It was a nice weekend here (well, assuming you forget about sports), most of which I spent clearing out the garage. I think I might wind up with enough thermal mass in the basement to keep it warm down there. OK, not really. It’ll be cold. But full.
The big news around here, I guess, is that Syracuse is jumping to the ACC. This is definitely an odd development. I understand the need to jump off the sinking Big East ship, I guess. But I can’t say I’m crazy about it. ACC football kinda sucks (not that we’re exactly ready to be playing with the big boys – as USC proved, though I think it would have been a bit closer had the refs not been quite so horrible), and ACC basketball? Meh. It will be nice to see our old friend Boston College again (and they must be happy to see us and Pitt come aboard, since they’ve been the redheaded stepchild in the ACC), and there were some good times with Virginia Tech in football.
Basketball, though. We pretty much are Big East Basketball. We will miss hating Georgetown (I’m sure we’ll still play and hate them, but it won’t be the same) and Connecticut (assuming they don’t jump over as well at some point). It’s the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden that we’ll really miss. That’s a big recruiting advantage for getting those NYC kids, and who the hell wants to go to frickin’ Greensboro or Chapel Hill or some place like that? Plus they’ll never love us in the ACC.
Lacrosse will be about the only interesting thing. If you look at the “new” ACC, you’ll see 23 National Championships since they started having an NCAA Lacrosse postseason tournament in 1971 (11 for Syracuse, 5 for Virginia, 4 for North Carolina, a couple for Maryland, and one for Duke).
In some ways, a jump to the Big 10 would’ve been better. They’re cold weather teams, at least, and we could go back to playing Penn State. But we’d get kicked around in football for a while. And there are few things as boring as Big 10 basketball (I think they still use the two-handed set shot there, and, much as I like Gene Hackman, who wants to play Hickory twice a year?).
Sad as it is to leave the Big East, the BE isn’t what it used to be. I mean, TCU? Not that the combination of Texas and Christians isn’t thrilling, of course (and Horned Frogs are a pretty good nickname), but the only thing Texas is East of is California. And they were taking about adding teams like Baylor and shit.
Oh well, as with pretty much everything else in this world, it doesn’t really matter what I think Except I think I’ll have some more coffee.