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So the ACC-area media have made their picks on who will finish where in what promises to be an especially competitive hoops season. So what do you think, from 1 to 11?
Two rules:
1) Ties, while tempting to predict, are not allowed.
2) One person, one vote, please. Elections in this country are already so messed up that foreign observers are coming here to ensure the legitimacy of Tuesday's results.

By the way, if, come early March, the 10th-place team loses and falls into sole possession of the cellar, all sportscasters should be required to quote the greatest movie of all time, "Spinal Tap," and say of the new bottom-feeders, "These go to 11."

So, how about ACC bowl predictions? After a bizarre Saturday on which North Carolina stunned Miami and Maryland beat Florida State for the first time in about 15 tries, the league is out of the national championship running and has one fewer BCS contender. But, the good news is 10 of 11 schools remain in contention for a bowl game with 4 wins or more.

Who goes where? Back-from-the-dead Tar Heels to Boise, maybe? Stumbling State recovers and lands in Charlotte? The Hokies climb all the way into the Gator? Virginia to the Tangerine, er, Champs Sports Bowl? Where do you think your school's going during bowl season, and how confident are you in that prediction? Let us know.

Perplexed by his team's persistent turnover and penalty problems, on Monday, N.C. State head coach Chuck Amato reached out to members of the media.

"Help me," he implored.

Obviously, I'm touched by the gesture and more than willing to lend a helping hand - provided a statue is raised in my honor at the Murphy Center if my idea actually works.

Here's my plan. It's time for a wardrobe change. Chuck's been stalking the sidelines this year with this bright - sorry, BRIGHT - red shoes. A flashy look, to be sure. But how about kicking it old school, back to Chuck's playing days, when he led the famous "White Shoes" defense? Why not give Chuck a pair of sparkly white Adidas high tops to wear? They'll still be very noticeable against those black pants and they'll represent a return to a simpler, more fundamentally sound time, when men were men and turnovers and penalties were scarce. It would be a huge psychological boost for the team.

Sound absurd? Perhaps. But the more logical ideas, like making players run sprints in practice for their gameday mistakes, clearly haven't worked.

Of course, I'm sure you've got a better idea for curing what ails State. So send it in. And remember, the Wolfpack is depending on you.

NC State coach Chuck Amato has received some pretty good wardrobe tips from our readers -- I particularly like "the Bro" suggestion, for upper-body support -- on how to turn things around for the Wolfpack.

One person Amato should have turned to for help before going to the media for advice: Dawn Bunting's mystical friend who spread sage all over Kenan Stadium several weeks ago while doing incantations to chase away the losing spirits from John Bunting's UNC football team. That seems to have worked: the Heels went on to beat Georgia Tech, Chuck's Wolfpack and No.4 Miami and have a good shot at a bowl berth now.

Unless she has a no-rivals clause in her contract with Carolina, Chuck should call her up and tell her to bring the incense on over to Carter-Finley. And, while you're at it, Chuck, pass along her number to John Fox in Charlotte and George Small in Greensboro.

Get used to hearing that phrase again and again (and again) this NBA season. The Charlotte Bobcats have - correctly - loaded up with raw talent and preserved plenty of salary cap space in the hopes of becoming a competitive NBA franchise in the near future. That just means the present - Emeka Okafor aside - could look pretty bleak.

But do you care? I remember when Kelly Tripuka, Kurt Rambis, Earl Cureton and Tim "Dr. K" Kempton roared into Charlotte during the early days of the Hornets. They were horrible, but fans from all over the Carolinas loved them dearly and followed them closely.

Now, owner Bob Johnson appears to be doing all he can to repair the wounds left behind by the Hornets and their co-owners George Shinn and Ray Woolridge (have fun, New Orleans). But is it enough? The hardcore NBA fans will be back. But what about you?

Are you willing to give the Bobcats a shot? Or have you had your fill of the NBA in North Carolina?

