Forget subtraction by addition, ACC troubles deeper
July 21, 2008
By Gregg Doyel
CBSSports.com National Columnist
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GREENSBORO, Ga. -- The food is free. The drinks are free. So are the cigars. They're big, they're stinky, and they're everywhere, these cigars. If you're lucky enough to attend the 2008 ACC Football Kickoff, even the golf is free -- and the golf is fabulous.

A typical round on the Rees Jones-designed Oconee Course at Reynolds Plantation costs $260. More than 130 people signed up to play Monday, all on the ACC's dime. That's about 338,000 dimes, but then, the ACC is flush with money.

What the ACC isn't flush with is great football.


The ACC would prefer to have both, obviously, but given the choice between football and finances the ACC will grab the cash every time. That's why the conference's ruthless expansion of 2004 was an unqualified success.

The ACC was rich, but it wanted to be richer. Objective met.

Thanks to expansion, the 12-school football conference has a $258 million TV contract, roughly twice the value of its previous deal with nine schools. Even with the ACC title game playing to crickets in Jacksonville, the annual league payout for each school has risen nearly 20 percent since expansion, to almost $12 million. As a result, ACC football facilities are going up almost as fast as ACC coaching salaries.

So what if the actual product has gone down?

The ACC once competed annually for the national championship. The competition was almost always created by one team, Florida State, but the rest of the league was credible. North Carolina (21-3 in 1997-98), Georgia Tech (10-2 in '98) and Maryland (31-8 in 2001-03) took turns making runs, and the middle of the pack was dangerous. In the four years before expansion, league teams went 14-10 in bowl games. In the four years since, the ACC has had seven extra bowl bids -- and lost all seven. ACC teams are 14-17 in expansion-era bowls.

What has become of the ACC since expansion defies logic. The ACC had a solid foundation before adding national powerhouses Miami and Virginia Tech, plus usually rugged Boston College, yet the bigger, stronger league has become undeniably weaker, less relevant. There have been no national championship contenders. There have barely been teams in the Top 10. Since expansion, the ACC's best individual finish in the AP Top 25 was No. 7 Virginia Tech in 2005. The highest-rated ACC team in 2006 was Wake Forest, at No. 18.

Most people figure the two are connected. The ACC inflated ... the ACC deteriorated. There's your cause. There's your effect. Let's go play a round of free golf!

But it's simply not true. Tempting as it is to pin the ACC's football freefall of today on its greed of 2004, it's not accurate. Expansion didn't drive ACC football into a recession. In fact, the two are completely unrelated. Virginia Tech and Boston College are the only teams keeping the ACC above the MAC. Considering that, expansion went right.

Here's what went wrong.

Bobby Bowden got old: It is what it is. As Bowden has become less coach and more figurehead at Florida State, the Seminoles fell back to the pack. And then behind it. Florida State reached its nadir (FSU fans hope) in 2006 when it tied for ninth in the league at 3-5, as many ACC losses as it suffered in 1992-2002 combined. Expansion didn't render Bowden obsolete. He was heading there anyway. The current FSU senior class -- and the ACC -- has paid the price.

Says FSU quarterback Drew Weatherford: "We've had to change our mindset. We used to go into the year thinking about national championships. We had this chip on our shoulder like, 'We're Florida State, it's going to happen for us.' It hasn't happened that way."

Butch Davis got out: Double whammy: Along with FSU, the ACC's other anticipated bedrock, Miami, slipped. Davis rebuilt the program from its NCAA ruins, bequeathing Larry Coker a team that would win the 2001 national title in his first season, but ultimately Coker was out of place. After going 35-3 with Davis' players, he went 25-12 with his own before being fired in 2006. Expansion didn't slam Miami; Coker did. Last season, under new coach Randy Shannon, Miami was 5-7. Players signed up for Miami but ended up more like Maryland. And they're not pleased.

Says UM defensive end Eric Moncur: "I was a little upset about that, but we have to take it on ourselves. Those teams that won titles, that wasn't us. We have to do it on our own."

The ACC got sentimental: A burst of nostalgic hires mostly backfired. In 2000 N.C. State hired Chuck Amato, an alum, and fired him seven years later. In 2001 North Carolina hired alum John Bunting, Miami promoted Coker, Maryland hired alum Ralph Friedgen and Virginia hired alum Al Groh. In 2002 Georgia Tech hired Americus, Ga., native Chan Gailey. Results? Bunting, Coker and Gailey have been fired. After a sizzling start, Friedgen's program has had four years of mediocrity. Groh is the best of the bunch, but he's still George Welsh Lite. And George Welsh Regular was no world-beater.


