Batten-down-the-hatches. Dicey Thursday morning in store.
If the wisps of white smoke wafting from college presidents’ offices this week prove prescient, Cal, Stanford — and perhaps Southern Methodist — may soon join the Atlantic Coast Conference.
And sports fans, both casual and rabid, thought letting Louisville in was an abomination.
College athletics, in case you’re in the casual camp, has taken on the appearance of a high-stakes game of musical chairs.
The last schools standing likely will be left holding very empty (money) bags.
And in the middle of it all, the one-time Big Four — UNC, N.C. State, Duke and Wake Forest pace nervously waiting to face the music.
How’s that?
The comically misnamed Big Ten fired up the band earlier this month by adding Oregon and Washington to its 18-school line up for 2024-25. The Big Ten, then just 14, snatched UCLA and USC away last year from the Pac-10 conference.
People are also reading…
Confused?
Only the hardcores (and those with financial) stakes understand. That would be the universities, trustees, boosters and the gamblers.
The shifting seats are of parochial interest here, though, because of Carolina, Wake et al. Even casual fans might like to know the schedule.
The end game is the game as greed disfigures college athletics forever.
Football has been crowned king and queen. The notion of pulling out the AV machines so high-schoolers could watch the ACC basketball tournament has become downright quaint.
And the ACC, with football schools Florida State and, to a lesser extent, Clemson grumbling about being left behind financially, has found itself in it the unenviable position of picking through the rubble — expand or die.
Which brings us to the latest. Reports this week have the ACC kicking the tires of adding Cal and Stanford, two of the four unfortunates left in the roadkill of the Pac-10. Other rumored additions included Southern Methodist University of Dallas — another unnatural geographical fit for the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Why, pray tell, invite two California schools and one from Texas into the mix?
By bucking up membership, the ACC figures that down the road it can pump up television contracts — specifically football — which float athletic-budget boats.
Carolina, State and Wake, as charter members of the ACC, naturally have a keen interest in stabilization by expansion.
And if the ACC whiffs on adding new members, that gives impetus to Florida State and Clemson to fire up their lawyers to see about forcing their way out of the league and into the waiting arms of the SEC.
And in the middle of it all, forgotten in these parts but alive and printing money, sits the University of Maryland.
Remember them? And the righteous indignation when Maryland turned in its charter membership to the ACC in 2014 to join … the Big Ten?
Full circle move, huh?
The Terps, as we plainly see now, were positively prescient by jumping when they did.
When Maryland signed on, the Big Ten had the biggest TV contract in college sports. Each member school was allotted $24 million a year while the annual ACC payout at the time was a measly $17 million.
The games we grew up watching on TVs rolled into history class are long gone.
All that remains is waiting for the last few notes of a sad game to fade as universities scramble for safe seats.
Health-care giants fight over turf
GREENSBORO — Admit the fascination. It’s OK.
If you’ve ever blown your stack over a (figurative) $200 aspirin, then watching the brawl between Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist and Cone Health over the placement of another hospital is oddly satisfying.
State regulators gave conditional approval for a second hospital in the Gate City — Cone’s traditional and monopolistic backyard — to Atrium Health after they said it had proven the overall need for a $246-million, 36-bed hospital on Horse Pen Creek Road.
Cone, which operates the only Greensboro hospital, naturally opposed Baptist poking its fingers into the local health-care pie. Naturally, Cone immediately appealed the decision.
Release the lawyers!
“This is a poor decision for everyone needing health care in this area,” Cone chief executive Mary Jo Cagle said in a statement.
And in the blue corner … the winner (for now) “is pleased with the state’s decision and we are eager to move forward,” said Joe McCloskey, a spokesman for Baptist. “But, out of respect for the process, we are reserving additional comment at this time.”
Baptist would like to start construction by December 2024 and, if allowed to proceed, aims to open by summer 2026. The proposed hospital is about 2 miles from a Cone Health facility that opened last year.
But first, there’s the little matter of the appeal over issuing a certificate of need CON), laws established to limit (or prevent) duplication of medical services in a community. They’re also meant to dissuade for-profit health-care providers from setting up shop.
“People in our community already have options when it comes to health care,” Cagle said. “This decision runs counter to how CON is supposed to work.”
Buckle up, buttercup. This clash of the titans is just heating up.