Powerless: With Tech Floundering, The ACC Has Little To Hang Its Hat On

After watching these first couple of weeks of college football, I have concluded that predictions in the world of sports are really worth just about the amount as the paper they’re printed on.

In case you were wondering, that means that they’re worth approximately nine thousandths of a cent, which is the price of a sheet of copy paper from Staples in a 5,000-sheet container.

That’s not a lot.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, it means that preseason predictions are worth crap.

At the beginning of the season, the Atlantic Coast Conference had five teams in the Top 25: Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Miami, Florida State, and North Carolina.

Now they have one—Miami, which sits at number 17 in the current poll.

Prior to the start of the college football season, the ACC was bragging about how it was a deep conference, how there were going to be multiple teams representing the conference in significant bowls, how Miami was on its way to greatness once again and how Virginia Tech could reasonably look to compete with the top teams in the land.

It seemed like every team in the conference was either going to improve or reaffirm the notion that they are indeed worth all of the preseason hype (Even the Duke Blue Devils heard talk of a possible bowl appearance. DUKE!!!).

Now look. Virginia Tech is 0-2 after falling to Boise State and James Madison, North Carolina has more players in hot water than they have starters, and Georgia Tech lost to unranked Kansas.

Florida State was humiliated by Oklahoma on the road in a game where all fans of the ACC were hoping and expecting they would at least contend in. At least Miami made their game with Ohio State respectable, even if they didn’t look all that good doing it.

In short, all of the teams that were supposed to proudly represent the ACC as the conference marched on to glory have lost and have not looked good in the process.

While the falls of North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Miami, and Florida State are all certainly damaging to the outlook of the conference in 2010, Virginia Tech getting edged by non-BCS power Boise State and then falling to James Madison is the nail in the coffin that hurts just a bit more than the other ones.

The Hokies were the one team ranked in the Top 10 this preseason from the ACC. They have talent, a great coach in Frank Beamer, a great fan base, and they have been on the edge of making it over the hump for the past several years.

This was supposed to be their year. The Hokies were supposed to break in to the upper-echelon of the collegiate football elite and bring some long sought after respect to the conference.

As Heather Dinich of ESPN said in her blog back on August 23 when the preseason AP poll was announced: “…expectations for the conference have never been higher.”

Remember how much I told you preseason predictions were worth again?

Just two weeks into a season that was supposed to be a breakout year for the conference (any year that people think Duke can compete for a bowl is one of absurdly high expectations), the ACC finds itself floundering. Any talk of the ACC being competitive with the other legitimate power conferences in the nation has to be discounted, at least for now.

Virginia Tech’s fall has put the conference in the undesirable position of having not one signature team within its ranks. Sure Miami is still ranked, but they’re number 17, and you can’t convince me that they would be able to compete with the top three teams from the SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12. Maybe the Big East or the Pac-10, but they’d probably struggle.

Looking at the conference as a whole and trying to measure out its top teams, a combination of Boise State, TCU, and Utah would, in all likelihood make a more formidable trio than Virginia Tech, Miami, and Georgia Tech.

(Don’t believe me? Well, we all know the result between the Hokies and Boise; Utah has already beaten Pittsburgh; and TCU dispatched with Oregon State, a formidable opponent in the Pac-10. These three teams would certainly hold their own against any three teams the ACC would choose to represent itself.)

It’s an unfortunate and sorry state for the conference. Based on the quality of the teams and the lack of performance from the top tier programs in the conference, is it safe to really call the ACC a true power conference?

After two weeks, the conference breaks down like this:

Top-Tier: Miami.

At least they had a respectable game against the second-ranked team in the nation. This is the one ACC team at the moment that can support its preseason Top 25 ranking and can probably compete with the better teams in the other power conferences. But don’t believe for a second that they’d be able to run with the likes of Florida, Alabama, Texas, and the other teams of that class.

Underachieving: Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Florida State

These four teams should be better than they are. Virginia Tech is self-explanatory. North Carolina is in this dog house more for the reason that they can’t seem to find a group of 22 players that can abide by the rules (no matter how dumb the rules are) and, as these investigations progress, seemingly end up in even hotter water. Florida State is here because they didn’t even make their game against the Sooners interesting. And Georgia Tech, who should theoretically be second best in the conference behind the Hokies, can’t beat a middling Big Twelve program.

Respectable, but not doing much to help the conference: Wake Forest, Boston College, Clemson, Maryland, North Carolina State, Virginia, Duke

This makes up a majority of the conference. These are teams that have simply beaten the team they’re supposed to because their opponents aren’t good (Clemson, BC, etc.) or didn’t have very high expectations to begin with, so whether they win or lose doesn’t affect the conference that much.

To recap, the ACC has one solid program, a bunch of teams that are OK but won’t really threaten anyone else from another power conference, and four teams that are either disappointing (Florida State, North Carolina, Georgia Tech) or just a flat out disaster at this point (Virginia Tech).

Intimidating.

If I’m an SEC or a Big Ten school, I’m calling up schools like Virginia Tech and Florida State and signing a two-year contract with them so that in the next several seasons I can pummel the best teams from a fellow “power” conference to make myself look good early on.

Hell, it’s easier than signing on to play a decent school from another power conference as Kansas proved against Georgia Tech.

Keep in mind, this could all change, and, in November, we could all look back and say that it was just a slow start.

Virginia Tech could rally and finish 10-2. So could any of these ACC schools.

But right now, with its premier schools down and out at the moment, the ACC cannot really call itself a power conference at all. It’s a pretender, not a contender.

As I said before, predictions are worth their weight in…well, nothing, really.

So take this with a grain of salt, nay, take it with several pounds of it and then just watch the season play out:

Based on the early season results, the ACC is not a power, and they will not be one this year. It will not be a player in any major bowls and any bowl wins will come in games where the ACC team greatly outclasses its opponent in terms of raw talent.

But hey, look at the bright side: With so much mediocrity running around the ACC right now, just maybe my Dukies can grab those six wins.

But after their loss to Wake Forest, I may need all the salt in the ocean for that one.