(09-21-2016 08:39 AM)IHAVETRIED Wrote:  

(09-21-2016 08:20 AM)Lou_C Wrote:  

(09-20-2016 10:01 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(09-20-2016 12:25 PM)Lou_C Wrote:  

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

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaaf/sag...onference/

Code:

1  ATLANTIC COAST      (A) =  79.91      79.11  (  1)   TEAMS=  9
College Football 2003 thru Sunday, January 4, 2004 - FINAL            the BCS uses the ELO-CHESS from here
HOME ADVANTAGE=  3.45           RATING    W   L  SCHEDL(RANK) VS top 10 | VS top 30 |  ELO-CHESS   |  PREDICTOR  
   6  Florida St.          A  =  90.55   10   3   79.43(   2)    1   2  |    4   3  |   88.66   10 |   92.07    4
  10  Maryland             A  =  87.46   10   3   73.24(  43)    0   1  |    3   1  |   85.71   13 |   88.80   10
  17  Clemson              A  =  85.25    9   4   75.33(  23)    1   2  |    3   3  |   85.34   15 |   84.69   15
  26  No. Carolina St.     A  =  82.01    8   5   75.27(  24)    0   2  |    3   3  |   80.25   27 |   83.35   23
  27  Virginia             A  =  81.81    8   5   75.68(  18)    0   2  |    0   4  |   79.72   29 |   83.53   19
  33  Georgia Tech         A  =  79.66    7   6   77.24(   6)    1   2  |    3   4  |   78.18   36 |   80.68   32
  46  Wake Forest          A  =  74.51    5   7   76.30(  12)    0   2  |    2   4  |   72.31   60 |   76.32   43
  75  Duke                 A  =  66.63    4   8   75.20(  26)    0   2  |    0   6  |   66.68   82 |   66.08   81
  93  North Carolina       A  =  64.16    2  10   76.62(  11)    0   2  |    0   5  |   60.40  107 |   67.64   75

My memory is hazy. Corrections:

1) That wasn't the year GT was in the Seattle Bowl. That was Chan Gailey's first year. Bleech. Nevermind GT.
2) IT wasn't Duke that was historically bad it was UNC.

Yeah, I know you said that Sagarin rated the ACC the best. Literally nobody that watches college football cares what Sagarin has to say.

Again, the MAC champ finished higher ranked than any ACC team. Zero top ten teams. That season was another trash season for the ACC, even though it had decent teams throughout the middle.

"Literally" nobody?? No one from 340m people?

Well, I guess I must be 'nobody'.

Wow! Uninformed hyperbole much?

Sagarin ratings are one of the best predictors and have been for 25 years.

Go and do a statistical correlation and provide the data.

Yes, "literally nobody" is hyperbole. So is suggesting that a statistically insignificant difference in an average rating from one of many computer rankings is evidence that the ACC was "clearly the best conference" that year.