ACC has uncertain identity
- Thread starter Hedgerunner
- Start date
Lets see. #6 Auburn wins by 7 over the Cards who isn't nor was ranked. #1 Ohio State wins over VT who isn't nor was ranked. Virginia who is not ranked nor was ranked loses to #13 UCLA. UNC loses to USC, BOTH teams were not ranked.
Seems to me the only game the ACC was supposed to MAYBE win was the match up between UNC and South Carolina, both of whom aren't nor weren't highly thought of. Anyone else smell any type of agenda here by the AP Sports Writers who gathered together to write the article?
Seems to me the only game the ACC was supposed to MAYBE win was the match up between UNC and South Carolina, both of whom aren't nor weren't highly thought of. Anyone else smell any type of agenda here by the AP Sports Writers who gathered together to write the article?
Virginia, UNC and Virginia Tech will all probably be in the bottom half of the ACC. Louisville is a good team and we saw them play #6 Auburn about even other than a few mistakes.
The best ACC teams are (in no particular order):
Georgia Tech
FSU
Clemson
Louisville
NC State
Duke
Miami
Virginia was supposed to lose to UCLA, USCE/UNC was a toss up, Ohio State was supposed to beat VT. And Louisville was a 10 point dog against #6 Auburn and Auburn was unable to cover the spread.
The ACC is just really top heavy and the fact that Miami has been mediocre to bad for the last 11 seasons isn't helping because they should be one of the top programs in the country but have refused to get rid of Al Golden for some reason.
So you've really just got FSU, Va Tech and Clemson as the football "powers" and then you have Ga Tech who nobody really respects and doesn't have a real football reputation and they're not helped out by the fact that they run a gimmicky, triple option offense. Which is effective and fun to watch but still I think makes people perceive them as a side-show and doesn't help them gain respect. Va Tech is that former great program that we've watched slowly die and one that needed to make a change at HC in recent years but refuses to do so.
Next you have Louisville. A relative newcomer to the college football "elite" or upper echelon. A historic basketball program thats labeled as a "basketball" school and a program that was stuck in CUSA, Big East, CAA limbo/hell for the last 10 years. Louisville has produced a number of draft picks and does have 2 BCS Bowls to their name but still doesn't carry the national "weight" or perception of a big time program.
The same thing I said about Louisville can be said about Duke only on a smaller scale. They haven't had the success or the draft picks that UL had and they weren't stuck in crappy conference purgatory like Louisville but everything else applies.
We're also not helped out by the fact that the ACC has a lot of either bad or just mediocre programs. Syracuse, Virginia, Pittsburgh, UNC, Boston College, Wake Forest...are all bad or just consistently mediocre.
So the ACC is really only FSU and Clemson and to be honest Clemson isn't really that big of a power or elite program either. So its understandable that the ACC would have a bit of an uncertain identity considering the programs that sit atop its conference.
So you've really just got FSU, Va Tech and Clemson as the football "powers" and then you have Ga Tech who nobody really respects and doesn't have a real football reputation and they're not helped out by the fact that they run a gimmicky, triple option offense. Which is effective and fun to watch but still I think makes people perceive them as a side-show and doesn't help them gain respect. Va Tech is that former great program that we've watched slowly die and one that needed to make a change at HC in recent years but refuses to do so.
Next you have Louisville. A relative newcomer to the college football "elite" or upper echelon. A historic basketball program thats labeled as a "basketball" school and a program that was stuck in CUSA, Big East, CAA limbo/hell for the last 10 years. Louisville has produced a number of draft picks and does have 2 BCS Bowls to their name but still doesn't carry the national "weight" or perception of a big time program.
The same thing I said about Louisville can be said about Duke only on a smaller scale. They haven't had the success or the draft picks that UL had and they weren't stuck in crappy conference purgatory like Louisville but everything else applies.
We're also not helped out by the fact that the ACC has a lot of either bad or just mediocre programs. Syracuse, Virginia, Pittsburgh, UNC, Boston College, Wake Forest...are all bad or just consistently mediocre.
So the ACC is really only FSU and Clemson and to be honest Clemson isn't really that big of a power or elite program either. So its understandable that the ACC would have a bit of an uncertain identity considering the programs that sit atop its conference.
