The Line Between Terp and Derp

In college sports, "It's about the kids" is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

On The Exit Of The Turtle

For the past few weeks, you could hear it building.

All the ACC folk, cheerfully circling Sunday's Virginia-Maryland tilt at the end of the ACC regular season. Anticipating with pleasure the thought of a resurgent Virginia taking Maryland to task for the grievous sin of leaving the conference. Hoping out loud that the Terps' last regular season game would be a whupping of epic proportions, with league champion Virginia standing in for Duke and Carolina to do the honors. That Maryland would be ushered out of the league it was abandoning with an epic loss.

Your Handy-Dandy Guide To Teams That Think They Got Screwed Out Of the 2013 NCAA Tournament

Every year, there are teams that claim that they got screwed out of a spot in the NCAA mens' basketball tournament. These teams tend to fall into two categories: teams from big conferences mad that teams from little conferences made it, or teams from small conferences mad that teams from big conferences made it. The truth is, once you get to a certain level it's all a crapshoot anyway, and nobody who's on the razor's edge for an 11-seed play-in game has a hope in Hattiesburg of winning the thing. (OK. Except for VCU that one time). But still, people squawk, and as such, it's our responsibility to give you a little information on why.

Without further ado, let's meet the screwed.

Et Tu, Testudo?

So Coach K. is mad that Maryland is leaving the ACC. Mad that they're going to the Big 10. Mad that they're walking away from a conference they helped found in 1953 (by breaking away from the Southern Conference). Mad that they're abandoning the long-time rivalry.
He's right to be mad, of course. That's a lot of tradition for Maryland to be abandoning for the promise of a paycheck and regular exposure on the Big 10 Network. I applaud Coach K.'s stand that teams should not leave their conferences, that they should not abandon their long-time rivalries for filthy lucre, and they should not leave the conferences they helped found behind.
And I look forward to hearing Coach K. re-iterate these sentiments next year when founding Big East member Syracuse comes to Cameron Indoor Stadium as part of its initial season in the ACC.

Second in Line for the Beatdown

The funny thing about picking on the fat kid (or the smart kid, or the small kid) in school is that there's always the chance the fat kid's going to move away. And when he does, the bullies and the opportunists and the sadists never seem to pack up and say "Oh, well, now that he's gone we might as well behave." No, they look around for the second-fattest kid, or the second-smartest, or the second-smallest, and they make that kid the new target.
Congratulations, ACC. You're the second-fattest kid.
For years, you've been trying desperately to hang with the cool kids in major conference college sports by pillaging the nerd conference to your north, the Big East. BC, Miami and Virginia Tech. Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Notre Dame. And all the while crowing about how you were proactive, how you'd strengthened yourself, how you were immune to the cherry-picking that was going on across the country because you were ahead of the curve.
And then today, the Big 10(ish) made it rain all over College Park, and Maryland left. Left despite there being a $50M penalty for walking out of the ACC - that's how much extra money is on the table for someone who joins the Leaders & Legends of the Rust Belt, that even with the $50M cover charge, it's still worth it. Worth it to the Big 10, which gets a foothold in a major eastern television market (and another one with Rutgers) and a corresponding boost in revenues to the Big 10 Network. Worth it to Maryland, which had to kill seven sports this year because of athletic department budget shortfalls. In other words, this was a no-brainer for the Terps, and the alumni and the talk radio hosts howling today about the loss of tradition had better understand that. (They'd also better understand that the glorious ACC tradition they loved so much had already been thoroughly trampled by importing football programs wholesale into their basketball conference, bloating their conference tourney, and exploding their schools' travel budgets for varsity sports by including trips to Miami and Boston.)
But if you ask me, this is only the beginning. Maybe they raid the Big East one more time to replace the Terps, filling the hole with Connecticut. But UConn football's not worth the add, and UConn basketball's no sure thing in the post-Jim Calhoun era, either. And in the meantime, the sharks are circling. There's rumors of Florida State being on the Big 12's radar. Of Clemson going to the SEC. Of North Carolina - venerable Chapel Hill, as ACC as ACC gets - going to the Big 10 when that behemoth rouses itself to fill out a roster of 16.
Maybe Louisville's left as a viable acquisition target in the Big East. Maybe UConn. But that's it. And when the biggest nerd is down for the count, it's the next in line that becomes the target.
Congratulations, ACC. It's your turn.