OMG .... CBS acknowledges: ACC Overtakes SEC in 2016

Jan 28, 2017, 9:53 AM

The ACC struck out the last time it seriously made noise to compete in football with the SEC. Knowing football money dictates how economics work in college sports, ACC commissioner John Swofford expanded in 2004-05 to add Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.

This was a period when the ACC split 36 games against SEC, which was saddled with several NCAA probations, from 1999 to 2003. Arguments got made by coaches and in the media that the ACC had surpassed the SEC and better positioned than its neighbor for the future due to expansion. Florida State's Bobby Bowden even bragged in 2004 that, by adding Miami, "The state of Florida is going to learn about the ACC" and "the stepbrother is down in Gainesville."

Yeah, that didn't happen. The SEC won seven straight national titles with Alabama, Florida, LSU and Auburn. The ACC, which has won only seven football national titles in its history, went 14 years without winning one during its longest drought since 1953-81.

Fast forward to today. The ACC -- not the Big Ten, as I wrote earlier this year -- turned out to be the best conference in 2016 thanks largely to coaches and quarterbacks. The question now: Is the ACC better positioned to sustain success than the last time it surpassed the SEC in football?

"Now we just need to continue that upward trajectory of staying there, and that's hard to do," Swofford said. "But to stay there, you have to get there first."

What changed is Clemson and Florida State became elite at the same time. Dabo Swinney and Jimbo Fisher, two former SEC assistants, brought an SEC mentality to the ACC that upped the ante. Fisher said no to LSU in consecutive years, and Swinney doesn't face his potential Alabama question yet.

At the moment, the SEC is Alabama and Everyone Else. This season was the first in SEC history in which only one team (Alabama) finished with fewer than four losses.

For the first time since 2002, only one SEC team finished in the final top 10 of the AP Top 25. The SEC had five final top-10 teams combined from 2014-16, down from 13 in the previous three seasons.

"We've had some coaching transition and the game of football can be cyclical at times," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. "We've been at the peak a long time. We'll see it continue, I hope. I don't think at all there's some destination we've reached. We'll still continue to be the highest level of football because that's the expectation."

Clemson-Florida State has supplanted Alabama-LSU as the best annual game in college football. It's a game you feel fairly confident will possess national championship implications every year.

With the bar raised, ACC schools such as Miami, Virginia Tech, Louisville, Pittsburgh and even Virginia and Syracuse made promising coaching hires in recent years. Eleven ACC teams finished with a winning record in 2016, including postseason wins over Alabama, Michigan and Ohio State.

The ACC had a 10-4 record for the year vs. the SEC -- topped by Clemson over Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship -- and won those games by an average of 11.3 points. For the first time since 2002-03, the ACC has a winning record over the SEC twice during a three-year period.

Since 2014, the ACC is 19-13 vs. the SEC. From 2004-13, starting when Miami joined the conference, the ACC was 30-53 vs. the SEC.

"I think all you media folks need to change your stories," Swinney said. "It sounds good. I've been in this league a long time, and this league has never gotten the respect that it deserves. But I said about five years ago or something, just keep your mouth shut and go play. If we want to change the story, then we've got to change it from the inside out. ... You've got to win those games. I told my AD that. I told Terry Don Phillips that."

this great article is continued at:

http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/how-the-acc-used-coaches-quarterbacks-to-overtake-the-sec-in-2016/

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OMG .... CBS acknowledges: ACC Overtakes SEC in 2016

Article refers to Dabo and Jimbo as former SEC coaches.

We just need to add....they moved up to the big time....***

Re: OMG .... CBS acknowledges: ACC Overtakes SEC in 2016

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