The first couple of chapters of ACC Basketball show the prolific attention to detail it shows to shining a light on the entirety of the conference’s history. This includes doing a great job of contextualizing the team founding members by detailing the conference they came from as well as the successes and failures of their teams in previous years. The book does a great job of showing the coming-of-age period that college sports were in. Between gambling allegations and the illegal recruiting tactics rampant, the text uses great examples from long-forgotten universities such as Long Island University and the College of William and Mary and their downfall. The text then capitalizes on all of this contextualization by presenting the way this scandal directly contributed to the creation of the ACC by saying, “The question, then, was how to gain the benefits of college athletics without endangering the other goals and standards to which academic institutions aspire”.
Along with this, the text also explores the actual process of creating the conference and raises the question of how universities go through the messy process of departing from their already established conference and creating a conference that will satisfy the desires of its founding members. They do a great job of showing this conflict by highlighting all of the differing problems that teams had such as the ban on bowl games and the way recruiting was handled. It also stands out how the author of this text has made it a goal to portray the bad blood of the rivalries that make the conference so special. This is accomplished through quotes from people directly involved in the rivalries such as one from referee George Conley where he says, “‘In my 20 years of officiating,’ … “I have never seen every player so involved in a fight’”. I feel that the portrayal of these rivalries and the hatred within them should be the most important thing going forward as it is what makes the ACC so special. Such a history of competitiveness and hatred is also something that excites me as a reader and keeps me glued to the book.
