ACC Week 7 Wrapup: Here Is What We Know

Here is what we know about North Carolina: They can’t stop anybody. The fewest points they have allowed this season is 27, to a SDSU team that’s ranked 98^th in the country in scoring. Notre Dame just hung 50 on them to run their PPG allowed to 43.3, which, I’m pretty sure, is more than Tulane has scored all year. They may have finally figured out that going with just one quarterback is a good idea, but it’s too late for this season. They’ll have to win 4 out of 6 to be bowl-eligible, and I don’t see them knocking off Duke, Virginia or Miami. Only Pitt and a suddenly vulnerable NC State, both at home, look like solid possibilities, and that’s for a team that started the year ranked.

Your Weekly ACC Roundup - Week 6: Things We Were Wrong About

On the surface, Week 6 - the first full week of conference play - looked pretty normal in the ACC. After the giddy heights of the first few weeks and the mayhem of weeks 4 and 5, it was almost a relief to get into conference play and have favorite pretty much run the table. But even in the midst of a sea of the expected - like, say, Florida State pummeling Wake Forest like they were re-enacting the Hulk-Loki scene in Avengers - there is still proof that we got some things wrong. Namely:

Clemson Is A Verb

"To Clemson" is a verb, derived from the Latin "clemsono", which means "to hand the ACC title to Florida State". They had the game won and they gave it away, like they always do. To watch Clemson in a big game is to watch a Sean Bean movie: you know he's going to get ganked sooner or later, but what keeps you glued to the screen is the details of how.

Your ACC Football Breakdown: Week 1

Week 1 of college football season generally exists for two reasons. One, to find a small-school cream puff you can whup up on without fear of losing, buffing the record and providing what's really a glorified scrimmage to start the year. These games have the added advantage of allowing coaches to work all those pesky 1-game disciplinary suspensions of key players out before anyone with a pulse comes calling. Justice, such as it is, gets served, but only in the form of an Oscar Meyer Lunchable.

Number two, which is generally a bit rarer, is to provide a team with a chance to play a quality non-conference foe. This technique is used by teams with national championship aspirations who want to burnish their strength-of-schedule rating, or by an up-and-comer team without reasonable title hopes for whom a "good loss" is still useful.

ACC Football Preview. Sort Of.

Because it's that time of year again, and the local airwaves are buzzing with talk of ACC football. In truth, there's more reason to do it than most years, seeing as how A)last year was a remarkably successful one for the conference and B)they've just added an actually good football team in Louisville, and Notre Dame has started keeping a change of clothes and a toothbrush at conference HQ while still insisting that they're just friends with benefits.

Your Weekly ACC Football Update: Thank God It's Over Edition

Precisely one game in the ACC mattered: Duke beat a resurgent UNC team - barely - to win the Coastal Division and punch their ticket to the conference championship game next week, wherein without intervention from either the Divine or Florida law enforcement officials, they will be turned to chutney by Florida State.

(Note: Duke fans, please don't even pretend to get upset here. Duke is a wonderful story and a much better team than anyone had a right to expect this year. But scraping past the Wake Forests and UNCs of the world - the same teams FSU beat by 50 or so - is indicative of a slight talent gap. Whatever happens in Charlotte, it's going to be ugly.)

Your ACC Roundup: Why Even Bother Edition

I'm not even going to bother breaking this one up. There's no point. Any given week in the ACC can be summed up in two sentences: Florida State beat holy hell out of someone, and everyone else might as well have played rock-paper-scissors. (Well, except Virginia. Because they probably lost.)

Weekly ACC Update: The Great Clemsoning

Usually, when members of a particular conference beat each other up all season long, it's taken as evidence by supporters that it's a strong conference with a lot of good, evenly matched teams.

This only works, however, if the games are close. When the scores come back 56-0 and 51-14 instead, it's hard to argue that there's league parity. Which brings us to Saturday, and The Great Clemsoning.

Florida State, Scooby Doo Villain

This is what Florida State's athletic director said in response to rumors that the Seminoles were looking to jump to the Big 12:

"We're in the ACC. We're committed to the ACC," Spetman said. "That's where our president and the board of trustees has committed to, so we're great partners in the ACC."

 Translated into English, this roughly says:

1. Crap, we got caught.
2. I want us in the Big 12, but those stupid poopyheads the university president and board of trustees said no.
3. Crud, we need to make nice to all the people we'll be playing next year if I don't pull this move off.
4. This word "great partners", I do not think it means what you think it means.
5. You're not buying a word of this, are you?
6. I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling reporters and your stupid dog. Also, our football coach shooting his mouth off.

You know, if more than 20 Division I athletic departments were profitable, I could see some vague justification for all of this. But they don't, so there isn't, and screw anyone who says "well, football's profitable, you need to cut some chick sport, that's all." A whole lot of football programs aren't profitable, and it's not because of women's field hockey. It's because of multi-gazillion dollar facility improvements and multi-million dollar contracts for football coaches and, oh yes, the added travel fees racked up by all the other sports who now have to fly to Boise by way of Saskatoon because football's jerked them into a conference realignment that only makes sense in terms of football dollars.

So I expect FSU to bolt to the Big 12. And I expect the ACC to respond by ripping UConn or Lousiville out of the Big East. And I expect all the happy horseshit will continue from there, as it has, because at least right now, football money is all that matters in college sports.

But gosh, they're great partners to somebody at FSU. It's not their fault that "somebody" changes.