Here in ACC country, let’s forget the Final Four, look ahead to the ACC Network

Since the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is down to four teams — none of which are from the ACC — now seems like a good time to think happier ACC thoughts. So why not look ahead to what the new ACC Network is going to be like?

The easiest way to get an idea of what ACC fans can expect when the new network dedicated to ACC sports launches in 2019 is to consider it’s older cousin, the 3 1/2-year-old SEC Network.

ESPN is producing both, so you’d expect there will be some similarities. One surprising bit of news from ESPN is the ACC Network won’t be based in Charlotte, North Carolina as the SEC Network is.

I had imagined some of the on-air people might just change hats as they went back and forth between ACC and SEC studios in Charlotte. (Ex-Wake Forest coach Dino Gaudio has done similar double duty in the past.) But no. The bulk of the ACC Network’s work will be produced in Bristol, Connecticut. So there’s that.

But in a broader sense, here’s what will happen: The ACC Network will mean a lot to fans of the schools that struggle to get attention in the league.

On the flip side, University of North Carolina and Duke basketball fans and Clemson football fans will barely notice — or need — the ACC network.

Here’s why. ESPN already blows out every big UNC or Duke basketball game. ESPN hypes games — especially the exalted UNC vs. Duke game — for weeks in advance and at every possible moment (including during the SEC men’s basketball Tournament, but don’t get me started).  

So for those fans (and to a slightly lesser extent, Clemson football fans), what happens on the ACC Network is a very thin layer of icing on a very filling cake. They can already gorge on their teams’ exploits without ever layering on the ACC Network.

In fact, most UNC and Duke basketball and Clemson football games won’t even air on the ACC Network because those marquee match-ups will stay on ESPN. Sure, Clemson football might show up on the new network when the Tigers play Wofford. But that’s about it.

Good news for the “other” teams
But here’s the other side of the pregame coin: If you love UNC football or Clemson basketball, this network is for you. Almost every one of your games will end up on TV somewhere, with a good number of them on the ACC Network.

So instead of Clemson football crowding the others out, the others now have another place to go to get some attention. If you’re a fan of Virginia Tech basketball or N.C. State football, you are now likely to be able to watch every game, no matter how meaningful or meaningless.

Yes, this applies even to you Pitt basketball (8-24 in 2017-’18) and Syracuse football (4-8).

Even better, the ACC Network will produce something like the SEC Network’s nightly “SEC Now” — the conference network version of ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

So for an hour or so each night, your team will get at least some airtime about that day’s exploits. That means airtime for teams that would have gone unmentioned on the national network.

Postscript
I dropped a lot of ACC team names here, (and should add Georgia Tech where my wife went to undergrad!) but no doubt some have noticed there was no mention of Notre Dame. Notre Dame football, which dwarfs the entire ACC in terms of the attention it gets, is keeping its deal with NBC for now. So it’s not a big factor in this context.

And what about sports other than men’s basketball and football? They’ll benefit from this as well. And that’s a topic for another blog post.

As March Madness begins, seeding the SEC Network’s best basketball analysts

It’s the time of year in college basketball that last-second shots and Cinderella wins are remembered by fans for decades. But as the basketball gets better, the announcers get worse.

Why? Because CBS takes over men’s March Madness after airing the random Saturday game, and its play-by-play announcers and color analysts seem to know little or nothing about the teams they’re describing.

(Don’t even get me started on the TNT talking heads.)

Analyst Jimmy Dykes made the point effectively in the SEC Network’s NCAA Tournament selection special Sunday when he directed a question to Auburn basketball coach “Mike Pearl.” It was a jab at Greg Gumbel who flubbed the name of Auburn’s coach when announcing the brackets earlier that day.

For the record, Auburn’s coach is Bruce Pearl. His response to Dykes: “I’ve been called worse.”

As the season goes on, I’ll sorely miss watching games on the SEC Network where the announcers know the coaches — and the players. They can name the stars, sure, but they also know the supporting players and the walk-ons. They know how the teams have fared over this season and seasons past.

So, as we say goodbye to games on the SEC Network, here’s a ranking of the best SEC Network college basketball analysts with a focus on those who do double duty at games and in studio.

If the mother ship (ESPN) has an opening for a college basketball analyst, Daymeon Fishback should get the call. He’s the SEC Network’s Booger McFarland of basketball. Photo via ESPN Mediazone.

No. 1: Daymeon Fishback. Yes, he knows the game, the teams and the players and talks with authority about all three. But all of of the SEC Network basketball analysts do that.

Fishback does it with a smile and a gleam in his eye that shows his intelligence and his good humor. He’s warm, personable and has a quick, sharp laugh that makes him not only someone I want to talk to about basketball, but  just about anything.

