For its 54th birthday, the ACC Tournament is retiring to Florida.
The tournament will be played in Tampa for the first time this weekend in the St. Pete Times Forum.
The move south is part of the conference's geographic expansion over the last several years. Although Tampa was picked as the site for this year's tournament in 2000-well before the ACC expanded to include Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College-it was a facet of the same plan to look beyond the conference's epicenter in North Carolina.
"It was part of a broader discussion about the tournament touching other parts of our geographic footprint," ACC Commissioner John Swofford said. "Tampa will be unique in itself, and you want some of that because it brings a freshness. It takes this event, which has been so good to the ACC and has had so much to do with our identification-who we are as a league over the years-you want that freshness. I expect Tampa to certainly have that and have its own unique qualities."
Holding the ACC Tournament in Tampa-an idea that was first presented and quickly rejected in 1994-is seen as a way of increasing the conference's fan base in the Sunshine State. Florida has long been known for its ties to football and baseball-Jacksonville has hosted the ACC Football Championship and ACC Baseball Tournament the last two seasons-but has never been considered a bastion for basketball.
Swofford said he believes Florida has already increased its support of basketball, but fans of traditional ACC schools do not share his enthusiasm about the move.
The tournament's traditional home is in Greensboro, where the Greensboro Coliseum has hosted it 21 times in the last 40 years. This year will mark just the ninth time in the tournament's history that it will not be held in the state of North Carolina. In 2005, Washington, D.C. hosted the tournament in the MCI Center while Atlanta's Georgia Dome was the site of the 2001 rendition of the event.
"Anybody probably prefers to have the tournament closer to wherever they are," Swofford said. "That's just human nature. What you have to do is step back and look at the bigger picture and what's fair and appropriate for the entire league. And I think that's what the conference has done."
Ticket sales have reflected the decreased enthusiasm around the conference. A drop in demand has occurred even with a limited supply, as the St. Pete Times Forum holds 3,000 fewer fans than the Greensboro Coliseum. In addition, the expansion to 12 schools has reduced the number of seats allotted to each individual school from 2,000 a year ago to 1,700 this season.
As a result of the decreased interest, many universities have gone further down the list of donors eligible to receive tickets than ever before. Last season, Virginia Tech made tickets available only to those that had donated more than $50,000 to the school. This year, that number has dipped to $2,000. And the Hokies are not alone.
The Iron Dukes traditionally require a $10,000 donation in order to purchase tickets. This season, Duke Athletics' fundraising arm has waived that prerequisite for members from Florida, opening tickets to them regardless of their prior contributions.
"The other side of it is. for every school that goes a little deeper, there are other schools that don't go as deep because they have greater demand," Swofford said. "All of that fluctuates some every year, depending on location and the circumstances of each school's season."
Tickets have also been opened up to the public on a limited basis for the first time since 1966. The ACC has offered to buy back tickets for Thursday's first-round games and make them available to the Tampa public through a lottery system.
Despite the decreased interest this year, Swofford said the setting will be appropriate for one of college basketball's most storied weekends.
"The one consistent thing that we've been so fortunate in always having is great teams, great athletes and great coaches," Swofford said. "The competitiveness on the court is first and foremost what has made the ACC Tournament what it is today."
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