The More Things Change...

So I'm looking at the brackets for the ACC Tournament, and I see that the 8-9 game will feature Clemson versus Florida State. Ahh, memories of a simpler time, when the ACC only had 9 teams, we didn't have to take our shoes off before we boarded an airplane, and the ACC Tourney play-in game Thursday night between the 8-9 seeds involved these two teams every year. Every ACC Tourney in the late 90s and early oughts seemed to feature these two teams duking it out Thursday night for the right to be obliterated the following afternoon by Duke or UNC. When J-Red, Brien, and I were at the ACC Tourney in 2001, we dubbed the game that Thursday evening "The Cheerleader Invitational." These teams might've been the 8th and 9th strongest teams out of 9 teams in the conference during those years, but they definitely had the 1st and 2nd strongest cheerleaders of any team (Duke coming in DEAD FUCKING LAST in that department). There was always a close competition between the two schools to see who was the #1 seed in cheerleading each year. When we went, FSU was the #1 seed, making us huge Seminole fans for the evening, solely because we wanted to see them for another 2 hours the next afternoon.