ACC basketball entered a whole new world on Dec. 8, 1982, when Raycom aired its first conference matchup as Virginia visited Duke in a broadcast that nearly didn’t happen at all.

Haines, who was en route to Greensboro to oversee the production of the game from a truck in a parking lot outside WFMY, heard on the radio about a bomb threat at the Washington Monument.

Right up until the 9 p.m. tipoff that night, there were doubts Raycom would go on the air as stations stuck with network news coverage rather than releasing the AT&T long lines for the broadcast.

“It’s amazing to me — to this day — how close we came to not being successful in our very first telecast with the ACC and not being able to get the game on the air,” Haines said.

Fortunately for both the ACC and Raycom, the first-night hiccups were an aberration in what would become the most successful syndication partnership in college sports with every bit of commercial inventory sold out that for the first telecast.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was in his third season when Raycom took over, giving the young coach a new level of exposure as the Blue Devils began building their dynasty.