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Is there a worse BCS conference in America than the Atlantic Coast Conference? You'd be hard pressed to prove that one comes close...

ACC: America's Conference of Comedy

by Ben Gunby (Analyst)

17

4,070 reads

Sports

January 04, 2008


Is there a worse BCS conference in America than the Atlantic Coast Conference? You'd be hard pressed to prove that one comes close.

Yes, I know, Wake Forest beat UConn, supposedly the second best team in the Big East, but at this point in the season, an argument can be made that Wake just might be the third or so best team in the ACC, so it's not like an ACC lightweight (and I use that term relatively here) beat a Big East heavyweight.

Take into account the ACC hasn't won a BCS bowl since Florida State's win in the Sugar Bowl in 2000, following the 1999 season. No ACC team besides Florida State has won one of the big bowls, which I'll include the Cotton, at least thru 1994, as a part of, since Clemson won the 1982 Orange Bowl. Granted, this could be somewhat skewered by the fact that the 1990 National Champion Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets played in the Citrus Bowl while Virginia accepted an early invite to the Sugar. Even so, it's been over 25 years since a team from the ACC not named Florida State has won a BCS bowl. Can you be any more putrid than that?

So why does the ACC have an automatic berth in the BCS? What has the league done to deserve it? The only bit of credibility the ACC has on the football stage no longer exists, that credibility being the Florida State Seminoles. The Seminoles descent to mediocrity, and ascension into a program full of off-field scandals has the ACC with absolutely no program to hang their hat on. It's not bad enough that for the duration of the 90's and the early part of this decade they were a one team league, now they've become a zero team league.

When the ACC snatched Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College away from the Big East it was supposed to signify the ACC's coming of age, and becoming a power conference. These additions were supposed to drastically alter the landscape of college football. Well, those additions did alter the landscape of college football, but certainly not in the manner the ACC and it's presidents and its schools had hoped. While the Big East has won a BCS game in each of the past three years (beating the SEC, ACC, and Big XII champions in doing so) the ACC is still searching for it's first BCS win since January 4, 2000. Just imagine how bad this league would be without Boston College and Virginia Tech. Who would have been ACC champions this year? Clemson? Wake Forest again?

While Wake Forest was a nice story last year, there is a reason you don't see many stories like that in college football. It's that in the majority of major conferences, for the majority of seasons, the play within the conference is at too high of a level for such a team to shock everyone and win the conference. While they may pull off a shocker or two over the course of the year, being able to do so over the course of an entire season just proves too difficult. Take Kentucky in the SEC for example. They had a team very much like Wake Forest last year, but yet, in each of the last two seasons they've played in second or third tier bowls because of the level of play of the conference they call home. Were they in the ACC, they'd probably have been to Jacksonville at least once in the past two seasons.

So while West V

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17 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment

  1. Leon Wynn about 1 year ago

    Excellent article.

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  2. Roger Williams about 1 year ago

    Wow...article just says it like it is!

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  3. David Williams about 1 year ago

    You're right. No other conference really comes close. The Big Ten has done subpar by going 3-4 in bowls, but at least it's not as bad as the ACC going 2-6. With such a poor conference, I find it incredibly tough to justify them having 8 teams play in bowls this year. It's not like teams like Maryland or Georgia Tech are bad...they are just alll excruciatingly mediocre

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  4. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    Funny that the Big East turmoil of a few years ago strengthen the Big East and drag the All Convicts Conference to ennui. Who knew?

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  5. Zach Smith about 1 year ago

    Well written article, Ben, but I strongly disagree with your opinion. Bowls are important, but they aren't the only relevant thing about a conference.

    I have written a response article of sorts, you can click on my name to find it (I'm not sure if I can use html to link to it here so I'll just let you go to my profile).

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  6. Ben Gunby about 1 year ago

    Bowls aren't the only way, but they are a big way simply because if comparing conferences, you have to look at how teams play against teams from outside their own league. However, let's look beyond the bowls, what of the ACC says it's a deserving conference? You say look at overall records? I disagree strongly there. You can look at overall records of a lot of different conferences and use those misldeading stats to easily misrepresent the strength, or lack thereof, of a conference.

    Let's look at some OOC performances, aside from their pathetic showing in bowls. Aside from Clemson's domination of South Carolina, the ACC hasn't fared so hot in their regular OOC matchups, has it?

    Florida State has lost 5 of 7 to Florida
    Georgia Tech has lost, what, 7 straight to Georgia?

    The four teams who have made the conference championship game in each of the last two seasons have done exactly what outside of league play? Struggle with Army and East Carolina? Lose to Georgia and West Virginia? Get beaten in the Orange Bowl pretty handily by Louisville and Kansas (not exactly football powers), get embarassed by LSU? Barely beat a midpack Big Ten team in their bowl game? It's not just about the bowl games, the bowl games are the culmination of everything. What it's about is quality of play, and the ACC doesn't have a very high quality of play.

