ACC football: Don’t believe the hype
Columnist
Those who are paid to promote the ACC, and there are plenty of them, will point out that the ACC has four ranked teams (!!!) led by Clemson at No. 6 and Florida State at No. 9.
Duke and Pittsburgh also are in the top 25 this week.
Wow.
Now, let’s look a little closer at all the numbers. Clemson and Florida State have one combined victory over a top 25 team — Clemson’s win at home against Notre Dame in the midst of a monsoon. The Irish, who are a pseudo-ACC football team, also have built their record on the strength of wins against less-than-stellar teams. They haven’t beaten any team that is currently ranked and have played two road games: an escape against Virginia (2-4) and their sloppy loss at Clemson.
Regardless, they are the only two ACC teams that matter. Duke, Pittsburgh and North Carolina, all 5-1, have beaten exactly nobody. Duke has the ACC’s other win over a top 25 team at the time — a victory over Georgia Tech when the Yellow Jackets were still ranked on the basis of crushing Alcorn State and Tulane by a combined 134-16. Since then, playing real football teams, Georgia Tech is 0-5.
So if you are scoring at home, the ACC has faced top 25 teams from outside the conference eight times — counting Notre Dame as outside the conference. Its record in those games is a sterling 1-7.
And yet the winner of the Florida State-Clemson game on Nov. 7 undoubtedly will make it to the College Football Playoff unless it stumbles. Both schools do have to play teams from a real football conference, the Southeastern Conference, later in November. Clemson goes to South Carolina (3-4), which lost its coach this season; FSU travels to much-improved Florida. It might behoove ACC Commissioner John Swofford to show up in Death Valley Nov. 7 dressed in orange because the Tigers’ chances of going undefeated might be a good deal better than the Seminoles’.
Swofford has spent most of his tenure raiding the old Big East to try to make the ACC a real football conference. First he went after Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. Back then, Miami and Virginia Tech were still important football teams. In fact, Virginia Tech won at least 10 games in its first eight ACC seasons, helped a good deal by playing against the bottom of the ACC every year.
But the Hokies have slid into mediocrity the last four falls. Their record since the start of 2011 is 25-21, including 3-4 this season, as they get ready to play Duke on Saturday. There’s no doubt that David Cutcliffe has done amazing work at Duke, but his team’s four wins this season against top-tier opponents (the fifth win was over North Carolina Central of the lower Football Championship Subdivision) have come against teams with a combined record of 9-18.
When Miami and Virginia Tech couldn’t deliver any big-game traction, Swofford went back to the Big East well, luring Syracuse, Pittsburgh and later Louisville to join the league. Those moves strengthened basketball, though not so much the league’s image: Syracuse is on NCAA probation, and Louisville is in the midst of a scandal involving strippers and basketball players and recruits.
All three fit in perfectly to the ACC as football teams, though: They’re all consistently mediocre.
Finally, Swofford made the ridiculous deal in which Notre Dame was allowed to join as a full ACC member in all sports — except the one that people care about. As one Notre Dame coach put it back then: “If I’m the ACC, my opening line in negotiations would be, ‘If you aren’t bringing the gold helmets, there’s no point in talking any further.’ ”
Notre Dame is occasionally bringing the gold helmets — playing five ACC teams a year, up from the past when it usually played three — while getting full status in the other sports and not having to face the dangers of a conference championship game in years when it’s good. The ACC also gave Notre Dame an excuse to drop Michigan and Michigan State. Instead, this year, the Irish will play Virginia and Wake Forest.
The bottom line: Through all the expansion and all the hype, the ACC is, at best, a two-team league. Florida State has returned to prominence the last four seasons and won a national championship two years ago, even though its best player was tainted by a series of off-field embarrassments. Clemson has won a lot of games under Dabo Swinney but is still waiting for the breakthrough win that will make it truly matter again. The Notre Dame win was nice, but the Irish aren’t great, and the game was at home.
A win, even at home, over Florida State would help. At least then the Tigers almost certainly would get a chance to see how they do against the big boys in the playoff.
Regardless of the outcome of that game, the ACC is a two-team, one-game-that-matters-each-year conference. Does it matter who wins the Coastal Division? Only to the team that does and gets to go to Charlotte and get hammered by Clemson or Florida State.
And yet the ACC will loudly trumpet that it has 10 bowl teams. It will tell us about its great nonconference record. It won’t mention the dearth of top 25 wins and the remarkably weak schedules played by most of its teams, Virginia being the notable exception.
The ACC desperately wants to believe that all is well. It desperately wants the emperor’s new clothes to be spectacular. The truth is, there’s very little to see.
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