Is The ACC Catching Up To The SEC?
May 11th, 2009 ║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt
It used to be that the SEC owned the college football bowl season. And then they owned the NFL Draft.
Nowadays they at least have company on the block.
For the second straight year the ACC will match the SEC with nine bowl tie-ins. Not too shabby for a pair of 12-team leagues. Of course, as the SEC learned last year, there are no guarantees that nine league teams will qualify for a bowl.
While the SEC led the way again in NFL Draft selections, the ACC again finished second. That’s become a trend in recent years.
While it may be easy to figure out that folks in the South take football more seriously and are better at it than their northern neighbors… and that probably explains why the conferences stretching from Virginia to Louisiana are the strongest (sorry, Boston College, you don’t fit the ACC mold)… it does not answer this question:
If the ACC is gaining in quality players and quality teams, why does the league fail to compete for national championships? Florida State and Miami have fallen on hard times, yes. Virginia Tech has reached a title game, albeit a decade ago. But the ACC just can’t seem to cash in when the stakes are the highest.
Until they do, no amount of bowl tie-ins or NFL draftees can change the fact that the ACC still runs a distant second to the SEC. (And if you ask Big 12 fans, you may find that the ACC really runs third.)
