Charlotte Makes Sense For ACC Title Game

(I couldn't find a photo from last year's ACC title game, so there's Josh Nesbitt instead.)

When the ACC finished its expansion four-plus years ago, it dreamed of a conference championship game that would rival that of its perennial bully and big brother, the SEC. (Sorry ACC fans, it's just fact right now. The SEC is better.)

The SEC Championship game, held the first weekend in December in Atlanta, has turned into a sporting event on par with some of college football's best bowls. Case in point, for the second-straight year, we might have a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup at the Dome in December.

By comparison, the ACC has fallen flat.

Through four title tilts in two different Florida cities—Jacksonville and Tampa Bay—the ACC has watched attendance dwindle to the tune of around 200 percent.

Equally as bad, the game has failed to take hold as more than just 60 minutes of football, but as a spectacle, a long-weekend party, like that of the SEC and even the Big 12.

Obviously, the conference has been hurt by a down economy, and far more so by the sudden and dramatic fall of expected power teams like Florida State and Miami.

But holding every game until now in locations south of every conference school save those two hasn't helped either.

Enter Charlotte, N.C., the Queen City herself.

Charlotte gets next year's game, as well as 2011's, and already, the city is lining up business partners and ambassadors to pitch the Carolina city as a permanent home for the game.

Frankly, I can't think of a better tonic for the ailing game.

Jacksonville is an obvious choice because of its long-standing relationship with the ACC through the Gator Bowl. Tampa Bay makes less sense, but OK.

But Charlotte is right on so many levels.

First, the city wants this game. Not that Tampa or Jacksonville didn't, but neither was ever clamoring for it.

Charlotte is that third job applicant who shows up to the interview dressed to the nines and honestly prepared to explain why it's the best choice.

When you're trying to make a game into an event that draws tons of people—with fan-friendly activities, concerts, parties, the works—that's the sort of attitude you need from the host city.

Second, Charlotte is far more central than either other location ever was.

As the story linked above points out, eight ACC schools are within 300 miles of Charlotte. The last two ACC Championships were played between Virginia Tech and Boston College, which are 778 and 1,366 miles away from Tampa Bay, respectively.

Only once has a Florida team played in an ACC title game, and only twice has either team come from less than 500 miles away.

This is all a nice way of saying Charlotte is the ideal location. Atlanta works for the SEC title game, because people in the SEC see Atlanta as a natural center of their conference. It's within a comfortable day's drive of almost every school, and the Georgia Dome and surrounding hotels and nightlife make it an ideal destination.

Charlotte is Atlanta to the ACC.

Third, and this is slightly less important, but putting the game permanently in Charlotte probably placates—if ever so slightly—the Tobacco Road ACC teams, some of whom have found that expanding the conference to bring in the football dollars isn't exactly the everybody-wins situation they expected.

Football has certainly begun to crowd basketball in the roundball lovers' conference. Not much, but it has, with all the sudden parity, etc.

Only one Tobacco Road team has made an ACC title game in its four years, Wake Forest in 2007. Putting the game in the heart of basketball country—which like it or not wields significant power in the conference—gives the schools in that area some semblance of ownership of ACC football, even if it doesn't come via success.

Last, and probably least in the ACC's mind, putting the game in Charlotte for good says that the ACC isn't just trying to play mimic with it's Southern brother.

Look, the ACC will never be the SEC. The two conferences are too different.

The ACC has a rich basketball tradition, the SEC an analogous relationship with football.

Many of the ACC's member schools—Wake Forest, Boston College, Duke, to name a few—are small institutions whose student bodies probably could not support a football program equivalent to, say, Auburn's.

By contrast, the SEC is made up mostly of large state schools with huge student bodies and corresponding alumni bases from which to draw fans and most importantly, money.

Football makes the lights turn on and the water run in modern college athletics, I get that. But I don't think running away from your soul is suddenly going to make you an overnight success at something you can't build.

Why not instead market yourself as something the SEC can't be—a 12-team conference with the kind of football-basketball balance and sweeping East coast appeal that every commissioner in the FBS would love to have.

You can't be the SEC, but why not be the ACC?