And although he’s enthusiastic, he’s not just a cheerleader for SEC basketball. He was the first of the SEC Network’s analysts to bring up the FBI’s investigation into the NCAA during one of the “SEC Now” broadcasts from the tournament in St. Louis. Props for that.

I remember him from his playing days at Auburn, and I admit I held that against him when he first showed up on the network. I’m an Alabama fan after all. It’s in my DNA to dislike all things Auburn. But it didn’t take long for him to win me over.

Jimmy Dykes has a coach’s perspective and a serious demeanor. Photo via ESPN Mediazone.

No. 2: Tie between Jimmy Dykes and Pat Bradley. Bradley joined the crew for the 2017-18 season and brought a gleaming, white smile, a quick wit and an incredibly thick Massachusetts accent. But he gets a pass for the latter because he was a star at Arkansas in the late ‘90s. He’s an honorary Southerner.

Dykes brings a coach’s perspective to the show — a really dour coach’s perspective. While Bradley is excitable and isn’t afraid to raise his voice an octave or two, Dykes maintains his monotone delivery almost no matter what. Is he angry? Is he still miffed about giving up his job as Arkansas’ women’s basketball coach?

Probably not. He’s just a little more serious, which makes it all the more amazing when he cracks a joke, like one night recently after the SEC Tournament when the network was showing college baseball highlights.

“I could hit him,” Antoine Walker said about a pitcher who was striking out batter after batter. Dykes responded, “Yeah, but could you hit the ball he’s throwing?”

No. 4: Andy Kennedy. Who knows if he’ll be back on the network now that the SEC Tournament is over. But while he was there, the recently deposed Ole Miss coach was enthusiastic, quirky and smart. Added bonus: He had the perspective of having coached against most of the teams just weeks before.

No. 5. Antoine Walker. I shared my thoughts on Walker in my last blog post. And while he loses points for picking Kentucky for, well, everything, I give him credit for improving in the two years he’s been on the network.

In the beginning, he seemed inexperienced, unpredictable and unprepared. This season, he knows the players across the league as well as the many season storylines. And on the night Andy Kennedy resigned, he described in very personal, credible terms how players feel when they’ve been abandoned by their coach.

It was a particularly bold analysis that countered the prevailing narrative that Kennedy was sacrificing himself for the good of the team.

While the games are moving to CBS, TNT, TBS, etc., it’s good to know these guys will still be talking SEC hoops on “SEC Now.”

SEC Network’s Antoine Walker needs to learn there’s no team in ‘we’

Five minutes into the SEC Network’s signature show, airing live Friday from the SEC men’s basketball tournament in St. Louis, the host and two analysts had to remind fellow analyst Antoine Walker of something.

“We’re professionals!”

The SEC Network’s Antoine Walker via Wikimedia Commons.

The joking rebuke was in response to Walker having just referred to the Kentucky Wildcats as “we” and “our.”

It was sort of like what happens in my journalism classes when a student keeps saying the same dumb thing and the rest of the class finally has enough and decides to shut him down.

Why does it matter if Walker can’t be objective, you might ask. For just the reason the other analysts, Daymeon Fishback and Pat Bradley, were giving. Walker is supposed to evaluate SEC basketball. He isn’t employed by ESPN’s regional network to be a cheerleader for his big blue alma mater.

It’s a journalism thing. He’s a professional. Or supposed to be.

But it’s become something of a running joke when Walker’s on air that if he’s asked an open-ended question like who will win the tournament, he always answers “Kentucky.”

Granted, there’s a fine line that might be hard for a homer like Walker to avoid tripping over. The SEC Network analysts are touted for their college experience: Fishback at Auburn, Bradley at Arkansas, for example. 

Walker needs to listen to his fellow talking heads and notice what they do — and don’t. Fishback talks knowledgeably about Auburn — both the current SEC co-champion team and the school’s basketball history. He should — he is a part of it. Still, he never becomes an Auburn cheerleader on air. Not coincidentally, he’s the network’s best at talking basketball.

Does Walker need more role models? During football season, Greg McElroy bends over backward to treat every team the same way he does Alabama where he quarterbacked the 2010 National Championship.

Over at big brother ESPN, Jay Bilas calls ACC game after ACC game (after ACC game). He seems to try even harder to be even-handed when his former school, Duke, plays arch rival North Carolina.

If somebody from another planet was given a recording of a Bilas-called UNC vs. Duke game, I contend the alien would never know Bilas played for Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

So Antoine, take note. You’re a professional.

Rick Hall and my claim to FAME (Recording Studios that is)

When I was a reporter at the TimesDaily, I got a call out of the blue that Rick Hall wanted to meet with me. After quite a bit of back and forth, we agreed to a day and time. I arrived and was led to a room inside FAME where I waited. And waited and waited. I still had no idea what he wanted to talk about.

He finally appeared wearing a loud sport coat and his trademark handlebar mustache and eager to talk about Shenandoah, a new country band he was producing. I never cared much for the music, but you can’t argue with its success.

