Dave Sez

ACC Arms race

It seems my article on the rising costs and pressures of recruiting was pretty timely. I even picked the right coach to quote. In an article today, Clemson's Tommy Bowden goes off on the growing "arms race" in ACC football recruiting. He doesn't propose slowing things down; he complains that Clemson's being left behind.

"Every time I turn around people are telling me I can't close, and that I can't get the great ones to come to Clemson, but let me tell you a story. We had a recruit that came for a visit and everything was fine. Well, N.C. State recruited a guy on his team and they took him up there one weekend without his mom knowing and he goes into that $50 million building and he commits to them. He calls me and tells me 'you didn't tell me anything about this building, did you see this?' What can I say, he's got me.

According the article, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Duke (who'da thunkit?) and Maryland have all either recently completed or are currently building new football buildings. The prices range from $23 million to $70 million.

In unrelated news, college tuitions continue to climb at double the rate of inflation.