ACC is at Fault

Nov 25, 2012, 7:13 AM

The league prepares a team poorly for real competition in football. FSU and Clemson can ease through the conference schedule and win a bunch of games against the likes of Wake Forest, Maryland, Boston College, and Duke. Even Georgia Tech, with its high school offense, can rack up some victories. However, as we see over and over again, whenever a perceivably good ACC team faces a tough out-of-conference opponent, another ACC loss often results. See the laughably pathetic BCS bowl record for the conference as an example (2-13, worst in the BCS).

The league, for the last eight or so years, is at such a very low level of competitiveness that a team need not be very strong to win many games. On the other hand, in harder conferences like the SEC, the difficulty of your opponents bears out your weaknesses and thereby forces you to work them out in such a way that weaker schedules do not. It is akin to a smart student who attends an academically poor high school. The low quality of his classmates and the curriculum prepares him inadequately for the rigors of college. He therefore struggles mightily in college chemistry and calculus, though he had breezed through high school science and math. His high school never challenged him to tackle the harder questions, read the longer books, and take the tougher courses.

Look at South Carolina. Indeed, it took them twenty years to become a dominant SEC (and therefore national) team. However, the Gamecocks eventually realized that, if they wanted a fighting chance to become league champion, proven head coaches and assistants were needed along with mean defenses. Unless blessed with a superstar like Cam Newton, an SEC school cannot normally climb to the top without a solid defense and a well seasoned coaching staff. High-scoring offences alone will not suffice on the biggest stage in college football (which also may explain Oregon’s or top Big 12 schools’ recent inability to win the national championship).

I have no idea what to do about this seeming impasse. Florida State and Clemson are hindered by their tepid conference opponents from becoming sufficiently good to compete on a national stage. Virginia Tech is, in most years, the league’s only consistently top-fifteen squad and FSU and Clemson, due to divisional rules, only play the Hokies two times per six years. Miami would have provided better competition had the Hurricanes not fallen into mediocrity and scandal. Without a strong Va. Tech or Miami, how can the Seminoles and Tigers be adequately tried by fire to become refined enough to compete with the national big boys?

flag link

military_tech

thumb_down