Shoot, when the tourney is in Tampa, you won't have as many fans from any of the schools because of the travel distance. And that is one reason why expansion that potentially includes BC, Syracuse & Miami would keep an increased number of fans home from games & tournaments. Now Virginia Tech is in the heart of the current ACC region...that addition would make sense.
Having the tourney in a centralized location maximizes the opportunity for fans of most schools being able to drive in for the Thursday/Friday games and if their team wins, maybe staying over for Saturday. Your big-money fans will travel anywhere...it's the fans with small children, the students, the just-out-of-school fans who probably don't have lots of money to spend on an expensive weekend (once you add in the tourney tix package, hotel for 2 or 3 nights, and airfare as opposed to just gas money)...those are the fans who are stuck at home the years that the tourney is in Tampa or DC.
I'm not saying the tourney should always be in NC...I think it should travel periodically to accommodate the fans at the far north & far south end of the conference. Someone made a good point: Clemson & UVA don't have a large arena in their cities, but when it is Clemson's turn to "host", it could rotate between Charlotte & Atlanta (both very close venues), and UVA could "host" in DC. In a 9 year period, that would put the tourney in DC twice, in Atlanta once or twice, in Tampa once, and in G'boro & Charlotte twice (splitting the 4 NC schools' hosting between the 2 in-state neutral sites, as opposed to having the tourney held on a homecourt at the Joel or the RBC Center).
This rotation doesn't put an unfair advantage anywhere, but simply puts the tournament near every single school's location, giving every single school an opportunity to "host", and evenly distributing the tournament based on the member schools.
If Maryland and FSU fans still feel slighted, work on finding other schools close by to join the ACC and then you too could have the tournament one more time near your home. Last time I checked Miami & Tallahassee aren't exactly neighbors and Boston & Syracuse are not College Park suburbs, so those additions won't help.
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