In football, the ACC will never be the SEC
By Matt Hayes - Sporting News
May 22, 12:06 pm EDT
Look, I don’t want to go off just because it’s easier to react and attack than reflect and respect. That said, I can hold these thoughts no longer: The ACC blew it when it expanded to 12 teams.
As we head into the fourth season of the 12-team ACC, it’s obvious things just aren’t working out—at least on the field. This, everyone, is what happens when money dictates change.
“There were numerous reasons for expansion,” says ACC commissioner John Swofford.
At the top of the list: greed and envy. There’s a reason those are two of the seven deadly sins.
In the three seasons since the ACC grew to 12, it has yet to win a BCS bowl game—in fact, the conference has lost its last eight BCS games—and hasn’t sniffed the national title chase. No big-boy conference has a worse record in the elite bowl games.
By comparison, the SEC has won three national titles in the past five seasons and has the best record of all conferences in BCS bowls since the format was adopted in 1998. Why do I bring up the SEC? Because the SEC is part of the reason the ACC is in this mess.
The ACC has always had a little brother complex when it comes to the SEC. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous notion—but one that is strong both at the administrative level of the league and within the fan base.
The SEC became a behemoth by expanding to 12 teams in 1992 and adding a championship game. Then came the exclusive network television contract with CBS. No other league gets guaranteed network national television games every week—it’s unheard of.
So why wouldn’t the ACC follow that plan? The problem: It’s a basketball league, and it wasn’t ready.
Other than at Florida State and Clemson, football wasn’t—and still isn’t—a priority in the ACC. Moreover, league administrators oversold the value of adding Miami and Virginia Tech to boost the football quotient and compounded the problem by placing the league championship game in the heart of the SEC in Jacksonville, Fla.
Instead of placing the game in Charlotte—in the heart of Tobacco Road—and leaving it there for a distinct identity, the game will be played in yet another SEC hot spot (Tampa) for the next two years before finally arriving in Charlotte in 2010. By then, it will be too late.
Last week, the ACC held its annual spring meetings and boasted about producing more NFL firstround draft picks (25) over the past three years than any conference.
“The draft tells you where the talent is,” says North Carolina coach Butch Davis.
And that statement tells you where the ACC is.
The conference that changed because of greed is embracing the league of gluttony to pump up its image.
This article appeared on the Sporting News website on Thursday, May 22, 2008.