Not many people remember Shenandoah now, but the R&B Hall produced in Muscle Shoals lives on as some of the best American music ever made. So glad Rick Hall finally got his due before his death this week.

Here’s the excellent New York Times obit by Jon Pareles. It helped a lot with this recollection of my Rick Hall interview because I was having trouble remembering exactly what it was we talked about. Then I saw the reference to Shenandoah and it came back. So thanks to Jon Pareles for being so thorough.

In the video, check out the cameo by Rick Hall at the :48 mark. (There’s another one later too.)

‘Forgotten’ Horseshoe Bend is a lesson for New Orleans’ Civil War monuments

The park welcomed me with a grand sign typical of the National Park Service’s careful attention to detail and rustic aesthetics. The next sign I read changed my perspective on the battle.

Third-grade Alabama history is the gift that keeps on giving, even 45 years on. (Thanks Mrs. Virginia Harless Cook!)

This time it was the inspiration for this opinion piece in The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina in which I apply the lessons I learned about the horror of an Andrew Jackson-led Indian massacre to what’s going on new in New Orleans and other places debating Civil War memorials.

Let me know what you think.

To learn from the past, keep its monuments

 

 

No wave? No way. Pretty sure Michael Stipe called B-52’s new wave

“Moogfest: Michael Stipe moves on from pop music“

So trumpeted (or should that be synthesized) the Durham Herald-Sun in a headline for a story about Mr. Stipe at Moogfest.

Moogfest is a weekend art, music and technology festival happening this very weekend in Durham.

I’m not sure anybody really classifies the R.E.M frontman’s music as pop, but the headline writer and the story’s reporter might be forgiven for that since Stipe calls himself a pop star later in the story — although probably facetiously.

(Side note: The word “pop” shows up eight times in the story. “Rock” once. “Alternative” none. But who’s counting?)

The writer does take a step over the line of credibility when she calls R.E.M. itself a “pop band.” Do popular hits make a band with 15 mostly rocking studio albums pop? Not in my book. But if you’ve only heard “Everybody Hurts” and “Shiny Happy People,” then you might not know any better.

So, while the story unsteadily tiptoes on the edge of understanding its subject, it still manages to do a decent job of explaining what Stipe has created for Moogfest: a video portrait of an influential friend accompanied by an original Stipe composition.

But the story comes crashing down that ridge it was warily treading when it reports, “Stipe also talked about others he knew in Athens — the B-52s, who left for New York at a time ‘punk rock wound down to no wave.'”

I know it happens, but papers are usually careful not to send someone who doesn’t know much about the legal system to cover a court case or someone who only eats chicken fingers to review a five-star restaurant. Alas, here’s a story that makes reference to the glory days of the no wave movement. Since there was no wave, no wonder I don’t remember it well.

Also, it’s B-52’s (not B-52s). Clearly, I wish I’d covered it myself.

But since that isn’t going to happen, the better solution is just to enjoy the artwork itself, thanks to WRAL.

Jeremy Dance by Michael Stipe

 

 

 

You might think of this as my letter never sent to Michael Stipe, R.E.M.

“I am tired of second guessing.” — R.E.M.

In the news business, you sometimes get the opportunity to interview famous folks. By my third or fourth time doing it, my insides would start to pitch and tumble like wet clothes in a dryer as interview time approached.

I had learned by then celebrities sometimes react to interviews like they’re uncooperative witnesses being asked by a judge, “Where were you when the prostitute’s body was found?”

Over the years, I developed some strategies for getting them to engage. Sometimes I upped the dosage of Southern in my accent or dropped in some “y’alls” or “yes sirs”/”yes ma’ams” — or if things were going really poorly, all of those things.

I’m not sure why they work, but they do sometimes.

Also, a little flattery can do it. And some big names will perk up if you show you actually know something about their music or their TV show or some member of their band.

Another approach that takes some creative thought and strategic planning is to say something attention-grabbing they haven’t heard before — a funny line, a unique observation or an oddball personal anecdote.

Not just any oddball anecdote, though; it has to involve them somehow. It once worked with Ira Glass at a public radio fundraising reception. I put my arm around Jennifer and told him his first movie was our second date.

He raised his eyebrows, looked me straight in the eyes and didn’t say a word for a couple of seconds. “Really?” he finally said, his voice shooting up. “That movie usually has the opposite affect on couples.”

I’m pretty sure it was his most memorable conversation of the night.

Our waiter said Michael Stipe came to the restaurant somewhat regularly, but I didn’t think to ask the waiter if Mr. Stipe minded interruptions.

I’m not quite so sure any of those things work if you sidle up to a table and make uninvited conversation, which is one of the reasons I didn’t try that on Michael Stipe the night we found ourselves sitting a few tables away from him in Manhattan.

