Is ACC underrated?

GlennW

GlennW

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To the always rational and high-minded discussion that is conference strength, consider this contribution to the dialogue.

By the ratings of the website footballoutsiders.com, the ACC has eight teams in the top 30, more than any conference in the country. The depth would explain, to a degree, the dog-eat-dog balance of the Coastal Division in particular. (Note: The rankings are through last weekend’s games.)

georgiatech.blog.ajc.com/2014/...acc-underrated/
 
mts315

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I think the ACC more than holds it's own as a conference and in my opinion it is SEC West and then a tie for everyone else (and I don't think the SEC West is that far out in front).

The whole thing is perception at this point as ESPN hype. It drives me crazy to hear Mark May say X team is good because they play in the "best conference in America."
 
GTJake

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I watched the Alabama/LSU game Saturday and it was like watching paint dry. Until the last drive Alabama had one first down and 34 total yards in the second half.
So the obvious question is are the defenses THAT good ???
They play mostly nobody out of conference and then they continually swap places with each other on wins/losses.
Is the SEC pulling the biggest "were the greatest conference" scam in college football history !!
 

Eli

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mts315 said:
I think the ACC more than holds it's own as a conference and in my opinion it is SEC West and then a tie for everyone else (and I don't think the SEC West is that far out in front).

The whole thing is perception at this point as ESPN hype. It drives me crazy to hear Mark May say X team is good because they play in the "best conference in America."
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Mark May is horrible
 
ASURAMS07

ASURAMS07

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Whiskey_Clear said:
Clemson vs USCe, FSU vs UF, and our game vs the mutts will speak loudly to this question.
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I think this is the year that the ACC can honestly go 3-0 in these rivalry games. Clemson should bet South Car. FSU should bet UF and we honestly have the best chance team wise to beat Georgia is a long time. Worse case ACC go 2-1 in these three games.
 
Northeast Stinger

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Whiskey_Clear said:
Clemson vs USCe, FSU vs UF, and our game vs the mutts will speak loudly to this question.
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Yes and no. If the ACC wins all of these games or if the ACC plays close in all of these games, it will not make much of a difference to those who promote the myth of SEC superiority. The "experts" will say, "It's just one game, not a trend." That is the problem. Of course if the ACC were to lose all of these it will not be seen as just one game on the schedule but rather we give evidence of a deep genetic disorder in the ACC body that will forever prohibit it from being able to compete with "the big boys." Clemson beat LSU and Georgia in back to back seasons and it was written off as soon as Clemson lost to another SEC team. And when was the last time Ohio State beat an ACC team? But we still are talked about like we are below that conference on some blogs.
 
Whiskey_Clear

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Im not arguing their is media bias for the SEC. Having said that....winning these rivalry games will be hard to argue against. Sure some of the talking meat heads will say USCe and UF are down this year. I grant ya that. How bad we beat them all could factor in. Regardless....it will be hard to ignore 3-0 against them. Lets hope it happens. Rivalry games are usually crazy tho.
 
GlennW

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Northeast Stinger said:
Yes and no. If the ACC wins all of these games or if the ACC plays close in all of these games, it will not make much of a difference to those who promote the myth of SEC superiority. The "experts" will say, "It's just one game, not a trend." That is the problem. Of course if the ACC were to lose all of these it will not be seen as just one game on the schedule but rather we give evidence of a deep genetic disorder in the ACC body that will forever prohibit it from being able to compete with "the big boys." Clemson beat LSU and Georgia in back to back seasons and it was written off as soon as Clemson lost to another SEC team. And when was the last time Ohio State beat an ACC team? But we still are talked about like we are below that conference on some blogs.
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After last season, when an ACC won the National Championship and a BCS Bowl game, as well as swept every major player award (i.e. the Heisman Tropy), a repeat of outstanding play by our member teams and players could be argued as the new pattern, not an "old trend". Just one man's opinion.
 
Bruce Wayne

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GlennW said:
After last season, when an ACC won the National Championship and a BCS Bowl game, as well as swept every major player award (i.e. the Heisman Tropy), a repeat of outstanding play by our member teams and players could be argued as the new pattern, not an "old trend". Just one man's opinion.
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I think that the media over the years in all facets of reporting, especially TV reporting (and even more clearly sports reporting) has proven itself very consistent. They travel in packs of group-think, typically stick to an appeal to the lowest common denominator, prefer consistency in story-telling (i.e., do not handle change well), and really care about "cover sheets on TPS reports" as in our good "company men" that serve their self-interests to get the largest numerical sets of eyes to stay tuned during commercial breaks.

