensboro.
We definitely should demand more for our money – no less than six of the next nine. Otherwise, this isn’t a deal, it’s a handout.
The rest of the championship guarantees spelled out in the budget are basically worthless – women’s basketball, baseball, other sports – since those tournaments are most frequently played within these borders anyway.
Which means the ACC is now in line for a $15 million bag of taxpayer money for, basically, agreeing to keep doing what it was doing before, whether in Greensboro or Charlotte.
A hand in your pocket
Sometimes, sports — and college or pro, it’s all professional — has more in common with a protection racket than an educational endeavor. Stadiums, offices, tournaments, it seems like someone’s always trying to get a hand in your pocket. PNC Arena’s upcoming renovations will be paid for by an earmarked tourism tax, but the ACC is getting state money that could have gone anywhere else. Like to actual, you know, educators.
The ACC belongs in North Carolina. There was never any doubt about that except in the minds of university presidents. If this was really about “fiduciary responsibility,” as Phillips originally pitched it, then staying in Greensboro always made the most sense. Instead, this magical mystery tour has dragged on for almost a year, wasting time, money and mental energy better expended on, you know, massive NCAA reform or closing the (growing) financial gap with the Big Ten and SEC.
Then again, wherever the ACC ends up, it’s hard to argue with the end result from the league’s perspective. The real fiduciary goal was to see if any suckers would pony up. Guess what.
So a conference that brought in $578 million in revenue in 2020-21 will get $15 million of your money to stay here – not to mention the piles of incentives and goodies Greensboro and Charlotte were both already dangling – and still be free to take the basketball tournament somewhere else more often than not.
The ACC’s wild goose chase ended up laying a golden egg.