But if I had, I would have told him this in my best Southern accent: R.E.M. came to Tuscaloosa in 1984. I was a big fan. But one afternoon, propped up on my dorm room loft bed, I had given it some thought and told my roommate, Chip, I thought $10 was too much to pay for a concert ticket. I guess he agreed because we didn’t go.

I might have added that I regret it to this day. I’d like to go back to 1984 and slap some sense into my 21-year-old self. Since I can’t do that, I make it a point to go to the concerts of everybody I like so Tuscaloosa, 1984, never happens again.

P.S. I sat on the edge of my seat the entire night, so close to jumping off and walking over. Do you think my story of Tuscaloosa 1984 would have engaged him? Tell me what you think.

Concerts I did see in Tuscaloosa between 1983 and 1986*

1. Oingo Boingo
2. X
3. The Go-Go’s
4. Jason and the Scorchers
5. Cheap Trick

 

*All were free. I guess I was just a cheapskate.

 

Talk about the passion: Mine for R.E.M. started in Tuscaloosa

Timing is everything. R.E.M.’s first album and I hit Tuscaloosa in 1983.

When I got there, I knew nothing about college or alternative rock. But I was ready for something beyond the Top 40 and found it on the University of Alabama campus radio station, WVUA.

VUA played “Radio Free Europe” from “Murmur” in as steady a rotation as a campus station is likely to do. I took notice. I remember the song seemed to just jump out of my car speakers one day as I crept over the train tracks on Hackberry Lane, past the Flowers bakery, making my way to campus. I thought, “Man, I really love this song.”

“Murmur” is usually called R.E.M.’s first album, and being new to college radio station I was unaware of the earlier “Chronic Town” EP, which I didn’t hear until a lot later — and by a lot I mean just the other day.

So I wasn’t on the R.E.M. ground floor, but thanks to WVUA I was a pretty early adopter. I bought “Murmur” around that time, probably at the grungy Vinyl Solution record store on the Strip. I was hooked and had no idea my love for R.E.M. was going to last well past college.

See the first post in this series here.

Next: 40 years later, still second guessing

 

That’s him in the corner: Michael Stipe sighting launches R.E.M. pilgrimage

Journeys sure do start unexpectedly sometimes.

If you follow them, they can take you to sacred moments from the past and then on to new places and discoveries of things you might have missed the first time. It’s risky, though. Trips to the past can bring joy but can stir up old heartbreak too.

This one started in an oyster bar in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. These are not places I frequent often — Manhattan or oyster bars in general. But Jennifer and I were near the end of a visit to the city earlier this year and enjoying our drinks amid the echoing clatter of food being served and the crunch of ice serving as temporary bedding for oysters.

We were deciding whether to add oysters to our order when the host seated a man several tables behind Jennifer who wasn’t quite as pedestrian-looking as the rest of us in the restaurant. He sported a bushy, gray beard, black horned-rim glasses and what in Alabama we always called a toboggan — you might call it a knit cap — covering his bald head.

I barely noticed those signifiers and focused mostly on the man’s nose (or septum) ring. It very gradually started to dawn on me I might be having a New York celebrity sighting. I asked Jennifer to Google to see if Michael Stipe wore a nose ring. A quick image search showed that he did, indeed, sport one — and horned-rim glasses and a long beard.

For me this wasn’t just any celebrity sighting. I described it to the kids this way: Think of your all-time favorite band, and then imagine the lead singer walking in and sitting a few tables over. I hadn’t really listened to R.E.M. much in a while, but the answer to “who’s your favorite band of all time,” would certainly, if I thought hard about it, always be R.E.M.

I didn’t bother Mr. Stipe, who was sitting alone at a small table near a window before being joined by someone a short time later. But boy did the R.E.M.-related moments and connections and missed opportunities and meaningful songs start stirring.

The posts that follow are what I imagine I’d have told him if he’d invited us over to his table for a chat.

Next up: Murmurs of new music in Tuscaloosa

Jennifer and Michael Stipe.

That’s him in the corner: Michael Stipe.

 

 

 

A follow-up on site traffic

Nice example of having success generating more traffic to a blog. Textbook.

Talent in the Triangle

In my last post on my blog’s site traffic, I talked about just how little attention this blog was getting. In the month since, the traffic to my blog has gone up exponentially! I’m not even kidding, you guys. It’s a little ridiculous. I’m getting more than 10 hits a day, which doesn’t sound like much but is huge compared to the 10 hits total I had before.

So, clearly, I made a few changes in my posting style to make all this happen. First of all, I started posting more than I had been which should be an obvious tactic. Secondly, I started tagging my posts with key words that were relevant, like “North Carolina” “entertainment” and other terms someone would use in a Google search. Another thing I did was use more hyperlinks about the blog content to link to other pages, which I noticed specifically got those…

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