Barry Jacobs
Popular columnist Barry Jacobs has covered the ACC since the 1970s, sharing his observations in books, magazines, newspapers and on WralSPORTSfan.com since March of 2007.
By Barry Jacobs
Nov 19, 2008
Slowly but surely we are being driven into a box. A converter box.
The news that the Bowl Championship Series has signed a deal with ESPN to televise the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar bowls, as well as the BCS championship game, marks a milestone in a march to transform viewers of major sporting events very literally into a captive audience. The Disney-owned cable network reportedly will pay a half-billion dollars from 2011 through 2014 for the four postseason games, $42.5 million annually more than the current BCS contract with Fox, which makes telecasts available over the air.
In recent years playoffs in the NBA, NHL, and Major League baseball have moved to cable, as have the British Open and Monday Night football. Oh, and did we mention that Disney/ESPN/ABC already owns the broadcast rights to the Rose Bowl? “At ESPN, we’re 100 percent committed to sports,” said George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN, Inc. and ABC Sports, in announcing the BCS deal. And
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By Barry Jacobs
Nov 15, 2008
North Carolina’s resort to its impressive bench in a season-opening basketball win on Saturday proved conclusively, at least in this case, that Penn was not mightier than the horde.
Top-ranked UNC dipped into a rich talent pool to excellent effect in a satisfying, if uneven, 86-71 win over its overmatched opponent from the Ivy League. Six members of the bigger, more athletic Tar Heel squad scored in double figures. There were 22 assists on 28 North Carolina baskets, impressive efficiency for any offense.
Freshman center Tyler Zeller paced the Heels with 18 points. Fellow freshman Ed Davis, a 6-10 forward whose initials spell out his first name, had a double-double in his collegiate debut. Ten of Davis’ rebounds came at the defensive end, a stat any coach would love. Zeller had no defensive rebounds, a deficiency duly noted by Roy Williams. “You know, still, it’s the first game,” the Carolina coach said. “We’re not going
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By Barry Jacobs
Nov 14, 2008
The overlap of sporting events and seasons has gotten to the point the hits not only keep on coming, but rarely stop. Because we seldom get to step back and consider what we’ve just witnessed before rushing on to the next thing -- a problem not just limited to sports in America -- we are in danger of missing a remarkable development in ACC football.
Here’s how seamlessly our recent sports experiences have joined. The first games of the 2008 ACC football season, in which Wake Forest defeated Baylor and N.C. State lost to South Carolina, were played on a Thursday four days after the conclusion of the Summer Olympics. (That same late-August night, Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.) Two months later, a week prior to Obama's election, the end of the baseball season arrived as Philadelphia beat Tampa Bay in earmuff weather in the rain-delayed World Series. The very next night, on October 30, the NBA commenced
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By Barry Jacobs
Nov 11, 2008
We’ve seen this game 100 times before. Or maybe it’s 200 times. Or maybe it just seems like 200 times.
Overtly grateful for the opportunity, an overmatched nonconference opponent ventures to Cameron Indoor Stadium early in the men’s basketball season, plays its heart out, and suffers a lopsided defeat. Duke’s overplaying defense prevents the visitor from running its accustomed offense, forcing the less-gifted opponent to try to score one-on-one. The outcome is never in doubt. The margin at halftime is huge. Play is determined but uneven. The Blue Devil defense is ahead of the offense. The game stats present interesting insights into Duke’s strengths and weaknesses.
So it was on the opening night of the 2008-09 men's season as Duke faced Presbyterian, in its second year participating at the Division I level. Other than the new scoreboard merging the video era with circa-1940 surroundings, there was a timeless quality to the evening’s
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By Barry Jacobs
Nov 9, 2008
N.C. State at Duke on November 8, 2008.
N.C. State coach Tom O’Brien, a strait-laced former Marine, is not noted for forays into irreverence. True to form, he found several conventional spurs to motivate his Wolfpack for the final third of the football season, which began Saturday as it renewed a venerable rivalry with Duke. But O’Brien was not above a little arch humor too as N.C. State sought its first ACC victory in five tries.
The coach started by reminding his team that, with four straight wins, the Pack could even its record and become bowl-eligible. Finishing .500 is rarely cause for reward in sports, but the much-maligned bowl system gave N.C. State something to shoot for even after losing six of its first eight games.
O’Brien also offered the chance to capture what linebacker Nate Irving, leader of the defense, called “the mythical state championship.” N.C. State is the only school that plays Duke, East Carolina, North Carolina, and Wake Forest this season. A win at Duke,
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