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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Remaining on John Swofford's Office Wall

As I revealed here two weeks ago, my inside sources informed me that John Swofford had placed an order with one of those corporate-motivational-poster companies to encompass his pride in his new and expanded ACC.

Allow me to redisplay his coveted framed piece here once more, because it sadly rings very true.....



Please note the subtitle of the piece -- "Possibly Better Than The Sun Belt". To the ACC's credit, I think we can remove "possibly" from that thought, but just barely.

Three different ACC clubs have played three different Sun Belt squads in 4 separate games so far this season - all at the ACC team's home field. The results are as follows:

Florida State 24 - Troy 17
Maryland 24 - Middle Tennessee 10
Georgia Tech 35 - Troy 20
Maryland 14 - Florida International 10

Since those matchups noted above, Troy managed to hold Nebraska to just eight touchdowns in a 56-0 squeaker, while Middle Tennessee played toe-to-toe with Oklahoma for approximately four minutes last Saturday in a 59-0 nailbiter. The combined margin of victory of the ACC schools over the Sun Belt schools (40) did not quite match Oklahoma's margin over Middle Tennessee in the first half of their matchup (45).

And the Big XII is supposedly having a "down" year on par with the ACC?

Alas, if your ACC spirit hasn't yet been stomped into powdery despair, tune in Thursday for the week 5 preview.

2 comments:

mobius said...

Come on, Marcus, it ain't that bad. Clemson's looking good, GT is underrated, and we're still not sure about Virginia Tech. I think FSU isn't done this year either. If they win the rest of their conference games - and the toughest ones are behind them - they just need one upset of Clemson and they're headed back to Jacksonville.

Can we get rid of NC State though? First they lose to Akron and Southern Miss and humiliate the conference. Than they upset BC and knock off one of the few remaining contenders. Wolfpack bastards are killing the ACC right now...

Marcus said...

I know, I know, the post was a bit toungue in cheek. But still, we would rag on the SEC crowd if they mustered such unimpressive results against the Sun Belt.

The real problem with the ACC is that there's no real national title contender, but there are plenty of bottom feeders (UNC, UVA, Duke). Each major conference currently has at least two programs with a shot at the national title, while the ACC has just one for now (VT) and they'll go down this weekend against the Jackets.

And NC State is now on my official Oh Crap Just What We Needed watch. FSU has enough problems with the Pack as it is. Now we have to go there an a cursed Thursday night and face a jacked-up team and a jacked-up crowd. Amato may be a poor head coach over the course of a season(s), but he can rally his team like few others on a game-by-game basis.