Is The Sky Falling?

Everyone from ACC Commissioner John Swofford to Duke head coach Ted Roof believe this ACC football season will be better than the last.Some football analysts and columnists however seem to think the sky is falling.

They say that the ACC has nowhere to go but up. They point to the measure of a conference's strength in its record against the other Bowl Championship Series conferences (and Notre Dame)..In the ACC's case, that makes 2006 an unqualified disaster. The league went 4-12 against its BCS brethren during the regular season. That ranks sixth, out of six, among the BCS conferences.

The Big East on the other hand, which also went 5-0 in the bowl games, ranked first with a 11-7 mark, edging the SEC (9-6) by percentage points.The ranking doesn't get any better when you consider the ACC's record vs. the rest of I-A in 2006. The league went 17-6, which in terms of percentage points, also ranks sixth (the Big 12 went 20-6 with the benefit of playing three more I-A non-conference opponents).The only good news for the ACC was it went 3-3 in the bowls, which was a better mark than the Big 12 (3-5) and Big 10 (2-5).

These "the sky is falling" gurus seem to believe that teams such as perennial powerhouses Miami and FSU will stay down. As Lee Corso would say, not so fast my friend! They seem to forget the years that FSU and Miami were in the national championship hunt. The last time I checked the SEC has its share of "frogs". Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and Vanderbilt are not exactly teams that put fear into the hearts of opposing teams. The SEC has been down in the past but I did not hear this cry from these same so called "experts." I for one do not think the sky is falling in the ACC. As they say, we shall see.