ACC Should Pick Charlotte

Bids were due for the ACC football championship by 5 p.m. Friday, and the ACC expected Charlotte, Tampa and Jacksonville to take their shot.

Let’s face it – it’s time to go to Charlotte.

The ACC is dying for attention in Florida, but that state has greeted ACC championship efforts with some impressive yawns.

The league held its first football championship there in 2006 and got lucky when Florida State played Virginia Tech. The game drew 72,749 fans.

But last year was different. Wake Forest, with its small but enthusiastic fan base, played Georgia Tech on a wet, dreary day.

The league announced 62,850 attended. If that’s true, half of them must have melted when the rain started, because they sure weren’t in the stands.

Jacksonville simply isn’t a great site for the ACC. The city is a long drive for everyone but Florida State, and it’s a place more tied to the SEC and NFL than the ACC. If you want to play the SEC Basketball Tournament in Raleigh, go ahead – just don’t expect much buzz.

Tampa is even less deserving. The city just hosted the ACC Tournament and the city basically shrugged and went to the beach. You could buy seats for the games with a sand dollar.

Why put the football championship there?

It’s Charlotte’s turn, especially in light of what Charlotte has done with its bowl game.

Like many, I laughed when Charlotte started the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Going to Charlotte in December just seemed comical.

Who would want to go to an event originally called the Continental Tire Bowl?

When the game started in 2002, I expected it to have the same shelf life as the Garden State Bowl, the Cherry Bowl, the Astro Bluebonnet Bowl and a host of other bowls that quickly disappeared.

Instead, Virginia beating West Virginia in 2002 drew a raucous crowd. And the crowds have kept on coming. N.C. State and North Carolina have both had great bowl trips to Charlotte.

Charlotte is an easy drive from most ACC sites and is packed with hotels and restaurants. Not only that, it has a downtown with real energy at night. So Charlotte now is what it wasn’t so much in the past, and that’s fun.

Florida has the beaches and a population base the ACC covets. But fans there just don’t care about the conference the way fans do here.

The game is in Jacksonville again this season. In December, the ACC will decide the site of the next three championship games.

One city might get them all.

Or each city might get one.

Florida has had its chance.