Insider Report

[Will Vandervort]

It is time for this week’s edition of The Insider Report.

We hope everyone had a great weekend and a great Mother's Day.

ACC Network is all the talk at spring meetings

The Clemson Insider is in Amelia Island, Florida this week covering the ACC Spring Meetings from the Ritz-Carlton.

Of course, the big talk this week centers around the launch of the ACC Network which is set to begin in August. ESPN has a big presence here this week as they have flown in all of the big wigs at the network as well as some of the television personalities you will see on the ACC Network this coming fall.

We spoke with former Clemson offensive lineman Eric Mac Lain on Monday. He is excited to start his new job as in-studio analyst for the network. The network will fly Mac Lain up to Bristol from Charlotte every Thursday for his studio work and then back home on Sundays.

Clemson women’s basketball coach Amanda Butler says the women’s head coaches are excited about the new network because it gives them even more exposure than they ever had. She says its going to help with recruiting and will give her sport and conference even more exposure.

As for Clemson’s participation in the network, the athletic department has put in a lot of money and time to make sure Clemson is a full partner and can do all the broadcast needs that are associated with the ACC Network.
A number of sports and their broadcasts will come right out of the Jervey Athletic Center.

“We are in a great position from an equipment perspective and from a technical perspective,” Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich said. “We are ready to go and just feed that into the ACC Network.”

ACC is still trying to sell the network

ESPN’s ACC Network has already landed with DirecTV, Hulu and PlayStation Vue as cable and media stream servers to watch its network, but the network still has not landed with some of the big cable providers such as Charter, Comcast and Spectrum.

The league is hoping to be on those cable providers’ programming by August, but right now they are not. The ACC Network is scheduled to launch on Aug. 19. The Georgia Tech at Clemson game will be the first live event on the network on Aug. 29 to kick off the season.

For the record Comcast is the cable provider for the city of Clemson.

What city could ruin Greenville’s and Myrtle Beach’s chance to host ACC Baseball Tourney?

As you read earlier on our site, the ACC Tournament will be moving from Durham Bulls Athletic Park. Greenville and Myrtle Beach are being considered as possible host cities. The conference’s athletic directors are talking about the bids from possible host sites this week in Amelia Island.

Radakovich says he will be advocating hard for the ACC to bring the tournament back to the Palmetto State. Right now, however, it seems like Greensboro is the biggest competition for Greenville and Myrtle Beach.
The Palmetto State has not hosted the ACC Tournament since 1995 when it was in Greenville. Myrtle Beach was set to host it in 2009, but the boycott surrounding the Confederate Flag flying over the Statehouse in Columbia got the tournament taken away from South Carolina.
Maybe this will be the time when South Carolina gets it back.

DRad has “great faith in Brad” Brownell

Radakovich told TCI today he still has great faith in Brad Brownell, despite the program’s inability to get back to the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year. Clemson finished the season 20-14 and lost in the second-round of the NIT to Wichita State.

“It was a tough year in men’s basketball just because of how close we were in some of those games, but I have great faith in Brad,” he said. “They are going to go to Italy, represent the United States at the World University games. So, that is really a positive.”

Brownell is looking for a new assistant coach after having to let Steve Smith go last week following his comments involving the recruitment of Zion Williamson and things he said in regards to Clemson football.

Clemson basketball is also looking for a new coach to be in charge of recruiting. Lucas McKay left the program last month to be an assistant coach at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. He had been with Brownell dating back to Brownell’s UNC Wilmington days, including all nine years at Clemson.

Clemson getting a lot of interest for new men’s tennis coach

Radakovich said he is blown away by the number of applications they have received from coaches who want to be Clemson’s new men’s tennis coach.

The Tigers are looking for a new coach after not renewing John Boetsch’s contract last Wednesday.

“It has just blown me away by the number of people that have been interested in the program,” Radakovich said. “We are going to take that to the next steps here in the coming weeks.”

Clemson of course is even a more attractive job after the opening of the new Duckworth tennis facility in Clemson. The new facility is one of the best, if not the best, tennis facility in the country with seven brand-new inside courts and 12 more on the outside. It also has brand new coaches’ offices and more.

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