As a native North Carolinian, few things elicit the excitement of the ACC basketball tournament. And even though this year's tournament is in a foreign land (Tampa, Florida), some 700 miles from where it should be (Greensboro or, at the very least, Charlotte or Atlanta), there's still some excitement for the tournament in this 32-year-old body that hasn't been present to a tournament in about 6 years.
And, believe it or not, I have the North Carolina public school system to thank for that excitement.
After all, "ACC Tournament Week" in elementary and middle school was almost like an in-school vacation. I can remember teachers pretty much making up lesson plans based around the tournament. Specifically, math teachers would have students calculate just how far it is between, say, College Park and Tallahassee. Or history teachers would have students research the Morrill Act (which paved the way for Land Grant colleges), or how the different schools were founded. And so on and so on.
The whole week was topped off when TVs were wheeled into the classrooms to watch the Friday morning and afternoon session of games from the tournament. And, of course, schoolchildren wore their favorite teams colors. Of course, being that we were in North Carolina in the 1980s and early 1990s, the classrooms were pretty much split between red and light blue. (There was no such thing as Duke fans back in those days. And I remember just one Wake Forest fan, K.C. Gold. I always respected that about him.)
For those of you who grew up in North Carolina, do you have similar memories? And for those that did not, was there a similar level of excitement for "the tournament" in your state?
14 comments:
We weren't as fortunate to actually watch the games on Friday -- but we should have. After all, no one paid any attention to what was going on that day in school!
Oh, it was always a great time when the Tournament rolled around. Quarterfinal Friday was kind of like the passage into the last chunk of the school year. When the weather turned and the TVs got wheeled into the classrooms, you knew afternoons wasted on the beach weren't far in the future.
The sad thing is I think those days are fading. I know there are probably a few diehard NC natives out there teaching that still insist on bringing in the TVs, but I sense their numbers are dwindling.
And with today's kids tethered to their Treos and Crackberries, who needs a TV to keep up with the games, anyways?
If it were up to me:
-All school age children from grades 4-12 should be required to watch the ACC tournament on Thursday and Friday
-BBQ restaurants that cook over hardwood coals would get tax breaks and wood-purchasing subsidies.
The times, they are a changin'....
James,
I assume that because of the pressures of EOCs now in public schools that it is almost impossible for teachers to take a day (or more) and do things like this. Heck, aren't field trips pretty much over?
Judging by the faddass kids in school these days, I'd say so is recess.
;)
I don't think those days are fading. Those days are long gone. By the time I was in high school, the North Carolina school system was really cracking down on activities that were not eductational.
In elementary and middle school, we regularly watched the ACC tournament on Fridays. Building an entire week around it seems a little extreme. By high school, your teacher had to be really slack or a really big basketball fan to see the tournament.
By the time I was a teacher assistant in the late 1990s, I'm sure a few die-hard teachers watched the tournament, but for the most part, that activity was out of vogue. Plus, more and more teachers here are not from this state, so they just don't know.
Matt, you're right about end of grade tests and such. Teachers are students are under a lot of pressure now, and that's in second grade!
James, I wouldn't let students watch the tournament on Thursdays, because it's blasphemy that the conference expanded and that there are tournament games on Thursdays.
I guess the 1980s and early 1990s were the end of a golden era a few ways -- the tournament was still pure and you could still watch it in school.
We got the same treatment through high school in Greensboro. I also remember that you could take the individual speakers off the headset on early Walkman headphones so if a teacher did try to teach you could run a speaker down your shirt-sleeve and when propped with your elbow on the desk, you could hold the speaker to your ear without being caught.
I too was a Wake Forest fan growing up so if I didn't get to see the Friday game, my weekend was over.
Remember the Carolina cheer that went something like "Wake is fake, Duke is puke, and the team I hate in NC State?"
One last memory. 1987 when both Saturday games went into double overtime. What a conference.
"eductational".
Nice. Give it up for N.C. public schools!!!
