Written by: O

In the summer of 2003, the ACC basically stole three of the Big East’s top football teams in Miami (Fla.), Virginia Tech, and Boston College.  This was thought to be a crippling blow to the Big East conference as the ACC looked to rival the SEC and the Big 12 in terms of becoming a college football power conference.  What has come for the ACC has been more money and more television coverage.  The surprise has been that not only has the ACC not become the football power conference they planned on becoming, they have also lost what was thought to be unprobable: their standing as a top basketball conference as well.

The arrival of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College had the ACC believing they had arrived as a big-time football conference.  Miami had been the dominant college football program, winning the national title in 2001, losing the national title game in 2002, and having a 34-game winning streak in the midst of all of that.  Virginia Tech had their national success in playing in the national title game in 1999, against Florida State.  In fact, the ACC was looking at how from 1998-2002, the newly formed ACC would have had a representative in every national title game and would have had both representatives in 1999.

Since the coming together of the “new” ACC conference, Miami and Florida State have fallen on hard, hard times, a huge determent to the expansion.  After missing the ACC title game by losing their final home game in both 2004 and 2005, Miami had their two worst seasons since the 1970s, which included last year’s first losing season, 5-7, in 30 seasons.  Florida State had dominated the ACC before the 2004 season, winning 11 titles, but since the expansion, the Seminoles have won 1 ACC title and has had 5 or more losses in the last 3 seasons.  Not what the ACC had in mind when football was made a priority.

Meanwhile, the Big East has flourished since 2004.  They went to the Conference USA and got Louisville, South Florida, and Cincinnati to join the Big East Conference and the Big East Conference has taken off.  West Virginia has become a national power.  Louisville was an aspiring football program and has steadily ascended as a quality football program recently.  South Florida has quickly become one of the rising college football programs in the country and even programs such as Connecticut and Cincinnati are starting to become decent football programs as well.   In fact, the Big East is 3-0 when their representative has made the BCS while the ACC has been 0-3.

Now, what should have the ACC worried is not just that the Big East has at least stayed even, if not surpassed them in college football, but the Big East has clearly surpassed them in what was the ACC’s best sport, college basketball.  Like football, the ACC powers have fallen off.  With the exception of North Carolina, the traditional powers have disappointed.  Since 2004, Duke has won three games in the NCAA tournament.  Maryland, who won the national title in 2002, hasn’t made the NCAA tournament in three of the last four years.  Boston College, the one team who was supposed to do well in college basketball as well as college football, has fallen off in both sports.  In fact, the ACC has only had one team in the Sweet 16 in each of the last three years.

The Big East has had a reemergence of being the best conference in college basketball.  Like football, the expansion only made college basketball better while traditional powers have gotten stronger.  Georgetown made their first Final Four in more than 20 years in 2007.  Only the greatest Final Four underdog, maybe ever, George Mason in 2006, has kept Connecticut from being thought of as the best college basketball program this decade.  Louisville made their first Final 4 in decades in 2005 and just barely missed out in 2008.

Before coming to any conclusions, just remember that it has only been 5 years since the expansion of ACC and then the Big East, so valid conclusions should not be made so quickly.  Most of the changes have been due to the many different hiring of coaches in both sports rather than the switching of conferences.  What has been determined is that the Big East has gotten off to a much better start, which has to be gratifying since the ACC pretty much raided the Big East conference.  Now the question will be if this keeps up, who will the ACC blame for the Big East beating them at their own game?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.