The Exorcism of Wide Right/Left

Just one week after young Dustin Hopkins' entry into the Seminoles' tortured field goal history, he calmly drops a nuke on all of that nonsense...

Well that was quite entertaining

Yesterday was quite possibly the most exciting weekend in the ACC in many moons. Throw out the Boston College-Wake Forest meh-fest and you had 5 games that all went down to the wire. We had:

• a home team rise up like Lazarus in the 4th quarter to steal a game it had no business winning
• a low-scoring, kinda sloppy, defensive struggle
• a shootout with a basketball score from the the cellar dweller programs
• a freshman QB in his first start lead his team to a last minute win
• yet another crotch punch delivered to one program's fanbase in another last-second loss (Wide Right IV?)

In the whole scheme of things it means little; the division races are basically the same as they were last week and the league will have at most two teams ranked in the Top 25 after this weekend. Nonetheless, this was crackerjack entertainment for anyone looking for some fun football.

And this also seems very familiar...

VIRGINIA TECH (7-2 overall, 5-0 ACC)

The Virginia Tech Hokies, after non-conference pratfalls in the first week(s) of the season, regroup in time to roll through their ACC brethren en route to another league crown.

LSU obliterated the Hokies in early 2007; three months later they were ACC champions. East Carolina turned the tables on Tech in the first game of the '08 season; 90 days later they were celebrating their second straight league crown. The boys from Blacksburg stumbled not only to likely BCS title game participant Boise State in Week 1 of the '10 campaign, but let that hangover beat them again 5 days later in the form of James Freaking Madison. And here we sit two months later as Beamer's crew is 5-0 in the ACC and basically a lock to win the Coastal crown.

What is it about Virginia Tech that makes them so prone to non-conference gaffes while methodically plowing through the ACC? It's not quite so simple. Simply losing at LSU in '07 was no disgrace; but getting butchered was. Still , that LSU team won the national championship that year. And the Hokies, en route to the ACC title, did lose a home conference game later that fall in one of Matt Ryan's miracles. In 2008, Tech stumbled out of the gate to ECU....and proceeded to stumble three more times in ACC play to Boston College, Florida State and Miami. ACC champion in 2008, certainly, but hardly in dominating fashion. And that's really it as far as Tech's pattern of losing early out of conference then winning the league. Will it happen again this year? Probably. Let's just hope they win the Orange Bowl this time.

This seems very familiar

ESPN Thursday night. Florida State at NC State.

For the fourth consecutive time, and fifth overall since FSU began ACC play in 1992, the biennial (not biannual, apparently) Wolfpack-Seminole showdown in Raleigh will highlight ESPN's broadcast on a Thursday evening. And despite all the jitters among the Seminole faithful, the arrangement has been successful for the Noles, who have won three of the four previous Thursday-at-Carter-Finley meetings. Nonetheless, the best Thursday night throwdown between the two was the lone Pack victory, a 24-20 grinder in 2006 that had all sorts of subplots and effects, namely:

• it was then-Wolfpack head coach Chuck Amato's (NCSU letterman '65-'69) last victory in that capacity as NCSU promptly went on a 7-game skid to end the season
• yes, the Chuck Amato who was Florida State's linebackers coach prior to (1982-99) and following (2007-09) his stint as skipper in Raleigh
• it was - debatably - when en-masse finger pointing shifted from Jeff Bowden to Bobby Bowden regarding the slip in the Seminole program; the Jeff experiment as Florida State's offensive coordinator was put out to pasture a month later
  
• it was the beginning of FSU's second slide of the decade - from middle-lower end Top 25 program to perennial six-loss/unranked unit

Soooo.....lots of curious recent history here. Do I have a preview or prediction for tonight? No, I most certainly do not. A prediction is pointless since both teams have had 12 days to prepare, both teams are coming off subpar efforts, both teams have (thus far) performed better than expected, both teams are playing for the clear division lead, and both teams sport the two best quarterbacks in the league - recent struggles be damned.

Should be an interesting game though, if for no other reason than it's the first Florida State-NC State matchup sans any Chuck Amato involvement since 1964, a span of 23 games (1965-69, 1992-2009)

I see things haven't changed much

Well hello there. And to those three diehards who keep checking this space daily to see if my hibernation is over - loves ya Mom, Dad and random stranger!

So it's been a season and a half since I've regaled humankind about ACC football and lo and behold, we still suck according to everyone at ESPN, Yahoo/Rivals, CFN, SEC blogs, most blogs, most message board posts (spelling/grammar very optional), Girl Scout troop 442-Brandon, FL and Lady Gaga (allegedly). And it is time for me to offer a rousing defense.

They're right. But so what.

For the 318th consecutive season, all ACC teams were eliminated from serious national title contention by week 3.

Coincidentally, for the 318th consecutive season, the ACC (thus far) has played a ridiculously unbalanced non-conference slate: ACC #8 Clemson at BCS #1 Ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifuburn; ACC #12 Duke hosting defending BCS champion and current BCS #7 Alabama; ACC #10 Wake Forest at BCS #13 Stanford....just to give you three games from one singular weekend (the enthralling yet inevitably soul-devouring Week 3).

What I wouldn't give to see a weekend where Florida State hosts Northwestern, Miami welcomes Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech entertains Colorado, NC State faces a suspension-depleted Washington in St. Louis....and, oh, let's say Georgia Tech makes an easy road trip to Kansas (wait...what? Retract).

This is not to defend the ACC's overall performance; the Jackets' afore-referenced facepalm in Lawrence is turning out to be one of the biggest non-conference gakks in recent memory (KU vs. three mediocre Big XII teams and North Dakota State = 34pt loss on average; KU vs. top-half ACC team and defending league champ = 3pt win). The Hokies' loss at home to James Madison (that's the 1-3 in the FCS Colonial league James Madison, mind you), despite all the "five days after the Boise loss blah blah blah" justification, was catastrophic for the conference as well since that Tech team is likely to win the dang league in the end. And the team the Hokies are likely to beat for that ACC crown, Florida State, endured a 47-17 dear-God-make-it-stop beating at Oklahoma; the same Oklahoma site where Utah State and Air Force took the Sooners to the wire in the weeks prior and after the FSU visit.

So yes, things have not changed all that much. The ACC keeps sabotaging itself through scheduling, through comically yet easily predictable poor play and tone-deaf self-promotion. At least I can pick up right where I left off.

Still, it is good to be back. For how long, I can't say. But the juices are flowing again.

Adios, muchachos

Five months have gone by since my last post here, and I am acutely aware that this project has run it's course for now. I have neither the time, energy, interest nor desire at this stage of my life to continue this fun little corner of cyberspace. I will not stop following and watching ACC football, but for now I am done blogging about it.

If work and life obligations become less intensive in the future, I will certainly fire this baby back up again. But for now, I bid you farewell.