Chansky’s Notebook: Baseball Format Hurts ACC

Carolina is why the ACC baseball tournament format is wrong.

The ACC restricting its baseball tournament to ten teams does not help its member schools that find themselves on the NCAA bubble. If there were no ACC tournament, the Diamond Heels would be a shoe-in for an NCAA tourney bid with their high RPI and top three toughest schedules in the country. But now the selection committee will say, “Well, they didn’t even make their own conference tournament.”

They did not because the ACC remains the best college baseball league in the nation with tremendous balance from top to bottom. Granted, the Tar Heels have slid considerably from their early season run in which they climbed to No. 3 in the rankings. But their RPI of 15 remains strong and is their best case for making the NCAA field. No team with an RPI that high has ever been denied.

But, still, Carolina is not playing at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park this week. How hard would it be for the league to add one more day to the tournament and let the other five schools in? Revise the format, start on Monday and give the top four teams byes like they do in basketball. They can figure it out; it’s not rocket science.

Is it a matter of money? The ACC is one of the wealthiest leagues in America. Surely, all schools would agree to pay travel expenses to Durham even if it meant playing one and be done. That would be like basketball teams that go out early in the ACC tournament; it may affect their NCAA seed but it wouldn’t be a black mark like it is in baseball. If UNC makes it on Selection Monday, and other ACC teams that are playing in Durham do not, we’ll surely hear the old complaints about favoritism for the Tar Heels.

What criteria should the NCAA use — your overall record and body of work throughout the season or your final standings in the conference? I say both. The Tar Heels will get in on Monday, but not happily for those ACC teams that ended their seasons at the DBAP.