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Reporters wield sharp pens in ACC-Big East cage match
[ Originally posted 06.29.03 ]
©2003 Bonesville.net
 Who
says the members of the sports media lack meaningful perspective?
After their breathless
reporting about the ongoing War of Southern Aggression, are there
still those with doubts about whether sportswriters have the ability to mix
biting sarcasm with laser-targeted humor in order to get a valid point
across?
From The Rock Hill Herald
to The New York Times, the laptops have been supercharged.
The Atlantic Coast
Conferences bumbling, stumbling, fumbling raid on the Big East has provided
the perfect fodder for scribes to prove their worth, to call a spade a
spade, and, occasionally, to label an Ace a Joker.
Here are a few excerpts
(including hyperlinks to the original articles) from recent coverage of the
convoluted process:
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It was planned as a surgical strike. It has
been carried out with all of the precision of a Three Stooges pie fight.
Tim Sullivan, San Diego Union-Tribune
-
The first rule of college sports should be
this: Unless all the football teams play each other, and unless all the
basketball teams play each other twice, it isn't a conference.
Mark Whicker, Orange County Register
-
"... The winner of college
football's version of Powerball could be East Carolina. ..."
Ted Lewis, New Orleans Times-Picayune
-
ACC officials kept expansion afloat with
this 11-team, 11th-hour decision, but it is difficult to imagine anyone
believing this is a good plan.
In an effort to get bigger and more
powerful, the ACC has proven it can really screw up a good thing.
Gary McCann, Rock Hill Herald
-
In theory, I've long liked the idea of ACC
expansion.
In reality, I'm glad I don't have to clean up the mess.
Scott Fowler, Charlotte Observer
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Ultimately, the ACC's presidents and
chancellors make all the decisions. In expansion, it has become painfully
clear that few, if any, of those folks understand the principles of
cooperation and compromise.
Caulton Tudor, Raleigh News & Observer
-
Probably too late now, but there has to have
been a way to somehow turn this athletic-conference wrangling over the
University of Miami into a reality TV show. Considering the weeks and
weeks in which the Byzantine drama has inched on, we might well have
called the series, American Idle.
Greg Cote, Miami Herald
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Miami called the shots to start the
ACC-Big East battle.
Miami will call the shots until the end.
ACC
officials thought Miami was meeting to approve their invitation to join.
Instead, they got notice that Miami will spend the weekend mulling the
proposal and, gasp, a list of late counterproposals from the Big East.
The circle of humiliation is complete.
Jeff Jacobs, Hartford Courant
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The only thing even remotely amateurish about
big-time college sports anymore are some of the people in charge.
Jim Litke, The Associated Press
-
Behold the power of the college football
dollar, that a reputable conference would be so eager and willing to
debase itself.
Mike Lopresti, Indianapolis Star
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Let me see if I have this straight. Miami and
Virginia Tech are headed to the Atlantic Coast Conference, Syracuse and
Boston College are going nowhere and Louisville might join the Hair Club
For Men?
David Whitley, Orlando Sentinel
-
The ACC, please excuse the sacrilege, is
poised to become a football league.
Roll over Everett Case, tell Bones
McKinney the news.
David Teel, Newport News Daily Press
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I hope they're not teaching ethics classes
at Virginia Tech. That would be a bad joke.
Mike DeCourcy, The Sporting News
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Charges of tampering, litigation, back-room
deals, broken promises and bait-and-switch tactics were the milestones the
Atlantic Coast Conference set on its road to expansion.
Joe Drape, New York Times
-
The ACC looks foolish. The Big East
looks vindictive.
Since this whole fiasco has a Marx Brothers feel to
it, maybe it is time for UM to listen to the sage words of Groucho, who
said, ``I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a
member.
Linda Robertson, Miami Herald
-
" ...
Since the expansion effort became
public in May, all sorts of actors have claimed roles. The Virginia
governor, state legislators, state attorneys general, U.S. senators,
boosters, business people and faculty members have all jumped in. ...
Ned Barnett, Raleigh News & Observer
-
" ... They really are
nice folks over at BC, but a wink from Atlantic Coast Conference piranhas
moved the nicest people from one of the best institutions to follow a
quasi-collegiate program like Miami's football juggernaut to wherever the
money trail took them. ...
David Pevear, Lowell Sun
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02/23/2007 11:29:36 AM
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