Last ACC Tourney For Barakat
Published: Mar 6, 2007
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TAMPA - Almost before the sun rises, he will be there, making certain all the banners are straight and ensuring that the locker rooms are immaculate. He will march to the rhythm of a non-stop cell phone.
Sometime around midnight, he will call it a workday, when players and coaches are back at the hotel, after the arena is drained of all noise. When he finally takes a deep breath, the thought will again cross Fred Barakat's mind.
"You know," he will say, "I didn't see a whole lot of basketball today."
It's a small price to pay for someone with incomparable vision.
ACC Basketball Tournament history can't be written without mentioning Fred Barakat, the ACC's associate commissioner, who will oversee the league's signature event this week at the St. Pete Times Forum.
After that, he's done.
"It's time," said Barakat, 67, who is retiring.
He will spend more time with his wife Florence at their home in the mountains. He will monitor his health (recovery from prostate cancer, a hip replacement and heart-related ailments have taken a toll). Maybe he'll be dragged back in a consultant role, who knows?
"I don't know what else to do in March," said Barakat, the head basketball coach at Fairfield University from 1970-81 before joining the ACC as supervisor of officials.
Since 1989, when he took over ACC Tournament administration, Barakat has orchestrated every nuance. There are generally no fires to put out because he leaps at the first hint of a spark.
"He's one of the giants in ACC history," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "To be quite frank with you, I don't know how you replace him."
Once at another ACC Tournament site, they dared to stage a VIP dinner without using fine china or silverware. Barakat walked into the room and grimaced. "Like someone had sucked every breath of air from the building," said Jeff Adams, chairman of the Tampa Bay Sports Commission.
Small detail? Maybe. But not the ACC way.
At NCAA Tournament events, the backstage areas are cordoned off by steel piping and blue curtains.
At the ACC Tournament, walls magically appear from thin air.
"It's true," said Ron Campbell, the Forum president. "We will have walls constructed in our building and they will be up for one week, then come down. Fred knows what he wants."
Now comes the hard part, the one that can't be found in his hefty tournament manual.
Saying goodbye.
"Let's not get too sentimental here," Barakat said. "I've had a great run with the ACC. It's basketball. It's almost all I've ever known."
When Barakat was a 7-year-old in New Jersey, his father disappeared, never to be seen again by the family. Money was tight for his mother, a seamstress, who raised three children. Basketball became Barakat's salvation, first as a player at Assumption College, then in coaching.
At Fairfield, Barakat was 160-128 with three NIT appearances. But just when the Big East was forming, changing the region's basketball landscape forever, he reinvented himself. Here was the lifetime coach, now supervising officials on Tobacco Road.
Actually changing them.
"The ACC was a touch-foul league," Barakat said. "Everywhere else, it was no blood, no foul. We were a parade to the free-throw line. I didn't think the ACC was well-positioned to go deep in the [NCAA] Tournament because of the way our games were called.
"We had to teach our officials to just suck on their whistles instead of blowing them for every call. I wasn't well received. The old coach came prancing in and some people resented that."
But in Barakat's first season, Smith won his first national title with the Tar Heels. Jim Valvano immediately followed with a national title at N.C. State. The ACC was rolling.
Soon, Barakat hungered for more challenges. He added the tournament to his workload. He scheduled all the ACC games, working in tandem with networks, arenas and schools.
"I have never met a more organized person in my life," said ESPN's Dick Vitale, who will host a retirement party for Barakat on Wednesday night in Sarasota.
"Never in my 10 years did a coach call me about a basketball situation," former ACC commissioner Gene Corrigan said. "Every other commissioner in the world will tell you coaches are on their back all the time. Fred always handled it. Now I can't imagine that tournament without him."
Some figured Barakat's finale would occur last season at Greensboro, N.C. But he chose to leave with a higher degree of difficulty, a new site, in an area where he now feels at home.
Tampa's first ACC Tournament is Barakat's last event.
But as Barakat reminds everyone, let's not get too sentimental. The players and coaches, they are the real show. Besides, it's not time to exhale, not yet. One thing still hasn't changed.
"I want it to be perfect," Barakat said.
Reporter Joey Johnston can be reached at (813) 259-7353 or jjohnston@tampatrib.com.
