(09-19-2016 03:46 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(09-19-2016 03:03 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  We are literally in uncharted territory in ACC football right now. This conference has NEVER been this good.

The gold standard for ACC football is (laughably? depressingly? fittingly?) 2003, the last year prior to expansion. The ACC finished #1 in the Sagarin and was clearly the best conference.

Georgia Tech limped to a bowl game in the middle of the pack ... and blasted BCS top 10 Stanford in the Seattle Bowl with an interim coach. The league was top to bottom good. The only bad egg was Duke, which was historically terrible.

Please. I hope you mean "prior to the last few years".

Here was the final AP poll. The ACC had zero top ten teams, and three ranked teams total, and not one ACC team finished above the MAC champion.

Nobody judges a conference by how good the second or third worst team is. The ACC only had two teams in the top 25 going into bowl season.

But it's a good example how strength in the middle has been the ACC's standard and it's been terrible for the football image.

1. USC
2. LSU
3. Oklahoma
4. Ohio State
5. Miami (Fla.)
6. Michigan
7. Georgia
8. Iowa
9. Washington State
10. Miami (Ohio)
11. Florida State
12. Texas
13. Mississippi
14. Kansas State
15. Tennessee
16. Boise State
17. Maryland
18. Purdue
19. Nebraska
20. Minnesota
21. Utah
22. Clemson
23. Bowling Green
24. Florida
25. TCU