Something is missing at tourney these days

GREENSBORO -- The ACC Tournament left Reynolds Coliseum in 1966. Maybe it's time to go back.

These other buildings and other cities aren't really working out. Or maybe contemporary ACC basketball isn't captivating hearts and minds like it once did.

During the first round at the Greensboro Coliseum Thursday, there were so many empty green seats upstairs that the lime glare had the same blinding effect as an Alaskan blizzard. It looked like St. Patrick's Day all over again, without Celtics or beer.

That sometimes happens in the opening weekday afternoon game with Clemson as the hottest commodity. This year, the box score reported attendance of 23,381, but the arena remained less than half full through the second game, Wake Forest's blowout loss to Miami.

Fans could buy tickets on the street for $5 or on eBay for $7. A veteran resale-market ticket specialist, once stereotyped as a scalper, said that he had bought 40 upstairs tickets for $40. Face value: $72 each. Without any customers, he took them home.

"This thing is over," he said.

He didn't mean that Duke will roll. He meant that the ACC Tournament is over as a pulsating, must-see event.

That remains to be seen. The economy will recover, however gradually. North Carolina will find a point guard and climb out of slug land, again creating demand for tickets that other schools can't sell.

The ACC may conclude that $396 is a stiff price in any economy. That's the cost of a tournament book, $72 for each two-game session and $36 for the final. Right now, the supply far exceeds the appetite.

Boston College and Miami don't come close to needing their 1/12th shares of seats. Some schools, unable to move their tickets internally, offered them to the general public. Maryland ran an ad on its athletics Web site mere days before beating Duke and seizing a share of first place.

During the second quarterfinal game yesterday, at a ticket booth where ACC schools distribute will-call orders to donors, several schools had sales agents at their windows. The Georgia Tech rep had tickets to sell for the Yellow Jackets' game three hours away. "We have plenty for all the sessions," she said.

Under the tame arena circumstances, that seemed perfectly plausible.

Carolina, the industry fan leader, pushed the crowd within a few thousand of capacity before exiting Thursday night, but the green seats returned for N.C. State's nightcap upset of Clemson and persisted during the afternoon games yesterday. NCAA contender Duke resisted Virginia. Virginia Tech, which has a mammoth, engaged constituency, tapped out against Miami in a thriller.

More people showed up last night, exuding more energy, but the sharp edge of dramatic urgency remained a memory. This isn't the first time.

Three years ago in Tampa, schools couldn't sell all their tickets to booster-club members and peddled them at the ticket window. Apologists blamed the travel distance and the luscious spring weather and Floridian indifference to college basketball. That didn't quite ring true, mainly because the University of Florida soon captured its second straight NCAA championship.

Normalcy returned in 2008, when the tournament filled Charlotte's downtown NBA arena, but everything hit the skids last March.

At the depths of the recession, the ACC ventured into the limitless seating capacity of the Georgia Dome and offered its first public sale since 1966. The public didn't bite.

The blame game might become an annual ritual in Greensboro, which has contracts for every tournament through 2015 except for the 2012 show in Atlanta's relatively new pro arena.

Reynolds Coliseum could solve the demand issue and the energy issue. No place rocks like Reynolds -- not even Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium.

N.C. State's male team forfeited the league's largest homecourt advantage by moving into its dream house, a hockey rink named for a Canadian bank out by the Wolfpack football stadium. Reynolds has been remodeled for the women and downsized to 8,560 seats. That's way too small, but historic restoration could expand the place again.

The ACC will not return to Everett Case's dream house, of course. In the modern sports business, business means more than sports. Luxury boxes, government services, corporate partners -- everyone knows the deal.

But the basketball would be hotter and louder. More fun, too.

lrawlings@wsjournal.com