Holding Court With David Glenn

The Atlantic Coast Conference has produced an absolutely sensational and highly impactful freshman class, led by a high-profile pair of former prep All-Americans in Duke forward Cameron Boozer and UNC forward Caleb Wilson and also including a handful of other fantastic first-year standouts.

During his first three months in a North Carolina uniform, Veesaar has started all 15 of the Tar Heels’ games, helped his new team to a Top 25 national ranking, firmly established himself as a prominent All-Atlantic Coast Conference candidate.

Why are there so many bowl games? That simple question has been the basis for one of the most frequent complaints of college sports fans for decades.

Thanks to the NCAA’s creation of the transfer portal in 2018, then the organization’s revolutionary 2021 rule change that allowed first-time transfers to be immediately eligible at their new school, the manner in which college football teams are built and sustained has changed dramatically.

In the first 100-plus years of the National Football League, there had never been a top-tier quarterback from the University of North Carolina. Never. Until now.

In the 1990s, when Mack Brown was building a couple of the best college football teams in the history of North Carolina (meaning the entire state), he did an amazing job of signing a large percentage of the top in-state high school prospects while also strengthening his foundation with lots of out-of-state talent.

There have always been four main sources of talent for college basketball programs: high school prospects, junior college products, major college transfers and international players.