With the cancellation of the NCAA fall championships on Aug. 13, practically an entire calendar year of college athletics has been lost to the coronavirus pandemic. If the 2020-21 college basketball season wants to be saved, leagues may want to start planning on a bubble format.

After all, bubbles work. Just ask the NBA, NHL, MLS, WNBA and NWSL.

Bubbles are also expensive. Not to mention, the idea of quarantining college athletes in a bubble for weeks or months at a time to play sports in a pandemic would undoubtedly challenge the preservation of the amateur model in collegiate sports.

“Unlike professional sports, college sports cannot operate in a bubble,” Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said in the conference's release that it was canceling athletic competition until Jan. 1, 2021.

The biggest defender of the amateur model, however, didn't seem concerned with the idea. In fact, NCAA president Mark Emmert embraced the proposition of using bubbles for winter and spring sports in his fall championship cancellation announcement.

"If we modify the model, shrink the bracket sizes, do everything in predetermined sites instead of running kids around the country... there's a way to do it," Emmert said. "Will it be normal? Of course not. Will it create other conflicts and challenges? Of course. But is it doable? Yeah, it is doable and we want to do that."

Luckily for the ACC, there is a very familiar destination in the heart of the league's footprint that possesses the facilities and infrastructure to pull off a 15-team league bubble if such a strategy was to be executed.

What better way to make up for the lost 2020 ACC Tournament than to have an entire ACC basketball season in a bubble in Greensboro, N.C.?

Everything will undoubtedly feel different without fans, but there is no other location that could provide the sample size of familiarity in a season absent of spectators quite like the home of the ACC headquarters.

Other than the undeniable feel-good dynamic behind playing hoops in Greensboro Coliseum, it makes logistical sense too.

Not only is the Gate City centrally located in the league's wide geographical footprint, it's also a manageable bus ride for at least eight of the conference's 15 members.

It has the infrastructure and facilities to host such an event as well.

The first is obvious. Greensboro Coliseum Complex would easily be able to handle the court and space requirements of facilitating a league-wide game and practice schedule.

It's not just a 22,000-seat venue capable of hosting conference championships and NCAA tournament games. The complex is also home to the Greensboro Swarm, the NBA G-League affiliate of the Charlotte Hornets. The Swarm has its own basketball facility on the campus, the Fieldhouse, which features a 30,000-square foot open area suitable for at least one basketball court if not more.

Those two courts alone would be enough to pull off a game schedule, but additional courts may be needed to enable ample practice time for each team when competition starts.

The league could make a quick call to UNC Greensboro to see if it could rent Fleming Gym, home of the Spartans' women's basketball and volleyball teams. Creative minds could potentially develop a makeshift hard court in the Steven Tanger Center. There are always private and public high school courts that could provide options in a pinch, although admittedly that may be more difficult if class is being conducted in person by that point.

With travel accessibility and basketball operations accounted for, the next major logistical challenge would be finding a central place of lodging for all of the bubble's inhabitants.

That would be no easy feat. Assuming a travel size of roughly 25 per team, that's 375 rooms required if each member of the bubble gets their own. That number likely doubles after adding league officials, operations staff, referees and select members of the media.

If the ACC is reading this, don't forget who suggested this idea.

Back to the lodging. The Koury Convention Center is a five-minute drive from Greensboro Coliseum and holds 985 guest rooms. It wouldn't just be able to provide a single room to each member of the bubble, it would also enable a somewhat normal way of life within it.

The convention center also has an outdoor space for 200 that includes a pool, an in-house restaurant space that holds up to 400, and three large ballrooms that could be used for creative amenities such as barbershops, study areas and social spaces. It even has a large meeting space that can normally hold 3,000 guests that could be transformed into an extra practice facility.

An ACC basketball bubble in Greensboro would be incomplete if it didn't include refreshments in part from Stamey's Barbecue and Natty Greene's Brewing Co., which both have locations directly across W. Gate City Boulevard from Greensboro Coliseum. Naturally, the second would be reserved for bubble members of legal age.

If you're not sold yet, maybe Brian Geisinger, writer for ACCSports.com and co-host of SportsChannel8 the radio show on 99.9 The Fan, can convince you. After all, he fantasized about the idea of an ACC Hoops bubble during his appearance on The Wolfpacker Podcast.

Sportswriters aren't the only ones toying with the notion of college basketball bubbles. Several league offices are already considering the idea, a strategy that will likely gain momentum if college football fails to weather the storm of coronavirus this fall.

NC State redshirt senior forward DJ Funderburk, who recently announced his return for a final season with the Wolfpack in 2020-21, was one of the first players in the ACC to visualize a bubble concept.

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