ACC Blues

Recall how Miami was supposed to storm the ACC in 2004 playing traditional Basketball schools and throttling them into submission? Well Miami's Football program is now the joke of the ACC: the equivalent of what Florida State is and Clemson used to be in Basketball. Miami has won just once in its last eight matchups with ACC foes and just three times in its last fourteen. When you consider those three wins were against traditional bottom feeder Duke and two teams Miami has traditionally played since the 1950s, Florida State and Boston College, you realize Miami is itself a dead armadillo on Tobacco Road.

Virginia Tech isn't a traditional ACC school either so taking them out of the equation, Miami has lost eleven straight games to pre 1992 ACC teams other than Duke. Eleven straight! Even Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Baylor would be amazed by that sort of streak within the conference. With Duke hiring David Cutcliffe it is now Miami that must be looked upon until further review as the worst team in the ACC over the last few seasons. Virginia is down this year but as they proved last year could be a couple of players away from again competiting for an ACC title. Miami has proven even winning games at home is unlikely. Yet many including myself want the Canes to storm back so badly that we proclaim a three point performance against an over rated Florida team at home (that subsequently lost also at home to a team that hadn't won an SEC game in 22 months) as some sort of proof that Miami was headed in the right direction. Well until Miami can compete in its own league, all predictions and claims of a return to glory must be suspended.

Critics claimed ACC expansion would make the league into a football powerhouse and water down the basketball product. Nothing has been further from the truth. ACC purists bemoaned the entrance of Miami and Virginia Tech as a watering down of ACC Basketball, the toughest league around. Thus far four pre season publications have been released and all four rank Virginia Tech and Miami in the upper half of the ACC. Miami is picked no lower than 4th out of 12 teams and the Hokies no lower than 6th. Yet traditional ACC powers Maryland, Georgia Tech, NC State and Virginia are picked below Miami and Va Tech in every single publication. So much for gloom and doom on the Basketball front. What the reputation of the ACC did was give Miami and Virginia Tech the platform to steal recruits from the Carolinas and Georgia. ACC expansion has in fact made schools like NC State and Virginia have to work harder to get the non blue chip recruits from the area that would not go to North Carolina, Duke or Wake Forest.

But the ACC's expansion unknowingly to anyone gave traditionally weak football schools the opportunity to beat up on a former powerhouse, a school that changed the game for better not so long ago each and every week. Until the Hurricanes can prove other wise they are officially the new Duke: The traditional ACC's pinata.