As published in The County Times (http://countytimes.somd.com) in March 2014
By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
The Atlantic Coast Conference started with a seven-school
gang - Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, North Carolina State, South Carolina,
Wake Forest and Maryland – in 1953.
There have been a few membership tweaks in the 60-plus years since, but
with the exception of South Carolina (who departed in 1971), all original
members remain today. They feel as
familiar as old sneakers and, with rivalries six decades long, possess the
hostility of ultra-competitive brothers.
The old, tightly woven family is about to change. With Friday’s loss to Florida State in the
conference’s basketball tournament, Maryland’s run in the ACC is essentially
over. Starting with the 2014-15
athletic year, Maryland will take up residence in the Big 10 Conference.
This is not new news, of course, but the reality is now
undeniably real. The end of the
football season stung a little. But
with basketball being the ACC’s primary identity, the curtains falling on
Maryland’s ACC basketball association is a lot more uncomfortable. Maryland’s Big 10 move is a money-grab, an
irresistible chance to patch the athletic department’s financial hemorrhage and
reside in a more lucrative neighborhood.
Such is life in college sports today.
So it is what it is.
I don’t like it, but I understand it.
Will I come to hate Michigan or Ohio State – Big 10 crown jewels – like
I hate Duke and North Carolina? I doubt
it - but maybe that’s good for my overall health and mood. My wife is nodding her head.
Still, despite the known reality, this hurts. I suppose you harbor disdain for your
brother…until life parts your paths.
The freshly sounded final buzzer on Maryland’s ACC basketball membership
left me awash in nostalgia. Racing
through the significant memories (some good, some bad), I realized this spring
marks the 40th anniversary of Maryland’s 103-100 overtime loss to
N.C. State in the 1974 ACC title game, perhaps the conference’s greatest
game.
That ’73-’74 Maryland squad, with players like Len Elmore,
Tom McMillen and John Lucas, was Maryland’s most talented if not its all-time
best. The loss was particularly painful
because, in 1974, at-large NCAA tournament bids didn’t exist (unreal…and
unjust). N.C. State, by the narrowest
of margins, went on to the big dance and, eventually, the national
championship; the Terrapins swallowed hard and went to…College Park
(home).
The memory of that team reminded me of Comcast’s fabulous
“My Life” piece on John Lucas. Lucas,
an All-American and the first overall pick in the 1976 NBA Draft, is a
fascinating subject. Racked with drug
and alcohol addictions, his vagabond NBA career is a tale of unfulfilled
promise, the standard-bearer for a drug culture that infected sports in the
1980s.
In the “My Life” feature, Lucas identified several causal
factors for his disease. Having always
dreamed of being an NBA player, he struggled with the “now what?” after being
drafted by the Houston Rockets. Lucas
also feared failure, life without sports and getting older. Sounds familiar, huh? For Lucas, cocaine made all those worries
and all that internal conflict subside – temporarily.
Lucas summarized his one-time mental state with this
profound statement: “An addiction wasn’t my problem, life was my problem…I
couldn’t live life on life’s terms.”
Individuals exert tremendous influence on their personal odysseys, but a
vast component of contentment and happiness is dealing effectively with
inevitable unknowns or the random cards that life deals. To a person, we all struggle with this
challenge to some extent; John Lucas succumbed to it – but only temporarily.
This spring wasn’t just the 40th anniversary of
that epic Maryland-N.C. State game; March 14th marked the 28th
anniversary of John Lucas’ sobriety and a second, “clean” act that has included
tremendous work with athletes afflicted with addiction. When asked what saved him, Lucas noted the
love of others and that, “I’m very honest with myself; I’m always under
self-examination as to what my motives are.”
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