The problem for a Tech fan, or just a rational fan of college football is that the system in place within the sport has always served to support just such an approach by the media paid to cover it. I said it before but College football did as a form of athletic competition for sports journalism what modern abstract art did for art critics, it gave them far more power than they deserved. This is because opinion polls have always played a huge role in determining the "champion" of the sport. It is still that way with this make believe "playoff" system starting this year and will continue to be the case until a legitimate approach is established for determining a seasonal champion through actual competition.

Remember when it was a ludicrous Big10 bias? And the media had one voice on how Ohio State was going to destroy Florida in the title game? I spoke to my brother at the time about how I felt like I was the only person who had noticed how good the UF defense was and that while OSU may have been capable of winning a close high scoring game against the Gators they would lose every other scenario and were pretty likely to get pummeled. The dominant meme/story for the media then was slanted hard to the Big10, They even said the regular season game OSU vs. Michigan was the true "championship" game that year before the OSU-UF game.

Financial interests have shifted away from the Big 10, and the SEC won a bunch of those mythical national titles in a row, but the entire structure still prevails in college football that allows for this propagandistic and lazy journalism to continue on unabated.
 
mts315

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ClydeBrick said:
"Is the ACC underrated?"

No. The SEC is overrated.

/thread
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We are consistently rated as the worst of the power 5 conferences. We are at worst on par with the Big-10 and Big-12 and a notch above the Pac-12. The ACC is only truly behind the SEC. I don't think that we are that far behind them either though, their second and third teams are probably better than our 2 & 3 but after than I think we compare fairly evenly.
 
GTNavyNuke

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Is the SEC over rated? Depends what you mean by over rated. The SEC is clearly the best conference top to bottom. We (the ACC) needs to win more out of conference games to get ranked higher.

Here's the J Howell rankings for conferences (bottom of http://www.jhowell.net/cf/cf2014.htm ):
SEC .704 (e.g the SEC average team is 70.4% likely to beat the average FBS team on a neutral field)
Pac 12 .658
ACC .621
Big 12 .607
Big Ten .590

{From post 77 in http://gtswarm.com/threads/the-coastal-race.4459/page-4#post-93988}
I think in 2012 and 2013 seasons, the SEC won about 77% of their non-conference non-FCS games. That is a large part of the reason why I think they have such a high Power Ranking by the different computer algorithms.

I agree with your point about ESPN being biased, but until the SEC starts to lose more outside the conference, they will be the ESPN darling because it attracts the largest audience. Once the SEC is no longer the darling, ESPN will go zombie on them.

Anyway, here's how I got the stat.
  • In 2013, the SEC conference record according to J Howell was 111 and 69. That's all games including bowls.
  • There are 14 SEC teams and all the one I checked played 1 FCS team. So subtract 14 off of the wins (97 ins and 69 losses). (Yeah I'm assuming that the SEC won all it's FCS games!)
  • The 14 SEC teams each play 8 SEC regular season games a year (at least the ones I checked). So that is 14 teams times 8 games divided by 2 since there was a winner and loser in each game (no ties I hope). That is 56 inner conference games which need to be taken off the total wins and losses.
  • Plus there is one SEC championship game so take another win and loss off of total win and loss.
  • Finally assume that the bowls were all SEC versus another conference. I think it's true, so wins and losses aren't adjusted for bowls. If there were SEC on SEC bowls, then you'd have to take one off of both wins ans losses and the % would go up.
  • Doing that, you end up with 40 wins and 12 losses or 77% winning %.
  • Similarly for 2012 where there were 111 wins and 68 losses, the % is 78%.
  • Someone else can go back to 1998!
 

Oldgoldandwhite

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Here is the problem. A win over A&M, LSU,USCe,UF,Oklahoma,Texas,UTenn,Kentucky,etc is a quality win. FSU's win over UVA, Louisville,etc is not a quality win. None of our wins are quality wins. According to the "experts". I have a hunch the committee will follow suit in this reasoning. Duke get's little credit and if FSU has one loss, good-bye playoffs for the ACC.
 
GTpdm

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Oldgoldandwhite said:
Here is the problem. A win over A&M, LSU,USCe,UF,Oklahoma,Texas,UTenn,Kentucky,etc is a quality win. FSU's win over UVA, Louisville,etc is not a quality win. None of our wins are quality wins. According to the "experts". I have a hunch the committee will follow suit in this reasoning. Duke get's little credit and if FSU has one loss, good-bye playoffs for the ACC.
Click to expand...

It's worse than that, actually--for SEC teams, a bye is a "quality win"...
 
awbuzz

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ACC needs to win more bowl games on a regular basis, especially the post Christmas bowls and then we'll get more respect.
 
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