Expanding the conference into New England and South Florida for the sake of big-money football may turn out to be a sound investment by some measures, worth the cost to the ACC's hoop heritage. The ACC is an asset for its home city of Greensboro, and I'm rooting for it to succeed. Certainly it is exciting to have the glamorous Miami football program join the party (especially when you beat them the way UNC managed to do this year), and if the old ACC teams start frequenting major bowl games then a lot of people around here are going to be happy.

But college basketball as North Carolinians have known it and loved it is slipping away.

The game we grew up on has been under stress for a while. The most talented players hie to the pros, lowering the quality of play and tearing at the bonds of loyalty that fans feel for their teams. Meanwhile the winter months that once belonged to ACC basketball are crowded with more sports on more cable channels than ever before. There are too many games and too much Dick Vitale. And the ACC tournament is wandering ever further and more often from its ancestral home at the Greensboro Coliseum -- it will be held in North Carolina in only three of the next six years, and just twice in Greensboro.

Diluting the essential formula of conference play is a risky move. The ACC needs to be careful with its core asset, and its core audience, even as it tries to reach new markets. The league should at least figure out a way for its four North Carolina schools to play each other, home and home, every year. Those are the ancient rivalries that are fun even when all the teams aren't as good as they look to be this year.

Creating a better conference shouldn't mean uncreating what was great about the old one.