Bobby Bowden is no spring chicken these days.
Mediocre quarterbacks: The ACC regressed at the most critical position. FSU and Miami devolved from multiple Heisman winners to Chris Rix and Kyle Wright. N.C. State's renaissance under Amato began -- and ended -- with Philip Rivers. Other than Boston College's Matt Ryan, the league has been barren at quarterback.

The ACC will no doubt offer another take Tuesday when commissioner John Swofford spins for the media -- not mentioning the ACC won half as many bowl games last season (two) as the Mountain West (four), but pointing out that no conference since 2006 has had more players drafted by the NFL than the ACC. Which is true.

The ACC also set NFL Draft records by having 51 players selected in 2005, 12 first-round picks that same year, and two players among the top four overall picks in each of the past three drafts. Those are facts, mysterious as they may be, adding another paradox to the riddle that has become ACC football.

With more powerhouse programs than ever, and more powerhouse players than ever, ACC football is worse than ever. Whether the participants believe it or not.

"Lots of people, friends of mine around the country, make jokes that 'the ACC is weak,'" says Miami tackle Jason Fox. "I don't think people realize how good this conference is."

Wrong, Jason. People have a pretty good idea.

Ouch.


I like it, keep it coming!

Could it be that with the salaries the NBA is paying plus the fact that hoops players can be one and done, that the ACC football programs are loosing too many top athletes to hoops.

It's definitely affected the Midwest. With the rise in prominence of hoops programs like Xavier, Marquette, Butler, Dayton, etc; there are even more programs that have their games televised and more media attention payed to them than before. A HS athlete sees how much more rigorous offseason training is for football than hoops plus he has a faster road to more $.

With previously unknown programs like Davidson in NC getting huge national TV exposure the drain of top athletes to hoops will continue. You can bet a sizeable chunk of cash that with last year's final 4 appearance, Davidson will get alot more attention this year. Athletes in NC will no longer have to get offered by an ACC school to get media attention and those players likely could have turned out to be talented football players. I know this is a little long winded and hope I'm making some sense here.

onlinepole Wrote:Could it be that with the salaries the NBA is paying plus the fact that hoops players can be one and done, that the ACC football programs are loosing too many top athletes to hoops.

It's definitely affected the Midwest. With the rise in prominence of hoops programs like Xavier, Marquette, Butler, Dayton, etc; there are even more programs that have their games televised and more media attention payed to them than before. A HS athlete sees how much more rigorous offseason training is for football than hoops plus he has a faster road to more $.

With previously unknown programs like Davidson in NC getting huge national TV exposure the drain of top athletes to hoops will continue. You can bet a sizeable chunk of cash that with last year's final 4 appearance, Davidson will get alot more attention this year. Athletes in NC will no longer have to get offered by an ACC school to get media attention and those players likely could have turned out to be talented football players. I know this is a little long winded and hope I'm making some sense here.

I see what you're saying here, but this isn't exactly an ACC or Midwest issue - this trend has been happening across the country. If an athlete has a chance to be legitimately great in either basketball or football but could only choose one to focus on, most would choose basketball because the potential dollars are greater, the careers are longer, there are less chances of catastrophic injuries, there are guaranteed contracts in the NBA, if a player doesn't make the NBA he can still make a living playing overseas, etc. Not everyone necessarily makes the exact same choice, but as a whole, it's the "invisible hand" of the free market that directs most athletes in this situation to basketball, regardless of whether they live in ACC, Big Ten, Big East, SEC, Big 12 or Pac-10 areas.

As to the other part of your comment, there are outliers such as Davidson and George Mason at the mid-major level every year, but that doesn't mean that top-level players will pass up spots at UNC and Duke for places at schools such as those. There are certainly "overlooked" players at mid-major schools that eventually develop into top-level players once they play for a couple of years, yet the McDonald's High School All-Americans will continue to pretty much all go the top BCS conference schools (or equivalents such as Memphis).

The bigger issue for college basketball is whether the "one-and-done" players start going overseas to play professionally for a year in the manner of Brandon Jennings as opposed to going to college. That will have a much bigger impact on the major basketball powers than the Davidsons of the world.