My Take: Who else should’ve been invited to ACC meetings?

When you can solicit advice from the 118th-best expert in their respective field, one does not simply walk away from doing so.

Last month, the ACC held its spring meetings in Amelia Island, Fla. It serves as something of a launching point into the summer — cue the seasonal police to note that summer doesn’t start until June 21 — with all of the league’s football coaches, men’s and women’s basketball coaches, and athletics directors all gathered in the same swanky beachfront resort.

They even have this, if Orange Blossom Himalayan Salt Scrub is your thing.

As part of this year’s festivities and awkwardness of two schools in litigation against the league and perhaps more to come, the ACC invited ESPN’s Joe Lunardi to speak with the men’s basketball coaches.

That was … an interesting invitation. Lunardi has been one of the most outspoken critics of the ACC in recent seasons. The St. Joseph’s color analyst has suggested the ACC’s issue has been lack of talent, taken aim at the league’s credentials because Georgia Tech’s Moses Wright (2021) and Wake Forest’s Alondes Williams (2022) were named players of the year, and has ignored ACC teams outperforming their seeds for the past three seasons.

(It’s worth mentioning, as silly as it is to have a projected bracket in June, that Lunardi’s latest iteration has six ACC teams in the field — Duke (1-seed), UNC (3), Miami (8), Wake Forest (9), Clemson (10) and Pittsburgh (10, play-in game) — and Louisville as the first team left out.)

He is also, per bracketmatrix.com, the 118th-best bracketologist (out of 179 qualifiers). While Lunardi can be considered the godfather of bracketology, he’s been passed by those following in his footsteps.

Again: An interesting person to invite to league meetings.

Maybe the hatchet was buried. Maybe some secrets of the NET were revealed. Maybe cigars were smoked and they sang Kumbaya.

We’ll give a nod to Luke DeCock of the Raleigh News & Observer for inspiration here, as he made two dynamite guesses as to who else could have been invited.

Which sparked the thought: Who else, and on which subjects, could have been invited to speak with such expertise on their respective fields?

Here are some people who just missed the cut … or could be suggestions for next year’s meeting:

If this were a discussion on actually refereeing, this wouldn’t belong in a satirical column.

Where is the fun in that?

There is no one better to explain how to avoid the spotlight than the basketball referee who is synonymous in ACC country with hijacking it. Whether he’s inadvertently tripping a player, mocking them by giving the cold shoulder, barking back at a coach or courtside fans, you always know when Theodore [random E-name] Valentine is calling a game.

Isn’t that what you pay to see?

If you can find a break in his schedule between playing golf and going to as many games as possible — that’s not a criticism, it’s the dream — the former UNC coach can swing through Amelia Island and educate the basketball coaches on when to call timeouts.

Or, more appropriately, when to not call timeouts.

Who knows, Williams might even bequeath a few of those timeouts he took with him into retirement. That way, some of the ACC’s coaches who are incessantly second-guessed for not spending timeouts at certain times of games can have a spare or two in their holsters.

Clemson’s coach has two national championships and the only other coach in the ACC with one to his name won it two decades ago.

But Clemson’s coach is also operating at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to talent acquisition these days.

While the rest of the ACC catches up to the Tigers, Swinney doubles and triples down on his culture and high school recruiting. Sure, it’s noble. The contrast between this and Florida State, though, is the reason the Seminoles have ascended back to the top of the ACC.

The cantankerous curmudgeon could spare an afternoon to speak on the value of playing the ACC tournament in the birthplace of the league.

After all, what a special meaning it’s had for him. Boeheim’s Syracuse teams averaged 0.5 wins per trip to Greensboro in his tenure — remember, a postseason ban in 2015 prevented the Orange from participating — and his final game as Syracuse’s coach featured a blown 13-point lead and loss on a buzzer beater in the Greensboro Coliseum.

Followed by one of the most-awkward press conference exchanges (the last minute of that clip) in a setting that lends itself well to those.

When your quarterback gets clobbered at the goal line and everybody in the stadium can see that he’s uneasy on his feet, that just means he got the wind knocked out of him.

When there’s a brawl in the end zone after a rivalry game, just act like it didn't happen.

Oh, you’re questioning this choice? How could you be so obtuse? Fedora has had 3-star generals tell him that the reason America is a great country is because there were no fair catches on kick returns (or something like that).

We’re going deep in the cut on this one.

The ACC’s football media guide in 2015 — ya know, back when such things were printed — featured one all-caps venting moment at the end of the previous season’s game-by-game results.

Look, busy work sucks. You should be able to type whatever you want after typing out the results for 14 teams.

Maybe a lesson was learned in hitting the delete button before sending to the printer.

The other ref to show up on this list. Jerry Magallanes didn’t make it through a round of editing.

TV Teddy and Magallanes are plenty flawed; Hess is the one who was so flawed the ACC decided he was no longer worth the headache.

King Karl’s courtside manner is probably most notable for his double ejection of N.C. State legends Tom Gugliotta and Chris Corchiani from a 2012 game. Don’t worry, they received Wolfpack Unlimited awards for their harrowing ordeals.

Hess’ final straw was telling Wake Forest board of trustees member Mit Shah, “When I’m older, I want to sit in your seat and watch your Egyptian ass ref a game.”

Shah, for the record, is of Indian descent.

If anybody in college football circles knows how to take the high road, it’s the two-time former Louisville coach.

His ethics are so strong that he’s been thrown a life jacket by the same school that fired him 12 years ago after he covered up an affair with a woman he hired.

In the event that’s not enough to convince you of his bona fides here, remember that he left the Atlanta Falcons in his first year and went the extra mile to post a laminated note in each of his players’ lockers that he had resigned.

Of course, he’s not even the only former Louisville coach who could be called in to discuss morality, ethics and extramarital affairs.

What harm could ever come from allowing the media to watch your practices? The more access, the better.

Surely, no privileged media members would know enough about what they’re watching to relay that information to opposing coaching staffs. And if they did, they’d be throwing away their career and reputation.

Wake Forest's former analyst on football broadcasts would be able to explain all of this in detail.