What it’s like: Behind the scenes at the 2015 ACC Tournament

For starters, the 2015 ACC Tournament is cold. I worked in college in a convenience store stocking shelvers and coolers. This is walk-in cooler cold we’re talking here.

Last year, at the end of Day 3, the Duke-Clemson game at 9 p.m. Friday, the Greensboro Coliseum was so hot that I couldn’t keep hydrated enough, and that was just sitting on press row. (The players and coaches said afterward that the heat definitely impacted the game.)

We’ve gone a bit too much in the other direction, methinks.

I’m probably hallucinating, but I swear I just saw a pack of sled dogs run by.

What else is the 2015 ACC Tournament: John Feinstein, America’s quintessential sportswriter, is sitting about 10 feet from me. I’m trying not to look like I’m eavesdropping, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing all that interesting. Yet.

Did I mention how cold it is?

The media meals are fabulous. I’m a little under the weather (did I mention how cold it is?), so I’m not gorging quite as much as in past years, but chicken parm, barbecue, eclairs, not bad.

The hardest part to the food situation is passing by the baskets full of Reese’s Cups and Kit Kats and Klondike bars all free for the taking.

Did I mention how cold it is?

My seat on press row isn’t quite where it was the past two years, when I was behind the Raycom TV guys. I’m about three seats out of their TV shots.

I wanted to help boost their ratings vis-à-vis ESPN, but nope, not this year.

It’s goddamn cold.

Miami Herald sportswriter Michelle Kaufman killed time between games talking with a friend about her husband’s upcoming book tour. I used to co-host a radio show that had Michele as a regular guest talking University of Miami sports.

One day we asked her if her husband would ever be willing to come on the show. She handed the phone to Dave Barry, and he said, Sure.

It’s not cold in Miami.

So I’m cold, a little under the weather, cold, but I do get to sit on the second row from the floor for the 2015 ACC Tournament, and three of the four games played (as of this writing) came down to the final seconds.

I’m in basketball heaven.

It is cold in basketball heaven.

– Column by Chris Graham