For the old hats, as I am young and ignorant.  When we and UVA were winning in the early 90s, and FSU was beating everybody into the ground in the mid-late 90s, did the ACC have the rep the SEC does now?  It seems to me that the media wouldn't have deviated from that model (i.e. 1 conference with two national championship contenders is the best thing ever while conferences with a bunch of good teams, but not REALLY good teams, are not) and that's exactly what the ACC was back then.  But then again, I've only been paying attention to CFB since 2008, so what do I know?