While it’s no secret that ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption show has been on a downward trend for years now, one comment made during a recent broadcast may be the worst take in the history of the show.
One of the show’s hosts, Tony Kornheiser, dropped an awful line about the state of ACC basketball when discussing Tony Bennett’s retirement, sending the college basketball world into a frenzy.
Kornheiser asked his co-host, “Do you know that the ACC, which is the best basketball conference in the country by a lot, now has no coaches that have won national championships because Krzyzewski, Williams, and Bennett are all gone?”
Kornheiser may be stuck in the past, daydreaming about the illustrious history of teams like Virginia, Duke, and North Carolina, but in the present, the ACC continues to get beat up by other conferences.
In the Preseason AP Top 25 release, the Big 12 Conference received tremendous praise for being the first conference in college basketball history to feature five teams in the Top 10 on the preseason media poll. While the Big 12 was breaking records, the ACC placed just two teams in the poll: Duke and North Carolina.
Out of the league’s 17 member institutions, just two made the Preseason Top 25 with four more receiving votes. The Big 12, the unquestioned best basketball conference in America, placed six teams in the poll, with four more receiving votes.
In addition to the conversation of ACC vs. Big 12, not only does the league have a more recent National Championship winner than the ACC, the Big 12 Conference has two national titles (Baylor 2021, Kansas 2022) since Bennett brought the ACC their most recent win in 2019.
Pound for pound, the ACC does not stack up against the Big 12, no matter how many ESPN media members attempt to rewrite history.
