The Real Truth: Will ACC Dominate SEC This Decade?

College football has had its ups and downs over the last decade. One of the things this new millennium brought was back to the college football basics. Traditional teams like the Southern California Trojans, the Texas Longhorns, the Oklahoma Sooners, even the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Ohio State Buckeyes, rose to the top since the last century drew to a close.

While college football tradition was resurrected, it occurred in the midst of the biggest mess college football has ever known. Conference demise, conference raiding, and conference reconstruction ruled the day in the 1990s and the past ten years. Major programs ended up in different locations, with some bringing with them the weight of the future. Especially in the Midwest and Southwest.

Yet this season change is in the air. The biggest benefactors of this change could be the ACC, a conference so maligned it has eaten crow during most of its history on the gridiron.

The ACC expanded during 2004 to become a major player in college football. Six years later, the ACC has a real chance to make that goal a reality.

Starting with the opening weekend, with Virginia Tech-Boise State and North Carolina-Louisiana State, the ACC has a handful of national spotlight games that would alter the league's reputation as "good but not great."

Miami's trip to Ohio State on Sept.11 might be the only obstacle on the Buckeyes' path to the Bowl Championship Series title game. Florida State will go to Oklahoma the same day. An ACC sweep in those contests would set off a wave of "Miami and FSU are back" stories.

The SEC and ACC have a long history together. Alabama's wins over Virginia Tech and Clemson by large margins could have flamed "the SEC is superior" crowd which includes most football pundits and aficionados. And other statistics also bear them out.

The SEC has the most alumni playing in the NFL. The 2008 NFL opening day active rosters showed 259 former SEC football players on NFL rosters. The ACC was second with 254 players; the Big Ten was third with 227; Pac-10 -- 178; Big 12 -- 170; Big East -- 87. The SEC has led all conferences with the most NFL players every year since 2001. In the 2009 NFL draft, again, the SEC led all conferences with 8 first rounders and 37 players drafted overall.

So what in the world is this deal about the SEC being so much better? Certainly, before 2008 talent in both conferences was about the same. In fact, the results on the field in 2008 were sufficient so that the most pro-SEC blog around admitted that the results on the field between the conferences had the ACC ahead.

But, the final big stat relevant to the SEC vs ACC rivalry is that the ACC was the only conference in 2008 to beat the SEC in head to head competition. Despite going 0-2 vs the SEC in bowl games, the ACC still managed to take 6 of 10 games between the two conferences in 2008.

If this were all, then the 2009 season should have seen a shift.  It did not. But it did continue a trend that has occurred starting in the 2000s. Namely, the SEC fared worse as that decade concluded than historically. 

Will the lack of any significant difference in talent prove significant in the future?

The best way to tell is this season, the first of this decade. If UNC beats LSU, then we have a much more likely trend for the future. The spread is almost silly if one considers history. UNC is a very small dog despite the distractions some claim will be significant in the game. LSU has had outstanding recruiting classes over the past six years. And UNC is largely unproven in huge games, which this clearly is for both sides.

While Les Miles has his detractors, Butch Davis may be the most over-rated college coach in history. After all, while his team won the national championship the year after he left Miami, his teams have never won a championship. Some believe that Davis and Miami deserved the national championship game in 2000, and they probably would have won that year.

So in the end, with the same talent, the question mark for the ACC is coaching. This year, we will see if there is still a gap. The answer could result in a vastly different landscape for this decade.

And that is The Real Truth.