Some perspective: Wake and ACC football
Posted by Zach Smith
on September 2, 2008 at 6:23 PM
I received an email yesterday from a reader, John, who asked the following question:
Do you feel the following (2) statements are mutually exclusive.
- WF wins the ACC football title
- The ACC is recognized as one of the top football conferences in the nation
I do not think the two statements are eternally mutually exclusive, but right now they probably are. For one, Wake's rise to national prominence is new, and national perception is still that Wake is a "weak" team and program. Wake doesn't have any history of beating big names outside the ACC, and that presents a major hurdle. Even beating Louisville two years ago wouldn't have fixed that, and wins over Baylor, Ole Miss, and Vanderbilt this season won't do a whole lot of good either.
In order for the two statements to be true, I think we need to add two conditions:
In order for the two statements to be true, I think we need to add two conditions:
First, Wake will have to have beaten a perennial top-10 team who is in the top 10 that year. That could be Oklahoma, USC, LSU, Ohio State, or someone like that. They would also have to win their BCS bowl (Orange, National Championship, whatever). Those two wins could come at the same time or be separate, but both are necessary.
Also, someone else in the ACC will have to finish in the top 15 (and it would help if they also played in a BCS bowl). Even if Wake wins the ACC and the Orange bowl, it won't mean the ACC was any good that year. It would mean Wake was pretty good, but not the ACC as a whole. In order for the ACC to be considered good there's going to have to a second very good team. Hopefully Wake would be undefeated, and the second team would only have lost to Wake.
For now Wake isn't going to be able to do it on its own, and we'll be waiting for at least next year for this to happen - Clemson and VT already blew it.
What do you think? Are these two statements mutually exclusive? What would have to change for both to happen? Leave a comment and let me know.
9/2/08, 9:48 PM
Zach - For whatever reason, in my opinion, the burden of the national perception of ACC football falls squarely on the shoulders of Florida State and Miami.
If Wake Forest or Boston College rises to the top of the conference (I believe the second and third best records in the conference since BC joined three years ago), that will do nothing to help the national perception and may even ultimately hurt it.
Right or wrong, the national CFB conscience can't get over the fact that the Miami and Florida State programs are simply ... pedestrian at this point. Teams in other conferences rise and fall (see: Nebraska, UCLA), but this doesn't seem to affect the perception of their conference since other teams bubble up and end up dominated the conference (Oklahoma/Texas, USC).
No dominance by one team in the conference = poor football conference in the eyes of the mainstream media.
Everything about the post-expansion ACC was set up to cater towards a Florida State-Miami ACC Championship game year in and year out, and the complete opposite has happened during the first three years.
I'm not happy about it, just seems to be the way it is. Programs like Wake and BC just don't sell like Florida State, Clemson and the U.
9/2/08, 10:28 PM
I think we would need to beat all ACC comers some of which end up as Top Ten Teams. We won't get any respect until the end of the year and then only if some of the other ACC teams prove to be very, very good.
The year we won, the ACC Championship, we all know that had it been Miami or FSU with the exact same schedule and record, they would have been ranked in the TOP 5 in the polls. It is an imperfect system based largely on members of the media who don't actually watch the games. . .
9/3/08, 3:11 PM
Mutually exclusive? I was terrible at all of that math stuff in high school Zach!
But seriously, good point. Yes right now, it's mutually exclusive. The one word I've been using to describe the situation is "unfortunate," because Wake is a very good team, and if the ACC was also good, Wake would get some national credit for being good.
As it stands now, the only people who realize this are the people who watch the ACC and Wake play. I think it's unfortunate that Wake won't be able to get the kind of credit they deserve, especially if they do win the conference this year, because of something completely out of their hands (the state of other programs in the ACC).
Keep up the good work Zach.