Are we missing something here? Is anybody in this league really good? Good enough to win whatever BCS game it enters?
Virginia looked good until going to FSU and getting predictably destroyed.
The Seminoles have been lame since then -- particularly in an absolutely unthinkable loss to Maryland. That's the Terrapins' only win in their past five games; in the four losses, they have scored 17 points. Total.
Miami was credible until it lost at North Carolina and blew a 17-3 lead on Clemson at home. Let's give proper credit to the Tiger defense, which was everywhere in the second half. But Clemson's now 5-4 and still too fond of the turnover to be trusted.
Are we missing somebody? Oh yeah. Virginia Tech. The Hokies were supposed to be down this year; they've managed to sneak up on their new league. While they're not a powerhouse, Frank Beamer has got to be coach of the year unless the Hokies collapse down the stretch.
N.C. State fans are getting angry at their penalty-happy Wolfpack. I've been covering college football for 16 years, and I have never heard so much booing -- so consistent from start to finish -- in my time as I heard Saturday. Asked to describe his feelings on the Pack in a message board, one guy put it perfectly: "defrauded."
If State loses at home to FSU on Thursday, the Chuck Amato, who allegedly saved the program from ineptitude, will have a .500 career record in ACC play. That's fine if you inherit nothing and start with a couple of 2-6 seasons and then build your way back. But that's not what happened.

There's a decent possibility that none of the Old North State's five Division I-A teams will make postseason football play. That hasn't happened since 1987, when there weren't nearly as many games as there are today. And even then, Wake Forest went 7-4.
If Wake (4-4) beats visiting UNC (4-5) at noon Saturday, the Tar Heels will be eliminated while the Demon Deacons will retain their chance at qualification. They'd need one more win -- and the best bet for that would come at slumping Maryland on Nov. 27 -- to make it.
The Heels must beat Wake and Duke.
N.C. State (4-5) must beat Florida State in Carter-Finley Stadium on Thursday and East Carolina in Charlotte 16 days later to have a shot.
The larger question is whether there will be a place for any of the alleged Big Four. Their best hope may be shortfalls from the Pac 10 and SEC and nothing wacky out of the Mountain West.
Specifically, here are the results ACC teams' fans should be hoping for this weekend (* denotes home team):
BYU* over New Mexico
Wisconsin over *Michigan State
Stanford* over Oregon State
Arizona State* over Washington State
Michigan* over Northwestern
South Carolina over Florida*

Not to keep beating on ACC football, but just how big of a deal is it around here?

We keep an eye on TV ratings, flawed as they may be, as one tiny piece of evidence of fans' interest in a team or sport. We don't make news judgments based on that (maybe we should?), but we know what folks are watching.

Read on ...

OK, I don't want this to turn into a rant about NASCAR's willingness to sell its soul to turn a buck. Advertising dollars are the lifeblood of many industries, including my own. But I do wonder what race fans think of the way NASCAR sells products, everything from Viagra to Crown Royal whiskey.

Sure, stock cars have long been speeding billboards circling in front of potential customers for a few hours every Saturday and Sunday. But can you fine a driver and dock him standings points for uttering a profanity on TV when in the background you seem to be promoting drinking and driving? In other words, is the hood of a race car a bad venue for beer and liquor ads?

N.C. State still has one game left on its schedule, but for all practical purposes the Wolfpack's season ended on Thursday night with its loss to Florida State. No winning record. No bowl game.

I'll be waiting until after the ECU game to write my post-mortem, but you can feel free to jump in right now with your explanations for how a once-promising State season went south so rapidly.

Where do you place the blame? Inexperienced Quarterbacks? The State hype machine? Amato and his staff? The injury gods? Those pesky turnovers and penalties? John Swofford for bringing Miami into the league? Jim Knight? Recruiting gurus who tabbed Marcus Stone as a Prep All American?

Or are you a kind-hearted soul, who believes that everyone did their best and sometimes that's just the way the oblong ball bounces?

Let me know what you think. And, if possible, give State some solutions for 2005.

Pregame music at college basketball games can run the gamut from alt-country to hip-hop. But there's a problem: Very few programs have adopted theme songs as their signature musical accompaniment when they run out onto the floor for pregame warmups. There ought to be law: Everybody gets a song. The musical genre doesn't really matter; it just ought to be something with discernible lyrics that can be linked to the school, mascot or something. "Devil With The Blue Dress On," has been associated with Duke, and that's a start.

One thing that Skip Prosser acknowledged his Wake Forest basketball team had to do better this season was defend. Obviously, scoring wasn't a problem last year. And judging by last night's season-opening 97-76 result against GW, it's still not a problem. But the jury's still out on the 2nd-ranked Deacons' defense, which did manage to blow open 5-point game by surprising the Colonials with some triangle-and-two late.

