The Real Truth: Can ACC Football Ever Be the Best?

Okay. What's with the lacrosse picture? 

Well, the ACC is the home of the best lacrosse in the world. No small accomplishment. Unless you recognize that it is also home to more prep school types than any other conference.

Yep. If you went to Choate and could not get in the bigs or did not want to go with your same buds, you can always go ACC.

So what in the world is it about this group of quasi-Ivy Leaguers that takes football fancy's flight into virtually unknown territory? Is it just the schools south of North Carolina?

And what are these upstarts going to do? Beat the SEC? At the game they made famous? Is Bear Bryant's crowd of beer-drinking, gospel-abiding, truck-driving hell-raisers going to kowtow to these fancy dancies with so little place in football history they are regularly mocked as a joke?

Forget about it.

Yet there are signs that living in states next door to and in the midst of the mighty and powerful can do some good. Maybe not in recruiting from there. Yet maybe so.

ESPN, a sporting center of knowledge, seems to think that the ACC is ready. Why else would they pit LSU against North Carolina?

The NCAA seems to think so. Why else would Carolina be so elevated in the latest investigation?

Even the fans think so. Why else would Carolina find itself elevated into USC by so many fans because of this investigation?

In the end, the ACC is the conference most love to hate. Quasi-Ivy Leaguers seeking to put their noses in the air and rule another big-time sport. Conference invader hated in most of New England and parts south after their ruinous raid against the Big East. Recruiting invader into Indiana and Ohio, where lumbering Big Ten schools are supposed to rule. Putting five teams in the top 25 in many recruiting polls.

These all point to a breakout year for the ACC. The Real Truth is that it will be.