ACC Basketball Tournament almost done with New York City mistake

The ACC will finish off a two year deal to hold their top basketball event in the Big Apple – and it was a nice idea on paper, but not in life.

Starting Tuesday, fans of the 15 teams who make up the ACC basketball – including the Florida State Seminoles – will arrive in New York City, hop on one of four possible subway train routes and arrive at 620 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn…better known as the Barclays Center, the site of the 2018 conference basketball tournament.

It’s the second straight season that the tournament has taken place in the Big Apple – and the first time that it has really been held outside of a ACC hotbed area. While most of the tournaments have been played in North Carolina, places like Atlanta, Washington D.C. and Tampa have hosted the week long event.

But New York City was a different animal. With the conference expanding into the state of New York by adding Syracuse to the conference in 2013, it was only a matter of time before the marquee event in commissioner John Swofford’s favorite sport headed to it’s biggest location – and with the Big East tournament holding down Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn was the site.

While it was a nice two year breakaway event, it’s time for the ACC to bring the tournament back and move on. It was a fun time, but it was also a mistake.

While there is no doubt that the ACC is a better conference all around than the Big East, the truth of the matter is that the conference never got the billing as the marquee event in New York City when they were there – and that’s understandable. For years, fans have been used to seeing St. John’s and Georgetown, so they aren’t going to jump for Georgia Tech and Clemson.

Yes, you had the blue bloods and big names like Duke and North Carolina there…you had the traditional name schools with alumni bases in New York City like Syracuse and Notre Dame…heck, even the Seminoles had a decent showing for their games – but New York City is not ACC basketball.

ACC basketball is sold out crowds in places like Charlotte, Greensboro and the occasional trip to an Atlanta or something like that. It’s having packed arenas from fans who are able to travel to the games, not those who have to watch from home since they can’t afford traveling to a place where the closest member school is 215 miles away (ironically, it’s Boston College and not Syracuse).

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The experiment was fun – and now, the ACC can say they had their fun in the big city (realize that they never got to be the big dawg they wanted to be) and have stories to tell their kids about all the fun inside the Mecca of Basketball in Manhattan. Oh wait, I mean they played in the home of the currently 20-44 Nets in Brooklyn.