ACC Drops The Ball With Football Title Game Return to North Carolina

The ACC wasted no time in making their return to North Carolina for championship events – something that may not have been the best move for the league.

Last September, the ACC made the move to remove all championship games and tournaments from the state of North Carolina in response to that state’s passage of a controversial law regarding the use of public bathrooms by members of the transgendered community. One of those events included the football championship game, moved to Orlando at the last minute.

After the state repealed certain parts of the bill not long ago (with several key controversial components still left in place), the conference wasted no time returning back to its home state for a variety of events – including the football championship game returning to Charlotte, where it had been played from 2010 until 2015 (site of three FSU football championship wins and another appearance in the game).

Not only that, but the ACC gave the Queen City an extension to host the game (h/t TheACC.com):

"The conference, in partnership with the Carolina Panthers, Charlotte Sports Foundation and Visit Charlotte, announced that the 2017 Dr Pepper ACC Championship Football Game will return to Bank of America Stadium and will be played on Saturday, December 2.  The ACC’s agreement to hold the game at the Charlotte venue, originally set to run through 2019, has been extended through 2020."

Instead of evaluating all their options, the ACC decided a the flick of a switch to return back to their “safe place” despite it maybe not being in the best interest. The conference is going to use the excuse that it doesn’t want to move the game too far south (i.e. move the game back to the state of Florida) and options in the North are too far out of the ACC’s wheelhouse in December.

Florida State Seminoles Football

I’m not saying have the game in Boston or New York City…but you’re telling me Washington D.C., for example, isn’t an option? This is a conference that has gone out of the way to try and expand their brand in what is obviously the favored sport for officials – basketball. The conference championship tournament has been played in the nation’s capital, Atlanta, and now is in Brooklyn for another year. Yet football can’t move out of their comfort zone for more than a year.

The truth is that the ACC never really wanted to move anything out of North Carolina and did so in an effort to not get roasted by the court of public opinion. We’re not even going to get into the political elements of the whole bill (even after the reversal of the bathroom portion, if the conference was against the discriminatory parts of the bill, then why are they going back when the parts about preventing cities from enacting anti-discrimination policies are still law in the state?)

If that wasn’t the case, they wouldn’t have gone running back when the state’s legislative body and governor did just enough to look like they were getting rid of this controversial bill without actually getting rid of it.

Hide behind the geography all you want to, ACC – but you just had around 50,000 people in Orlando when fans from Clemson and Virginia Tech had around two months to adjust their schedules and go from being a combined 307 miles away from Charlotte to 1250 combined miles from Camping World Stadium.

If the ACC truly cared about expanding their brand, they would have looked elsewhere for their title game or at least put other cities in the rotation. Alas, this decision again shows the the sport – despite producing two of the last four national champs – is going to be second fiddle at corporate offices in Greensboro.