Just so you know my entire world revolves around BBQ, I was at Ole Time BBQ today and saw a bumper sticker that said:
"Proud North Carolinian
#1 in Pork Production
#42 in Teacher Pay"
That's a great bumper sticker!
We had the TVs wheeled into class on Friday, too. Better yet, we got to go to the gym or the library to watch the second game, as the administration realized it was better to have kids at school (attendance = state and fed money) rather than going home on a note actually signed by their parents, for once.
Championship Sunday was, for me, the first day of spring. The quality of sunlight was different, none of the leaden sky you're used to in winter. Honest to God sunshine, and the first daffodil shoots poking out of the ground. You would go to church in short sleeves and come home, shoot a few hoops with your brother or your dad and then go inside to wash the driveway grime, and the vulcanized smell of streetball rubber, off your hands before making a barbecue sandwich and sitting down for the pregame. Some years we'd host a party, some years we'd go to one, some years there was no party, for whatever reason. But everyone paid attention, and I remember the Selection Show being almost anticlimatic.
Fast forward, to 2004 -- my brother went to Carolina. This was the year Maryland came out of nowhere to win the tournament. I was watching on ESPN in Colorado, he was catching it via JP in Winston-Salem. When the screen flashed to a little Duke fan on his daddy's shoulder, bawling his eyes out -- five years old, never in his life had he not known a season with a Duke ACC title, so I don't feel sorry for the little shit at all -- I called my brother.
He didn't answer with "Hello," or anything, just. "I WANNA SEE TEARS!!! CRY BABY!!!! CRY!!!!!"
The law of the jungle in the ACC: Do unto others before they do unto you.
By the way, the 1980s will stand forever as this conference's golden age.
Two seminal national titles -- I mean the kind that resonate coast to coast. And State's, I'll argue, had more impact, because its unbelievable underdog hot streak is why everyone tunes in today, and what everyone wants to see, regardless of allegiance. No sport honors its underdogs more than tournament basketball.
In that decade you also had, at every school with the exception of perhaps Wake Forest, coaches that either won national titles, went to the final four, set (or would set) school records for victories, on and on. Valvano, Krzyzewski, Cremins, Dean Smith, Terry Holland, Lefty Driesell, even Cliff Ellis at Clemson -- all of these have pantheon status in their school's basketball lore.
Duke went to, what four final fours? Carolina to one, winning it all, State to one, winning it all, Virginia to one.
Plus the inimitable Len Bias and Ralph Sampson -- two undisputed all-time greatest ever ACC players, not from the state of North Carolina. Len Bias was the only non Big Four name anyone ever said when we were calling out who we were emulating. And Sampson, my God, he was the bogeyman incarnate. His name literally inspired dread.
I'll run the 1980s ACC up against any decade of any league, college or pro. People ask me who I grew up rooting for, I tell them I have no pro interests, really, because I didn't need them. Not with that league.
I can think of a few things that are more illicit than the ACC Tournament, but I won't post them on a family message thread!
However, Matt's e-mail does "elicit" some old memories for me. I remember in the seventh grade I smuggled a transistor radio in so that I could listen to the first round games. My social studies teacher caught me (the wire down into my t-shirt probably gave me away) and took the radio. Then, as we were doing our school work, I noticed he had put the radio on and was listening to the games. Every 3 minutes or so, he would write the score on the chalkboard so that we could all keep up. He kept my radio for the rest of the day (as punishment, so he said, but I think he just wanted to listen to the next game).
I always thought it was strange that back in the days of seven ACC teams, they would play two games in the afternoon on the first round, and then one game at night. And I think they used to start the Tourney on Thursday so the finals would be on Saturday night. I seem to recall the NCSU-Maryland game in 1974 was on a Saturday night.
(from T.M.)
It's Thursday afternoon ... and it's just plain weird to listen/watch ACC tourney games in Tampa. My $0.02 worth.
No expansion.
No Thursday.
No Tampa.
No justice.
No peace.
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