What's the Wake fan's take on things? A solid win over a decent A-10 school? We have Chris Paul and you don't? Or nagging concerns that the Deacs' D will be their undoing in March?

So I was contemplating this strange ACC football season - one in which it's still hard to tell who's headed to the Orange Bowl and who's headed to Boise - when it occurred to me that I have no idea who should be conference coach of the year.

Let's start with who's out of the running. Take Friedgen, Amato, Grobe and Roof out. Can't have a losing record and be coach of the year. Take out Larry Coker as well. Yes, Miami could very well win the conference, but did anyone think they'd lose more than one conference game? Bobby Bowden? This guy still thinks Chris Rix can help. So he's out. Tommy Bowden? He had a shot, until he lost at Duke. Al Groh? For a team that was supposed to be the best threat to the conference's Florida supremacy, Virginia has looked very ordinary against those very same Florida teams.

That leaves us with these three - Chan Gailey, Frank Beamer and John Bunting. Gailey's lead his Yellow Jackets to a suprising 6-3 mark, but with games left against UVA and Georgia, Tech is likely to finish 6-5. If that happens, he's out.

Beamer's taken a team with a lot of flaws and put it in first place in the ACC. If the Hokies stay there, he's the guy. If the Hokies win one of their last two - against UVA and Miami - he might still be the guy.

But if Va Tech loses both? Well that just might open the door for the man who was supposed to be fired already - John Bunting. If the Tar Heels win at Duke - and certainly they should - then UNC finishes 6-5 and a stunning 5-3 in the conference. A bowl game for a team predicted to finish 10th in the ACC? Sounds like coach of the year material to me.

What do you think? If someone gave you a ballot, who would you select as ACC coach of the year?

Good reading in two issues arriving Thursday: Ed Hardin's column in the News & Record and Sports Illustrated on UNC basketball star Rashad McCants.

It's been interesting to see the schools of thought. Ex-coaches-turned-ESPN-analysts Digger Phelps and Mike Jarvis both say the Tar Heels have too many chemistry problems to even reach the Final Four. Yet SI picks them No. 1 and puts McCants on the cover. And Ed says he's "the one player who can turn this into the breakout season they’ve been waiting for since the old man retired."

The biggest revelation for those in this business in North Carolina wasn't what Julius Hodge called him at the scorer's table. It's that SI got three hours with him in his apartment. Must be nice!

So are they the nation's best team, or still a flawed one?

One of the issues facing college basketball, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said recently, is its timetable. Virtually everybody must start practice at the same time, but not everybody starts its season at the same time. N.C. A&T, for example, began this past Friday, Nov. 12. Here's the rest of the local schedules: Wake Forest, Nov. 15; N.C. State, Nov. 17; Georgia Tech, North Carolina, UNCG, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Maryland this Friday, Nov. 19; Miami, Saturday, Nov. 20. Given the NCAA's general desire to enforce equality of opportunity, as seen throughout the massive rulebook, this difference in competitive starting date is rather odd. Seems to me there needs to be uniformity in uniform.

Let's say right off the bat: We know that you don't care how difficult our jobs are. "Just give me the news and quit whining about how hard life is for you," you're thinking. You're right.

However, you, the reader, may like to read about certain athletes or teams or universities and may like to see certain questions answered. Sometimes it's about strategy, sometimes it's about personnel (and we understand rights to privacy), and sometimes it's about dollars and public institutions. It's not "the media" they should be answering to, it's you.

So here's a little of what's gone on in the last few days:

OK. Let's hear it. Were you surprised by the extent of the punishment rendered to the playing antagonists in Friday's Pacers-Pistons brawl? I was pleasantly surprised, frankly. I figured all three miscreants would be allowed back just in time for the teams' Christmas Day game. Now it will be interesting to see how well the union fights off the year-long suspension of Ron Artest. The union, if you recall, managed to turn Latrell Sprewell into a sympathetic figure and P.J. Carlesimo into the bad guy several years back.

Who else out there was surprised by how decisively Clemson and South Carolina moved to impose stiff sanctions on their own programs after Saturday's sideline-clearing brawl? No bowl games. Wow.

My guess is so many players were involved and deserving of at least one-game suspensions that they figured they'd barely have enough players for a bowl game, so what the heck?

