Yesterday, I recalled the “good old days” of Big East college basketball and after posting my rant on that subject, it occurred to me that the Big East seems to be on an ascendant track while ACC basketball seems to be on a downward arc. Back when the Big East was prominent – – 30 years ago or more – – the ACC was equally prominent. The Big East declined significantly and is now “coming back” while the ACC seems still to be less than it used to be.
In the past, you could start to think about the upcoming college basketball season, and you could count on Duke, UNC, NC State and Maryland to offer strong teams. Often other schools would have serious teams on display like Wake Forest (the Tim Duncan years) and Georgia Tech (the Bobby Cremins years) and Virginia (the Ralph Samson years). That seems not to be the case today – – and in recent years.
I went back and looked at last year’s March Madness bracket; there were only 4 teams from the ACC included in the field of 68 teams. Getting four teams in the tournament field would have been laudable when the ACC had 8 members; today, the ACC has 18 members. I think part of the ACC decline can be explained by the exodus of a lot of top-shelf coaches in a short period of time. Since the COVID cancellation year in 2020, here are some – – probably not all – – of the iconic coaches who retired from ACC schools:
- Tony Bennett – Virginia
- Jim Boeheim – Syracuse
- Mike Brey – Notre Dame
- Mike Krzyzewski – Duke
- Jim Larranega – Miami
- Roy Williams – UNC
That coaching array attracted a lot of talent to the ACC simply because “everyone knew those names”; if a kid or a parent got a call or a letter or an email from one of those coaches, it probably did not go directly into the recycling pile or the great bit-box in the sky. Those coaches probably have some involvement with those school athletic programs, but they are not the ones active in “closing the deal” with a prized prospect. It will take time for the current crop of coaches to earn their stripes; ACC basketball will return to prominence just as Big East basketball is in the process of doing; it will just take a bit of time.
Moving on … It seems that the trial date has been set in the gambling cases brought against two Cleveland Guardians’ pitchers, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz; reports say that jury selection will begin on May 4th, 2026. Clase and Ortiz are accused of being involved with an illegal sports betting ring and that they intentionally threw specific pitches in specific circumstances so that other members of the betting ring could cash in game bets; Clase and Ortiz have entered pleas of “Not Guilty”.
In addition, Clase is alleged to have been involved with the illegal betting ring and then “expanded its reach” by recruiting Ortiz into the operation. A report at The Athletic said that as part of discovery, the prosecutors have already turned over a terabyte of information about their case to the defense teams. Just to give you an idea of how much data that is:
- One of these rants is about 20 kilobytes in storage size.
- One terabyte therefore is approximately 50 million of these rants.
- If I were to write 200 rants a year, it would take 250,000 years to finish the assignment.
Switching gears … The Colts lost QB, Daniel Jones, to an Achilles injury on Sunday. Anthony Richardson is also out for the year with an injury and the Colts’ fast start to the 2025 season seems to be derailed. However, this morning the story is that the Colts worked out Philip Rivers to see if he might come out of retirement for the stretch run in 2025. In case Rivers has been flushed from your memory banks:
- He is 44 years old and retired after the 2020 season. (His birthday was yesterday).
- He is a borderline Hall of Fame QB.
- He was in the NFL for 17 seasons and threw 421 TDs and 209 INTs.
During his retirement years, Philip Rivers had been the head football coach at St. Michael Catholic High School in Alabama. Rivers was particularly good throwing the “deep ball” during his active NFL days; it would be interesting to see video of his workout with the Colts to see if that part of his skill set remained intact.
Finally, here is a comment that may have haunted Philip Rivers for the last several years:
- The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………