Hello, Florida State — goodbye championships

The ACC's issue will always be what it does OUTSIDE the conference...not what it does against itself (ie just beating FSU doesn't bring cred to football). 

FSU needs teams that compete for national titles.


http://www.citizen-times.com/story/sports/2015/08/01/hello-florida-state-goodbye-championships/30983939/

In the first 39 years of the ACC, when the league was a quaint seven or eight schools from 1953-91 and football to most fans wasn’t much more than an outdoor activity to pass the time until basketball season started, Clemson and North Carolina’s Big Four schools — Duke, North Carolina, N.C. State and Wake Forest — combined to win outright or share a total of 33 football championships.
Then, two words turned these five schools almost into afterthoughts when it comes to trophies — Florida State.
And 12 years later, when another football power — Virginia Tech — joined the ACC, league titles became even more of a distant memory for the original Fab Five.
Over the past 23 seasons, since FSU began its domination and won the first of its 15 titles, those five schools that produced 33 crowns have combined to win just two championships — Wake Forest in 2006 and Clemson in 2011.
From 1953-91 Clemson and the Big Four schools won 84 percent of the ACC titles; since 1992 it’s 8 percent.
For UNC and N.C. State, the championship slide began long before the Seminoles planted their flaming spear into the heart of ACC football.
The Wolfpack have finished first seven times, but not since Bo Rein’s 1979 squad.
The Tar Heels have five ACC titles, but none since the Dick Crum era in 1980.
The last of Duke’s seven championships came in 1989 under a young Steve Spurrier, though the resurgent Blue Devils did win a Coastal Division title in 2013.
Wake Forest’s crown in 2006 — the only time in a seven-year stretch (2002-08) that neither FSU or Virginia Tech won the title — was the Demon Deacons’ second ever and first since coach Cal Stull won it all in 1970.
But no program has felt the pain of expansion more than Clemson, whose 14 championships are second only to FSU.
Unfortunately, second to the Seminoles has become a familiar place for the Tigers, who have slipped from the prettiest girl at the wedding to the bridesmaid, the Avis of the ACC.
Before FSU became the ACC’s ninth school in 1992 and subsequent purges of the Big East Conference swelled the league to its current number of 14 in football, the Tigers won 13 titles and had become the league’s dominant franchise, with seven crowns in 15 seasons from 1978-91.
But over the last 23 years, Clemson has claimed just one championship.
In the past 19 seasons, the Tigers have finished second in the ACC, either in the overall standings or in the Atlantic Division, seven times. On five of those occasions, the only team ahead of Clemson was FSU.
“Florida State isn’t going away,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, who is going after his fifth straight 10-win season, said recently at the 2015 ACC Football Kickoff.
“This is a deep league with a lot of good teams, and (FSU) has been at the top for a while. It’s up to the rest of us to close that gap.”
The Seminoles’ 15 ACC titles have been accumulated in just 23 years; Virginia Tech won four championships in its first seven years in the league.
No other school has won more than one crown since FSU’s arrival (Georgia Tech shared first-place with FSU in 1998 and won the 2009 ACC Championship Game, but that victory was vacated due to NCAA sanctions).
“Here’s what’s happened in the ACC,” said Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer.
“A lot of teams have gotten better, and we are a strong league in the middle, but (with the exception of Florida State) we haven’t had that totally dominant team,” he said.
“We all want to be that dominant team, but in the last few years it’s only been Florida State.”
The beginning of the end
When coach Bobby Bowden brought the Seminoles to the ACC in 1992, he had already built the foundation of a dynasty.
FSU had gone 53-7 overall the previous five seasons and finished fourth or higher in five consecutive final AP polls.
The league added the Seminoles for its football prowess and to upgrade national exposure in a sport that had always been considered secondary to the accepted belief that the ACC was a basketball league.
Bowden didn’t disappoint, blowing through the league like a strong varsity program beating up on the JVs.
FSU went 8-0 in ACC play seven times in its first nine years and 7-1 in the two seasons it missed perfection.
Each of those nine teams won league titles, all finished in the top five of the last AP poll of the season, and two (1993 and ’99) won national titles.
Clemson and the Big Four went 1-44 against Bowden in that stretch (1992-2000), with only N.C. State (24-7 in ’98) earning a win.
While the rest of the ACC got bulldozed, most if not all of the schools used FSU’s domination as at least part of the reason to upgrade or rebuild football facilities.
“Sure, we’ll take some credit for that,” Bowden said with a laugh years ago when asked if his program forced the other ACC schools to put more emphasis on the sport.
“We had, year in year out, one of the best teams in the country, and I know some coaches and (athletic directors) went to their presidents and their boosters and said we have to upgrade if you want me to compete with that.
“I shoulda gotten a cut.”
More expansion
While FSU continued its unprecedented run through the ACC (after Maryland snapped the Seminoles’ streak of nine straight titles in 2001, FSU won ACC crowns the next two seasons), the league decided to aggressively expand, adding three Big East programs in two years, including football powers Virginia Tech and Miami in 2004 and Boston College a year later.
Virginia Tech immediately started flexing its muscles as the league went to two divisions in 2005. Beamer’s program won four league titles over seven seasons (2004-10).
The expectation was that with Florida State in the Atlantic and Miami in the Coastal Division, those two rivals and national powers would meet in the title game in Jacksonville, a financial bonanza for the league.
But it didn’t work out that way.
The two superpowers suddenly became ordinary by their standards — FSU went 16-16 in ACC play from 2006-09, Bowden’s last four seasons at the school.
After winning the program’s fifth national championship in 19 seasons in 2001, Miami brought little to the table after joining the ACC.
The Hurricanes are 46-43 in league play over 11 seasons, have won just one division title (a shared crown in 2012) and haven’t played in a championship game.
The promotion of Jimbo Fisher to replace Bowden in 2010 helped put the Seminoles back at the top of the league, and now they are as dominating as ever, with three straight championships and a 24-game winning streak against ACC opponents.
“It’s up to us to change that (FSU’s domination),” said Louisville coach Bobby Petrino.
“They’ve won a national championship, the rest of us haven’t (Georgia Tech in 1990 was the last non-FSU team to win the national crown).
“We have to go out and recruit better and play better to get to that level.”
The future?
Fisher said keeping an ACC dynasty going is harder than ever.
“Look what just happened,” he said, referring to the preseason poll in which the media picked Clemson to unseat his program as the 2015 champion.
“We’ve won three in a row and have a real good team coming back, and they picked Clemson,” he said.
“That tells you something about the depth of this league. I think that’s good for the ACC.”
“The (FSU) rivalry is a fun rivalry, and it’s been a real dogfight every time we play them,” said Clemson defensive tackle D.J. Reader, while acknowledging the Tigers are 6-17 against the Seminoles in ACC play.
“But we have to beat them; that’s a fact.”
With N.C. State (35 years since its last title), North Carolina (34), Duke (25), Wake Forest (1 in 44 seasons) all looking to end long championship droughts, coaches and players realize they have to get better to compete for titles.
“People said last year, ‘Hey you went to a bowl game, good season,’” said UNC linebacker Jeff Schoettmer.
“We won six games (the Tar Heels finished 6-7 after losing 40-21 to Rutgers in the Quick Lane Bowl). Winning six games is not a good season, and that’s nothing to be proud of.
“You’re not going to be a champion with that mentality.”
But there is always hope, according to N.C. State defensive end Mike Rose.
“When is the last time we won (a championship), the 1970s?” he asked. “This is the time. Florida State is down, Clemson is on the rise, and so are we. We can do this.”