This is hilarious considering the circumstances...

Associated Press Wrote:After a down 2006, ACC looks to get swagger back
By JOEDY McCREARY, AP Sports Writer
July 22, 2007

http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news;_ylt=...&type=lgns

PINEHURST, N.C. (AP) -- Calais Campbell and Miami have something to prove. So does the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

A year after the super-sized league was ridiculed as weak when traditional powers Miami and Florida State struggled, those teams -- and the ACC as a whole -- are out this season to restore their reputations.

"You come here to win games. You come here to be a part of something great," Campbell said Sunday during the first day of the league's three-day media event.

"When people count us out and say that we're not a part of something like that, it hurts. It's like saying we're not good enough to do it," he added. "Right now, it's motivation for us. ... We've got a chip on our shoulder."

So does the entire league.

The ACC is hoping to return to prominence after a trying season in which two of its highest-profile programs -- the Seminoles and Hurricanes -- combined to lose 12 games. Miami took part in one of the lowlights of the season when it engaged Florida International in a vicious on-field brawl.

Three coaches were fired, and no team placed higher in the final rankings than No. 18 Wake Forest -- a most unlikely conference champion after it was the preseason pick to finish last in its division.

"A lot of it is just the attitude," Florida State's Andre Fluellen said. "When I first got there, we expected to win every game. Now, it's like, 'Well, we might win this game, squeak by this game.' It shouldn't be like that. We should be expected and looking like we're going to win every game, no matter what."

That kind of swagger largely was missing a year ago in Tallahassee and Coral Gables. Both teams finished 7-6, far from their normal perches in the Top 25, and those struggles led many observers to the conclusion that when Miami and Florida State are down, so is the rest of the ACC.

Winning, and winning big, "is what they're supposed to do. They're the names people think about when they think of the ACC," Georgia Tech's Tashard Choice said.

Said Campbell: "When it's not like that, then the ACC must not be that good, because the powerhouses aren't really performing."

Others suggest it's a result of the rest of the league finally catching up to the Hurricanes and Seminoles.

"The ACC is a really good conference, but it's beginning to level off," Wake Forest's Jeremy Thompson said. "The talent at one school isn't necessarily that much better than another school."

Miami has yet to match its first season in the expanded ACC when it finished No. 11 in 2004. Florida State hasn't had a top-10 finish since wrapping up 2000 at No. 5 after losing in its most recent appearance in the national championship game.

It has been a steady decline ever since Fluellen's redshirt season in 2003, when the Seminoles finished 11th. They slipped to No. 15 in 2004, fell to No. 23 the following season and tumbled from the rankings last year.

"I looked at Florida State as being in the hunt for the national championship every year," Fluellen said. "My first year, we were kind of in the hunt, and every year after that, we went down a little bit. So we're trying to get this thing back up to where we're looking for the national championship every year."

The only ACC team to finish in the top 10 in the post-expansion era is Virginia Tech, which accomplished it in 2004 and 2005. The Hokies, the popular pick by most preseason magazines as the ACC's team to beat, insist they don't feel any pressure to save the conference's face.

"It's not that much added pressure on us because we come in every year wanting to be ACC champions and then take that to the national championship," defensive tackle Carlton Powell said. "It's the same amount of pressure we had before, the same amount of pressure every year."

Perhaps the most effective way for the ACC to restore its reputation is to halt its Bowl Championship Series futility.

Since the BCS began in 1998, league teams are 1-8 in the major bowl games -- easily the worst record of any conference with an automatic berth -- and the ACC has lost seven straight in BCS.

"Winning. And then winning more games, winning the BCS games or winning bowl games," Choice said. "That's the only way."

I will believe it when I see it. Isn't the ACC regretting not having West Virginia by now?

The ACC should have had WVU from its inception. All ACC schools, like WVU, were members of the old Southern Conference. The North Carolina schools (UNC primarily) blocked WVU's entry when the ACC was founded. They didn't want to have to travel to Morgantown over the old mountain roads, and at the time WVU was a national power. North Carolina didn't want the competition either. But WVU has always wanted an affiliation for its sports programs.

SI.com Wrote:The ACC: How Low Can You Go?
7/24/2007 12:55:00 PM

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/si_blog...ou-go.html


Bobby Bowden's Florida State team hasn't finished in the Top 10 since 2000.
AP

The ACC's coaches and players gathered in Pinehurst, N.C., Sunday and Monday for ACC Media Days, and one can only wonder how many of the writers who attended were there solely for the golf outing.

The nation's grandest basketball-conference-charading-as-a-football-power has hit a pretty indisputable rough patch. Check out these damning statistics from Bob Lipper's column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

∙ Last season, the ACC went 6-16 against opponents from other BCS conferences.

∙ The conference is 3-31 against top-10 opponents since 2000.

∙ Its league champion has lost in its bowl game seven straight years.

It's no coincidence that those unflattering statistics coincide with the recent demise of longtime league dynasty Florida State, whose last AP top-10 finish came in 2000. The question is, why have none of the league's other pre-expansion members been able to take advantage of the Seminoles' struggles?

At the beginning of this decade, nearly every school in the league either changed coaches, significantly upgraded their facilities or both. In 2000, N.C. State hired Chuck Amato. The next year, Maryland hired Ralph Friedgen, Virginia hired Al Groh, Wake Forest hired Jim Grobe, UNC hired John Bunting and Georgia Tech hired Chan Gailey. Nearly all of them generated significant buzz early (particularly Friedgen and Amato) but have failed to maintain the momentum (and in Amato and Bunting's cases, got fired). Only Grobe and Gailey's programs could currently be classified as "on the rise."

This is why it's no coincidence that my annual worst-coaches list has had a heavy ACC slant every year. You can't tell me there isn't talent in the ACC. Just two years ago, the league had more players selected in the NFL's first round (12) than any other conference. But with the exception of newcomer Virginia Tech, no one has been able to produce a consistent, national power.

Not surprisingly, then, most of the popular themes at Pinehurst this week involved ... improvement. As in, will Florida State return to prominence with its new coaching staff? Ditto Miami with new head coach Randy Shannon. Will new coaches Tom O'Brien and Butch Davis restore credibility at N.C. State and North Carolina? Will perennial underachiever Clemson finally turn the corner?

Or will the ACC remain largely irrelevant nationally for at least another season? What do you think?

I love it!!!