Let me begin by jokingly calling out Robert Reinhard, Wake Forest SB Nation blogger, for his #GoACC Power Rankings that have FSU ranked above Clemson. This comes despite Clemson’s win over UGA, which now looks like a top five team, while FSU’s best wins include a 14-point comeback win against Boston College last week and a Labor Day blowout against Pitt.
Maybe he’s a just a bit bitter after his Demon Deacons suffered the biggest blowout ever leveled by a Swinney-led Tigers team. Nobody, and I mean not Troy, not SC State, nobody has lost by more.
Nevertheless he’s not alone in his anger/frustration and it goes WAY, WAY beyond the Clemson loss. Quoting from SB Nation’s Wake Forest Blog (Blogger So Dear) :
“The fan base is in a dangerous combination of anger/apathy that even sparked a poll on the OGBoards wondering if the fan base would be okay going to FCS in football if it meant making the NCAA Tournament in basketball each year.”
I inquired as to the result of the poll, and bear in mind, these are your most engaged Deacon fans. Here are the results:
47% Pro-FCS/NCAA Tournament every year
45% Pro-Keep FBS football
8% Don’t care / Other
n=116
Woah! That shocked me. I knew how much the Deacon faithful loved their basketball team and I’ve seen the apathy for football, but wow!
I’ve drawn up what I think are ideal divisions for the conference before, but this led me to conjure up dream ACC divisions without Wake Forest. To even it out, I’ve replaced them with Notre Dame. What an amazing conference the ACC would become with this swap. What do you think? We can dream.
ACC North
- Notre Dame
- Louisville
- Virginia Tech
- Virginia
- Pittsburgh
- Boston College
- Syracuse
ACC South
- Clemson
- FSU
- Miami
- Georgia Tech
- NC State
- UNC
- Duke
Maybe best of all, there are no real rivalries across these divisions so there would be no need to maintain cross rivals. Notre Dame could still play each ACC South team every 3-4 years and would play the ACC North teams annually. Of course, this is purely hypothetical. I can’t even imagine what would have to happen for a dead-beat program to get booted from a conference. Does anybody know how bad a program has to get before a conference could seriously consider booting them from a conference? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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RyanKantor.com 