This week's ACC Roundtable is hosted by Brian and Jeff of BC Interruption. They approach Boston College athletics in a similar fashion to ESPN's TV show "Pardon the Interruption". They also recently moved from Blogger to SBNation so be sure to head on over to BCI to check out their new layout in addition to their upcoming ACC Roundtable Roundup! Our responses are below, and as usual, we would love to see your feedback.
Now that most ACC teams’ non-conference schedules are winding down and we are starting league play, it’s time to take the vitals of the ACC’s play in non-conference action. Here is how the ACC fared against the rest of college football through 4 weeks (based on my back-of-the-envelope math):
BCS Conferences
vs. Big East 2-2 (.500)
vs. Pac 10 1-1 (.500)
vs. Big XII 1-2 (.333)
vs. SEC 0-2 (.000)
The Rest
vs. I-A Indep. 1-0 (1.000)
vs. MAC 1-0 (1.000)
vs. Conference USA 2-1 (.666)
vs. Sun Belt 1-1 (.500)
vs. Mountain West 1-2 (.333)
vs. FCS 9-2 (.818)
Overall 19-13 (.594)
Comment on your team’s (if applicable, sorry Miami) and the conference’s non-conference performance through 4 weeks. As a conference, what head-to-head record against another conference stands out to you most?
GT is an outlier in this statistic as we will begin playing our OOC games this Saturday against the SEC. The ACC is on the verge of becoming what it needs to be, which is a top heavy upper half and a respectable bottom half. The conference has the top half, but those bottom feeders (We're talking to you Duke, Maryland, Virginia) that need to be respectable have accounted for over 60% of the ACC's OOC losses. No matter how much we complain about the SEC and their weak schedules, none of them lose to 1-AA teams.
The ACC still has a chance to go .500 against the SEC as Tech should definitely beat Vandy and MSU and be favored against Georgie. Clemson should win the annual South Carolina "No One Cares Bowl". The problem is timing. When ACC teams lose premiere games on national television at the beginning of the season, we have to deal with all the SEC-loving media.
The ACC still has around 12 or 13 OOC I-A games and should be favored in a majority of them. The only Vegas underdogs we might see are OU @ Miami and FSU @ UF. But guess what? It's too late. Respect is lost easily and almost never regained. If we shut down every OOC opponent from here on out, then we may have a snowball's chance in Hell of regaining some respectability. Bowl games matter a lot as well. Remember last year when the ACC went into bowl season with a winning record against the SEC? We felt pretty good about ourselves and then BAM! We lost that feeling pretty quickly.
(Because we like to fan the ACC vs. Big East flames …) The only BCS conferences the ACC has a .500 record against so far this year is the Big East (4 games) and the Pac-10 (2 games). Yikes. In a weekend where 2 of 3 Big East teams knocked off ACC teams, we have to ask. The ACC is still > Big East, right? Right??
The Big East is on its way back to respectability as we have seen with teams such as South Florida and Cincinnati. South Florida is a pretty legitimate football program that recently knocked off Auburn and Florida State. I wouldn't wanna play 'em. Cincinasty is looking pretty good, too. Ultimately though, when you hear about lack of facilities at Cincinnati and USF's lack of a real stadium, you know they're still in a lesser league. A late USF-Miami match-up on November 3rd should put the ACC over .500 against the Big East.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is losing to a CAA team and 10 is getting the ACC some much needed street cred by winning the BCS MNC, how satisfied are you with your AD’s non-conference scheduling this year? With the non-conference opponents your program has lined up over the next few years, will you be more or less satisfied?
Extremely satisfied! Georgia Tech is taking a tour of the SEC and if all goes according to plan, by 2015 we will be crowned SEC champions. The 2009 schedule includes Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Georgia. Georgia Tech has always had a fairly good out of conference schedule since 2003 or so including but not limited to Auburn, Vandy, Notre Dame, BYU, and of course uga. Future schedules include Kansas, Syracuse, Tulane, and Alabama.
Last one, ESPN’s College GameDay is heading to Chestnut Hill this week for Florida State (2-2) at Boston College (3-1). Both teams are unranked. Parts of the blogosphere are going completely ape s**t over the WWL’s selection. Justify the selection (if you can). If not, tell us why you dislike the selection.
ESPN has been doing some strange things lately. Maybe, it's gotten too commercialized? Last week, College Gameday should have been in Blacksburg for VPI vs. Miami and this week, I can't really say I am comfortable with FSU vs. BC, simply because it's a "meh" game. Georgia vs. LSU is out of the question because Georgie fans are notoriously terrible towards the Gameday crew. OU @ Miami is probably a better game but with Miami's flop last week and Bradford's questionable status, there's little interest in that game. Perhaps, it's an attempt by the ESPN big wigs at proving their not favoring the SEC by dividing out some revenue and media coverage. We'll see. No outrage here.