    By the way, the point of the article was if the ACC should keep it's automatic berth in the BCS, and when the conference hasn't taken advantage of said berth in nearly a decade, then yes, it DOES center around the BOWL results. The BOWL results show they don't deserve the automatic BOWL bid.

    You can argue overall records all you wish, that's all you can use. I'm an ACC fan, but we suck. We are the worst BCS conference, easily. When your league champion is constantly getting beat in it's bowl games, and your other teams aren't faring any better, how can you argue it? Oh, you argue it with overall records, which is 3/4 their record against each other as opposed to how they play against teams not within the ACC.

    I'm sorry, don't mean to sound like an ass, but your argument of "overall" records when trying to compare this conference with the rest is a very, very, very weak one. Let's compare them to other conferences by using a stat that for the most part, ignores how they actually do directly against those other conferences. Winning OOC games against Central Michigan, Troy, Notre Dame and Ohio doesn't help the cause either. Yes, every conference plays weaklings, the difference is, when they play teams that aren't, they generally experience some success. The ACC does not. Mid pack teams from other conferences are constantly beating teams who are upper echelon in the ACC, or going toe to toe with them.

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  7. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    I don't hate the ACC, but the fans are ridiculous.

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  8. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    You idiot - Georgia Tech was the National Champion in 1990 - that was 18 years ago. Go back to elementary school, Roscoe!

    Mike in Virginia

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    • Ben Gunby about 1 year ago

      I'm the idiot? Did you not READ the article? Perhaps either you should read the whole article before commenting, OR, upgrade your reading comprehension skills. I pointed out that Tech won the national title, you think I'd forget that? I'm a TECH FAN dumbass. However, they DID NOT win one of the major bowls in doing so.

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  9. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    Your statement, "Just as Louisville dominated Wake Forest the year before" is a sensationalist proclamation that is way off-the-mark. Check the box score. The stats are relatively even. And from where I was sitting at the game, it was Wake that pretty-much dominated Louisville and held Brohm in check. The Cards needed a 4th quarter rally to win. The difference in the game was 2 controversial freakish fumbles by Wake in the red zone. Each of which was bang-bang, each of which was reviewed, each of which could have gone either way. Sans those 2 fumbles, the final score of the game would have reflected the fact that Wake was the better team that night, but just pissed the game away. To state "Louisville DOMINATED Wake" lends little credence to your article...

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  10. james baker about 1 year ago

    lol at all the Big East fans trying to convince themselves that they're better than the ACC. You guys have ONE good team. One. Bitter much? Yes the ACC has a lot of room to improve but we've got the programs to do it - FSU, Miami, and VT have all accomplished more than any team in the Big East and you could argue that Clemson, BC, and Wake are better than anyone in the BE except WVU. Personally I think the Big 10 was worse than the ACC this year too. But if the ACC is a joke, what does that make the Big East?

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  11. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    i suppose you could argue that Clemson, BC, and Wake are better than all BE teams except for WVU, but then you'd have to accept that you'd lose your argument...a more reasonable claim would be putting Clemson, BC and/or Wake up against the best from, say, the MAC or C-USA (no disrespect to those conferences).....take a look at the OOC wins BC, Clemson and Wake Forest COMBINED produced- Army (3-9), Navy (bowl team), UMass (1AA), Furman (1AA), Bowling Green (bowl team/doormat to Tulsa), ND (3-9), La-Monroe (6-6), Vandy (hey, they're Vanderbilt, no need to pile on here), Uconn (bowl team), S.Carolina (bowl team), Mich State (bowl team/sole posession of 9th place in the "Big" Ten).... the remainder of these schools' win totals came from wins against the other also-ran brethren from the ACC.

    face it, its a mediocre conference on its best day. that said, they do have potential, as you pointed out- they have some very fertile local high school programs to recruit from. now maybe the ACC will figure out that game they call "recruiting" and actually compete with the big boys.

    jm

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  12. Ben Gunby about 1 year ago

    South Carolina wasn't a bowl team.

    With the ascension of South Florida, Urban's present in Florida, Saban's place in Tuscaloosa, I don't think Miami and FSU will be able to reclaim such dominance. A lot of Big East schools have been tapping into Florida as well, and the sucess those schools are achieving will only make it tougher on the 'Canes and 'Noles.

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  13. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    get a grip. "accomplished more than any team in the BE..." The storied histories of Pitt and Syracuse extend FAR beyond the recent successes of the Florida teams. and VT, what were they doing prior to their entry into the BE??? nothing.

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  14. Anonymous about 1 year ago

    thanks for the correction ben. sorry for the oversight w/s.carolina. just seeing if you were paying attention ;)

    jm

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    • About the Author Ben Gunby (analyst)

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