A classic Ol' Roy rant to warm you up on this sub-50 degree day in North Carolina.
Skip to the 7:40 mark for the meat of the discussion.
What started out as a question about the ACC schedule(which was an interesting discussion in itself) quick pivoted to Roy Williams venting about ESPN's Green Room feature. In case you hadn't seen it, the "Green Room" refers to the room at the NBA Draft where players wait for their name to be called. Usually only lottery picks are invited though other players can choose to attend the draft if they like. In this case ESPN's recent feature has been focused on which players will essentially be lottery or first round picks devoting significant air time to talking about players headed to the NBA five months before the draft.
Williams notes that ESPN is the ACC's partner in broadcasting basketball yet this type of feature appears to kneecap the college season and detract from its importance. Williams notes he is "trying to win a championship' and ESPN is discussing which players are potentially going to be in the NBA Draft well before those decisions need to be made. Of course ESPN's in a position of serving two masters given the network also carries NBA games. The drive towards synergy between the two partnerships is likely driving this sort of thing.
As for the schedule talk, Syracuse's Jim Boeheim complained about it on Thursday saying the league schedule was a mess and needed to be fixed. One can only suspect years of it being this way, even in the Big East finally pushed Boeheim over the edge. That and he has never really been able to hide his disdain for being in the ACC.
Williams noted the coaches have no say in what happens with the schedule and TV rules the roost there. He opined for the days when teams played on the weekend and once during the week on a consistent basis. Now the schedule is all over the map. Teams can play several games in a short stretch then have long breaks. The inconsistent nature of the schedule seems to be a sticking point for Williams and apparently others.