That's the equivalent of drawing conclusions about the SEC's strength after week one if the schedule had looked like this : UK played At Clemson, Tennessee played Baylor, Missouri played Oklahoma , Ole Miss played Ohio St and all of them lost while the rest of the league blew out the cupcakes like they were supposed to.
Nobody thinks that ACC top to bottom is on Par with SEC yet or possibly even the rest of the power 5 Conferences but you would be foolish to gauge the league by those first 4 games. Yes it would have been nice if one of the ACC teams had pulled the upset but a better gauge would have been if the schedule would have looked more like this: Louisville vs S. Carolina, Va Tech vs Tennessee, Virginia at Colorado and the above Mizzou/Oklahoma matchup.
I guess it's something to read.
Nobody thinks that ACC top to bottom is on Par with SEC yet or possibly even the rest of the power 5 Conferences but you would be foolish to gauge the league by those first 4 games. Yes it would have been nice if one of the ACC teams had pulled the upset but a better gauge would have been if the schedule would have looked more like this: Louisville vs S. Carolina, Va Tech vs Tennessee, Virginia at Colorado and the above Mizzou/Oklahoma matchup.
I guess it's something to read.
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I cannot quibble with anything in that article. The only thing they left out was the ACC has six games against Notre Dame this year, so we have more matchups against P5 opponents than they listed.
The ACC started the season with many analysts predicting that our champion would be the one that gets left out of the playoff this year. In week one, we had four chances against P5 schools to show that we're stronger than we have been given credit for ... and we lost all four.
To the league's credit, we did not have any stumbles against Group of Five (G5) schools or members of the FCS. Duke went on the road and beat our only G5 opponent (Tulane) 37-7 in perhaps the most impressive win the ACC had this past weekend. And the other 8 ACC teams all played and beat FCS schools.
This week we get fewer matchups against P5 schools, but many more matchups against the G5:
In Conference:
Wake Forest at Syracuse
P5:
Notre Dame at Virginia
G5:
Houston at Louisville
Miami at Florida Atlantic
South Florida at Florida State
Appalachian State at Clemson
Tulane at Georgia Tech
Pittsburgh at Akron
FCS:
Howard at Boston College
Furman at Virginia Tech
NC Central at Duke
NC A&T at North Carolina
EKU at NC State
The ACC started the season with many analysts predicting that our champion would be the one that gets left out of the playoff this year. In week one, we had four chances against P5 schools to show that we're stronger than we have been given credit for ... and we lost all four.
To the league's credit, we did not have any stumbles against Group of Five (G5) schools or members of the FCS. Duke went on the road and beat our only G5 opponent (Tulane) 37-7 in perhaps the most impressive win the ACC had this past weekend. And the other 8 ACC teams all played and beat FCS schools.
This week we get fewer matchups against P5 schools, but many more matchups against the G5:
In Conference:
Wake Forest at Syracuse
P5:
Notre Dame at Virginia
G5:
Houston at Louisville
Miami at Florida Atlantic
South Florida at Florida State
Appalachian State at Clemson
Tulane at Georgia Tech
Pittsburgh at Akron
FCS:
Howard at Boston College
Furman at Virginia Tech
NC Central at Duke
NC A&T at North Carolina
EKU at NC State
No matter what anyone says there was virtually no way Virginia (bottom tier ACC team) was going to travel the west coast and knock off a very talented #13 UCLA team.
Not sure that any college team can beat Ohio St with their new toy Braxton Miller and Unranked Va Tech led them at half and in the process lost their starting QB before the OSU talent explosion and the expected wearing down of the Hokies.
Unranked Louisville despite gift wrapping 14 points in the first half to talented 6th ranked Auburn and using a raw but talented freshman QB took an SEC heavyweight down to the wire.
Absolutely nothing to hang their head about and again not much to be learned about the strength of the ACC from these results. Time will tell.
Not sure that any college team can beat Ohio St with their new toy Braxton Miller and Unranked Va Tech led them at half and in the process lost their starting QB before the OSU talent explosion and the expected wearing down of the Hokies.
Unranked Louisville despite gift wrapping 14 points in the first half to talented 6th ranked Auburn and using a raw but talented freshman QB took an SEC heavyweight down to the wire.
Absolutely nothing to hang their head about and again not much to be learned about the strength of the ACC from these results. Time will tell.