More about the Wahoos

OK. So the Wahoos play in the Atlantic Coast Conference. In my adult lifetime, the ACC has consisted of the Turtle, Wahoos, Deacs, Dukies, State, Tech, El Tigre, and the evil, despised Tarheels. This was an excellent system. We had a nice 8-team bracket and could comfortably play all our opponents twice in the typical hoops season.

Then someone had the brilliant idea to add Florida State. This was bad. You couldn't refer to "State" anymore because there were now two of them. Plus, I'm generally opposed to Florida. And they had that stupid tomahawk chop and the chant that went with it. And Florida was really far away and not really part of tobacco road. And I decided they were evil and corrupt and I hated them. And we now had nine teams, which made for an icky bracket featuring an 8 versus 9 play-in game on Thursday night before the tournament began. Oh, the ignominy of having to play in the play-in game, and if you won, the prize was either Carolina or Duke in about 14 hours.

After a decade or so, because I'm not much of an early-adopter sort of person, I got used to it. I didn't like it, but I got used to it.

And then they fucked everything up again. I'm not even sure who's in anymore, except apparently the Hokies are, which means we can't say "Tech" because there are two of them. Also, Wahoo is playing Boston College today and it is apparenty a conference game, so I guess that means BC is in the ACC. And shame of shame, Miami is in too. (I couldn't remember that one. I had to look it up.) The ACC is now fully-laden with football-factory schools and I can't even remember who's in anymore. We have "divisions" whatever that means, and it's all too complicated. BC, are you kidding? Why not Nebraska? They're as contiguous and tobacco-road-ish as BC. We've utterly lost our regional flavor and are now just a marketing group. Ick.

The worst part, of course, is that the Wahoo is last in the conference, having won a whopping one game so far. They aren't really sooooo bad. They lost a few in OT and they came within one of beating the evil, despised Tarheels. They play everyone close, but consistently fail to deliver when the chips are down. Sigh. Even the Red Sox won eventually.