Lou Holtz was ready to retire, anyway, so that makes South Carolina's call a little easier maybe. But by agreeing to the same penalty, Clemson removed the suspense from a pretty good debate: Who was more deserving of a Continental Tire Bowl invitation? North Carolina or Clemson? And who was more likely to get it?

The loser in that debate was going to get sent to Boise. Clearly, it sometimes is better to stay home.

Are Tigers fans out there feeling ripped off? It could've been a great pre-New Year's party down in Charlotte. Or are you happy to see your school take the high road and show that it values integrity?

Following on staff writer Jeff Carlton's comments below, my two cents' worth is that Clemson did the right thing.

An appropriate response, especially after the disgusting reaction from head coach Tommy Bowden on Saturday: "I don't want to minimize the fight, but this is a very intense sport and a very intense rivalry."

Translated: "What's the big deal about this fight? It's South Carolina, and we won the game. That's all that matters." (If you don't believe that, check the Clemson web site photo gallery from the game, which shows a player kicking a ball and a scoreboard showing that Clemson kicked South Carolina's butts, but no photos of the Clemson player kicking the South Carolina player in the head, as seen on page A1 of the News & Record today).

Don't know about you, but I'm just about all brawled out. I know there's probably an Outside the Lines that needs to be done, a made for tv movie starring Jaleel White as Ron Artest and almost certainly an ESPN Magazine article title "The Ron Artest that nobody understands." But for now, I'd like to return to our humble abode of ACC basketball, the place where Larry Brown was once a brawler himself - albeit on the court.

Here's a question I was asked two days ago and it's piqued my interest. Who will be the surprise team in the ACC this season? That one team that exceeds everyone's expectations - maybe to make an upper division finish, maybe to make the NCAA tournament.

I was really all set to say Florida State on this one, but then they lost to Texas A&M - Corpus Christi. (I checked, it really is a school. They're the Islanders).

So I fell back on the trendy choice of UVA (If everyone's picking a team to be a surprise, can they really be a suprise?) They showed flashes of promise last year and just seemed to be a point guard away from being a legit NCAA team. Well, that point guard appears to have arrived in freshman Sean Singletary, who abused Arizona point guard Mustafa Shakur in the Cavs' big upset of the Wildcats.

What do you think? Is UVA the team that will defy expectations? Or will there be a negative surprise team - i.e. one that does much worse than what everyone anticipated?

Let's pause a moment in the midst of the upcoming hoops hysteria and pay homage to the UNCG men's soccer team. The Spartans will take on UC-Santa Barbara (the Gauchos, in case you were wondering) this Sunday at UNCG in the Round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.

You read that correctly. The Spartans are one of 16 teams left in the nation in the Division I soccer championships, and they're good enough to be hosting the game. Step back for a moment and think about what an accomplishment that is for a school that was Division III not too long ago and still has large commuter population among its student body.

UNCG's 19-2-1 season, which has included a lengthy stint at No. 1 in the country says a lot about its coach, Michael Parker, and his staff. It says a lot about the players, including Southern Conference player of the year Randi Patterson. And it says a lot about the soccer community in the Greensboro area, which has provided UNCG with several key local players and has fostered an environment in which this hometown David can take on the Goliaths of the soccer world and win more often than not.

The ESPN-driven concept event starts tonight, and it sneaks up on us every year. Its arrival catches us by surprise because it follows the Thanksgiving weekend so quickly. And because some teams' non-conference schedules condition their fans to pay hoops no heed until January rolls around.
But here's a look at the matchups:

It seems ridiculous to even suggest the possibility of the Carolina Panthers making the playoffs after their 1-7 start, and after they lost their best receiver, two best running backs and all-pro defensive tackle for the season.

But, here it is. At 4-7, the Panthers are just one game out of a wild-card spot. Minnesota or Green Bay -- whichever doesn't win that division -- will take one wild-card berth. Only the Giants and St. Louis, at 5-6, are ahead of Carolina for the other, though a handful of teams are tied with it at the moment. Only one of the Panthers' five remaining games is against a team with a winning record, and Atlanta, which the Panthers visit Dec. 18, isn't the most impressive 9-2 team in NFL history. The Rams come to the Panthers in two weeks, which by then could actually be a make-or-break game.

So, three questions: 1) Will the Panthers make the playoffs? 2) Do they have to run the table to make it, or is 8-8 good enough? 3) What does it say about the lack of quality teams in the NFC that I'm even posing these questions?