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How ACC making a play for #1 in CFB
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Exclamation How ACC making a play for #1 in CFB
From Athlon Sports: How the ACC is Making a Serious Play for College Football Conference Supremacy

Quote:A funny thing happened in college football last season: The ACC was the best conference. No, seriously. We’re only a couple years removed from a time when the ACC regularly challenged the old Big East for the label of worst major football conference. From 1998 through 2011, the ACC had a 2–13 record in BCS bowls and was a laughingstock.
 
But the narrative turned dramatically in 2016. It wasn’t just that Clemson topped Alabama for the national title, although that certainly helped. But Clemson also routed Ohio State in the semifinals, Florida State edged Michigan at the Orange Bowl and the ACC had a combined 16–6 record vs. the SEC and Big Ten. From 2004-13, the ACC was 30–54 vs. the SEC, which used to lord over the sport. Since 2014, the ACC is 19–13 vs. the SEC.

...

The SEC still has more money than the ACC, which plans to launch a TV network with ESPN by 2019... The ACC won’t always be this good in football. The SEC won’t always be Alabama And Everyone Else. But the ACC, which has always fielded a lot of NFL-caliber talent, at least now has the blueprint for sustained success.
 
Hiring Better Coaches
...The eat-or-be-eaten world of the SEC seems to have turned off some coaches. Tom Herman chose Texas over LSU... Look who the ACC hired in 2016: Miami’s Mark Richt, Syracuse’s Dino Babers, Virginia’s Bronco Mendenhall and Virginia Tech’s Justin Fuente. Prior to their arrival at their respective schools, they had a combined .698 winning percentage and 307 career wins. Meanwhile, the ACC had previously brought in Pat Narduzzi (Pittsburgh), Bobby Petrino (Louisville) and Dave Clawson (Wake Forest) to increase the depth...
  
Quarterback Play
In recent years, the ACC closed the gap with the SEC by gaining an edge at quarterback. Elite quarterbacks from the ACC/SEC footprint started swinging to the ACC. Jameis Winston started the trend by leaving Birmingham, Ala., for Florida State. Deshaun Watson was raised in Gainesville, Ga., but he became a Clemson Tiger, not a Georgia Bulldog...
 
“Quarterback is where I think the rest of the country, especially the ACC, has been able to close the gap to a degree on the SEC,” says Senior Bowl executive director Phil Savage, a former NFL general manager. “The [ACC] quarterback play is just better than in the SEC. People argue the defenses in the SEC are better, and that’s probably true. But for just the pure spinning of the football and the overall arm talent, there’s been a quartet of [ACC] guys that can really throw it.”

...

The SEC had one passer in 2016 ranked among the top 25 in quarterback rating (Dobbs), according to CFBStats.com. The ACC had six (Pittsburgh’s Nathan Peterman, North Carolina’s Mitch Trubisky, Virginia Tech’s Jerod Evans, Watson, Kaaya and Jackson).
 
Improved Defenses
According to Bill Connelly’s S&P+ rankings, eight of the top 22 defenses in the country last season came from the ACC: No. 6 Clemson, No. 10 Florida State, No. 11 NC State, No. 13 Miami, No. 17 Virginia Tech, No. 19 Louisville, No. 21 Boston College and No. 22 Wake Forest. Only the Big Ten, which had worse offenses, played better defense on average than the ACC based on the S&P+ rankings.

...Having several quality defenses was a huge key for the SEC becoming a major power. The last time the ACC seriously tried to compete with the SEC was more than a decade ago.

Is ACC Success Sustainable?
Herein lies the major question for the ACC: How many of its schools really want to win big in football? Clemson and Florida State are givens. They’ve got SEC-style fan bases and history. Virginia Tech has a passionate fan base that wants to return to the glory years of Frank Beamer. Richt returned to his alma mater to try to reinvigorate “The U,” and Miami is raising millions of dollars to build an indoor practice facility. Louisville is the ACC’s best example of a basketball-centric school that has shown how it’s possible to build up football, too.
 
Still, as a whole, the SEC will always have more rabid fans than the ACC, for better or worse. That passion drives schools to win at all costs — sometimes at the expense of NCAA violations (hello, Ole Miss). Who in the ACC is really willing to stay involved in cutthroat recruiting, managing the academic eligibility shell game for pockets of players, and the football spending arms race? Some ACC schools will be willing, but probably not as many as in the SEC.
 
Where the ACC has an edge is coaching stability, and that’s huge...
 
...What changed? “The easy observation is everybody wants what we achieved,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey says.

No kidding. The ACC took the bold step of moving up its media days this summer to compete for one day with the SEC. On July 13, the media can choose between hearing Gus Malzahn, Hugh Freeze and Will Muschamp talk about the SEC, or Dabo Swinney, Jimbo Fisher and Bobby Petrino about the ACC. The SEC could have countered by scheduling Saban on July 13, but didn’t.
 
The ACC has sent a message. Now comes the hard part: Sustaining that success.
 
Game of the Year
It’s long past time to state the obvious: Clemson-Florida State is college football’s best annual game. Rest in peace, Alabama-LSU, at least until the Tigers snap their six-game losing streak to Nick Saban. We see you, Ohio State-Michigan — which had a classic thriller last year — but Jim Harbaugh still must beat Urban Meyer to get the series over the hump.
 
Neither of those games feels like where we’re at with Clemson-Florida State, which is the game that’s most likely to have huge national championship implications each year. That’s what we mean by “best.” We don’t mean best rivalry, most-watched game or even necessarily the most well-played game. Rather, Clemson-Florida State is the one game you can bank on having to watch to figure out the College Football Playoff.

...
 
The talent in Clemson-Florida State games has reached an incredibly high level. From 2011-15, the Clemson-Florida State games produced 62 NFL Draft picks and 12 first-rounders. That’s very close to the Alabama-LSU series (71 draft picks, 16 first-rounders) and Florida-Florida State (64 draft picks, 14 first-rounders).
 
Clemson-Florida State surpasses the talent produced from more hyped annual series, such as Miami-Florida State (55 draft picks, 10 first-rounders), Ohio State-Michigan (43 draft picks, eight first-rounders) and Oklahoma-Texas (40 draft picks, 12 first-rounders).
 
- Written by Jon Solomon

Much more in the link.
06-29-2017 01:36 PM
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